Influence of Moisture Content, Particle Size, and Binder Ratio on Quality and Economics of Rice Straw Briquettes
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Influence of Moisture Content, Particle Size, and Binder Ratio on Quality and Economics of Rice Straw Briquettes Nishant Gill 1,2 & Ritu Dogra 2
&
Baldev Dogra 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017
Abstract Rice straw as solid residues are biomass residue materials that are not optimally used by farmers in Punjab and potentially become environmental pollutant. A large amount of rice straw (17 million tons) is generated and left as much in combine harvested rice fields in Punjab, India. It is very difficult to manage such huge amount of rice straw thus, farmers resort to burning it which leads to greenhouse gas emissions like CO2 due to open field burning and loss of rich organic matter present in the soil. Further due to imposition of restrictions by the state government, the practice of burning rice straw has now become an offense. So farmers are looking for alternatives which are economically viable. Rice straw can be effectively used as bio energy as it has about the same heating value (15 kJ kg−1) as that of wood, half that of good quality coal and one third of oil. The operational conditions required to produce high-quality chopped rice straw briquettes have not been determined and this study determined the optimal moisture content, particle size, and binder ratio required to produce rice straw briquettes. The optimized conditions resulted in formation of high-density (1030.38–1159.22 kg m−3) briquettes with durability ranging from 71.9 to 92.3% with minimum power requirement for briquetting (36.60 kW), maximum calorific value of 15.61 MJ kg−1, and minimum ash content (16.34%).Total cost of making chopped rice straw
* Nishant Gill [email protected] * Ritu Dogra [email protected]
1
Department of Farm Machinery and Power Engineering, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab, India
2
School of Renewable Energy Engineering, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab 141001, India
briquettes was 0.041 USD per kg and 0.00281 USD per mega joule of energy. Cost of briquetting from chopped rice straw with 10 and 20% cotton stalks was 0.050 and 0.051 USD per kg, respectively, and 0.0033 USD per mega joule of energy. Also, the briquettes prepared from chopped rice straw with and without cotton stalk as a binder were economically viable. Keywords Briquetting . Chopped rice straw . Cotton stalks . Binder . Particle size . Moisture content
Introduction Agricultural crops, which are used as a major resource of biomass, include rice, sugarcane, wheat, cotton, and maize. The biomass waste generated from wheat is mainly used for cattle feed in Punjab, whereas sugarcane baggase, cotton stalks, and maize stalks are mainly used as firewood at domestic level. The percentage of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and sulfur in wheat straw is 38.39, 5.06, 0.60, and 0.63, respectively; whereas sugarcane baggase has 43.54, 5.73, 0.98, and 0.29 percentage of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and sulfur, respectively. The carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and sulfur percentage in maize stalks is 28.63, 3.58, 0.39,
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