Characterization of Fuel Pellets Made From Rice Husk, Sawdust and Corncob Bond with Cissus Populnea and Manihot Esculenta

Abstract

There is growing interest in the production of biofuels from biomass wastes. The availability of biomass waste poses the need for technical assessment of pelletisation of biomass waste at industrial production level. The misuse of environmentally friendly and sustainable energy resources and lack of compressed biomass energy products that could enhance fuel quality needs to be addressed. This study intends to determine the energy output from tenary combination of the biomass fuel pellets consisting of rice husks, African birch sawdust, corncobs and their varying mixtures bond with aqueous extract of C. populnea (Cp) and M. esculenta (Me). The combustion characteristics of pellets produced from Rice Husk, African Birch Sawdust, Corncob and their blends (M, M1, M2, M3 and M4) were conducted by the development of an analytical protocol. Pellet admixtures were prepared at each binder ratio of 10% of bulk weight of RH, ABS, corncob and their various blends in the ratios 1:1:1 (M), 1:2:3 (M1), 2:1:3 (M2), 3:1:2 (M3) and 2:3:1 (M4), respectively. The Bulk Density (BD), Ash Contents (AC), Heat Release Rate (HRR) and Calorific Value (CV) of the pellets were measured using established procedures. The result revealed that combustion characteristics of fuel pellets made from Corncob and Blend ratio of 1:2:3 bound with Manihot esculenta gel were enhanced and the fuel pellets possessed sufficient calorific values suitable for energy applications. It was recommended that massive production of fuel pellets from biomass wastes for small and medium scale energy systems could give a positive development to agrarian and rural areas in Nigeria where there is a lot of these resources and lack of stable electrical supply.