Briquette production from rice husk by using screw compaction

Abstract

Most of the agricultural residues have low density resulting in increasing the cost of storage and transportation. With the reduced volume by the compacting process, density and other properties are increased while the storage and transportation space and cost can be reduced. The effects of screw characteristics on the briquette qualities were measured. The process condition for producing fuel briquettes with screw extruders can be used as renewable energy in the industry. Rice husk was collected and its moisture content was reduced around 8-12%. A screw used as feeding and compacting with a length of 45 centimeters and 19 degrees of screw tip angle. The mold temperatures were around 300-400 degrees Celsius. Three lengths of the screw were tested. While the briquette properties were analyzed, such as density durability, an expansion length, heating value, and moisture content of fuel briquettes after the compression process. The experimental results showed that the suitable compression condition for agricultural materials was in the range of 45.9 cm screw length and mold temperature in the range of 330 - 360 degrees Celsius. The briquettes had a durability of 98.67%, a density of 0.846 g/cm3, expansion ratio of 1.1853 %, the heat value of 3813 cal / g, moisture content after compression of 1.9% w.b. and capacity of 112.8 kg/hr. Increasing the screw length improved the performance of compression, continuous working, and briquette fuel quality. Reducing the screw length required a higher mold temperature, leading to the failure of continuous working, defective machines due to extra burden and deteriorating quality of fuel briquettes.