Preliminary study on biomass burning emission characteristics from brick industry area (Case Study: Mranggen, Demak)

Abstract

The brick industry in Indonesia has been going on for a long time. This industrial practice is generally done traditionally by using biomass in the burning process. These burning activities have the potential to produce emissions. This research was conducted in the brick industry area of Mranggen District, Demak Regency. This study identifies emission sources, raw materials, burning processes, meteorological conditions, emission characteristics, and emission distribution. The results of industrial field studies show that the raw materials used are wood and rice husks for burning. Brick burning takes 2 days and one night with a flame of 750-820°C, oven heat of 320-660°C, and wind speed of 10-20 km/hour. The meteorological conditions of the location during the burning process are air temperature 31-37°C and air humidity 56-70%. Emissions from biomass burning in the brick industry are observed to not much different from biomass burning emissions in general with special content of Si, Ba, and Cl. Preliminary simulation results show that the emission can be dispersed as far as 300 m from the source area with a concentration at a range of 250 μg/m3.