Determination of Optimum Particulate Size for the Production of Some Agricultural Waste Briquettes
Keywords:
Optimum Particulate, Groundnut Shell, Dokanut Shell, Flame characteristics, Briquettes.Abstract
This research was carried out on properties of briquettes produced from Groundnut shell and Dokanut shell with a view to finding out which of the two residues can be used more efficiently and rationally as fuel. The agricultural waste of the two residues were sundried, sieved into 0.60mm,1.40mm, 2.00mm, 2.40mm, 3.35mm and 6.35mm respectively, before using the machine fabricated to produced briquette with the addition of starch as the binding agent to produced different particle sizes of briquettes. Ultimate and proximate analyses were carried out to determine the average composition of their constituents. The results indicate that briquettes produced from these two agricultural wastes (Groundnut shell and Dokanut shell) would make good biomass fuels. However, it was discovered that Groundnut shell briquette has more positive attribute than Dokanut shell briquette. The optimization of all process parameters yielded optimum results for the responses (output), the higher the desirability value the better the optimization result and as a result between the two solution generated by the Design Expert software Version 6.0.6., Groundnut as the biomass type yielded a briquette with density of 0.8390kg/m3, compaction pressure of 1.4669N/m2, Moisture content of 31.39%, pore content of 49.29%, ash content of 21.28%, crushing strength of 1153.2 N/m2, soot content of 10.49%,boiling rate of 6.9498 oC /min and calorific value of 28.953 kJ/kg.
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