Abstract
Biochar is a solid material obtained from the carbonization of biomass. If properly produced, it is useful for soil application to enrich plant values. Rice husk (RH) waste, an abundant agricultural by-product, was gasified in a top-lit updraft Belonio rice husk gasifier with a biochar yield of 29.0% ± 1.9%. The equivalence ratio (ER) for optimum biochar production was identified and its effect on biochar properties such as pH, volatile matter (VM), fixed carbon (FC) and ash content (AC), electricity consumption, biochar yield, specific gasification rate (SGR) as well as reactor temperature investigated and statistically analyzed. As ER increased from 0.292 ± 0.005 to 0.442 ± 0.016, the SGR decreased from 85.4 ± 4.5 kg/(m2hr) to 51.6 ± 2.4 kg/(m2hr) whereas reactor temperature increased linearly with ER. The original VM content of RH was found to be 76.1% ± 1.2% and decreased with increasing ER from 14.1% ± 0.2% to 10.6% ± 0.3%. The original FC and AC of 5.49% ± 0.22% and 9.10% ± 1.23% increased with ER from 50.5% ± 0.7% to 51.3% ± 0.4% and 33.7% ± 0.4% to 36.7% ± 0.1% respectively. The biochar pH at low, medium and high ER was 9.36 ± 0.11, 9.64 ± 0.03 and 9.42 ± 0.01, respectively. Results revealed a significant change in biochar yield and proximate values as ER changes from low to high.
Highlights
There is need to maintain soil fertility to sustain agricultural production
The biochar yield depends on the operating conditions such as the amount of air used during gasification and the particle size of rice husks (RH)
Original rice husk (ORH) as RH in its original form and fine rice husk (FRH) as rice husk that is partially broken were tested in this gasifier because they both exert a different pressure drop and the amount of air used for gasification will be different for both
Summary
There is need to maintain soil fertility to sustain agricultural production. The dependence on artificial fertilizers is expensive and not sustainable. Major agricultural produces in Malaysia include palm oil, rubber, rice, coconut, cocoa, pepper, pineapple, tobacco, coffee, tea and sugarcane These feedstocks and the tropical climate provide a great prospect for biomass investment with agriculture contributing about 10.6% to Malaysia’s gross domestic product in 2010 [7]. Original rice husk (ORH) as RH in its original form and fine rice husk (FRH) as rice husk that is partially broken were tested in this gasifier because they both exert a different pressure drop and the amount of air used for gasification will be different for both It is the purpose of this work to run the OBRHG on RH at various ER and determine temperature profile inside the reactor, gas velocity and temperature, yield and the characteristics of the produced rice husk biochar (RHB)
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