Analysing The Effect of Rice Hush and Saw Dust in Preparation of Briquettes Using Hand Operated Briquetting Machine

Air pollution is caused by the millions of tonnes of agricultural waste that are produced year and either incinerated or burned inefficiently in loose form. Briquettes made of biomass can be used as a substitute for wood charcoal. One of the renewable energy sources developed to aid in the fight against global warming is briquetting technology. Solid fuels are still visible in usage in Rural areas and the excess availability of waste materials in the form of Biomass is used in areas near forest zones where wood and charcoal are used as fuel for general purposes. Deforestation results from rural residents' use of wood fuel and charcoal, even though agricultural waste is generated in large quantities there. Thus, the use of biomass as fuel is a substitute for conventional fuels to limit their usage. The traditional fuels can be partially replaced by biomass in the form of briquettes. Different biomass ratios were compared to manufacture charcoal blocks. The blocks are prepared using manual compressing equipment where three different samples were prepared with different combinations of utilizing a proportion of husk of rice, straws of rice, saw dust and Cow dung and the prepared samples were named S1, S2 and S3. The samples were tested to understand their moisture content considering the variables attained using the ANOVA technique and further understand the sample's cost efficiency. The results obtained from the comparative analysis of the proximate analysis revealed that S3 briquettes have the lowest moisture content while S2 briquettes (rice husk, rice straw and cow dung (10: Among the three samples, the S2 briquettes (10:05:40) displayed the highest moisture content. The comparative strength results stated that the highest compression density measured in S3 briquettes was 0.91 g/cm3. S2 briquettes consisting of rice husk, rice straw, and cow dung (10:05:40) had the highest moisture content (63.11%), whereas S3 briquettes had the lowest (23.64%).