Production and characterization of agro-based briquettes and estimation of calorific value by regression analysis: An energy application

Biomass in the original form having low bulk density results in huge transportation & storage costs, and cannot be used as an effective combustible fuel. Densifying biomass by briquetting/pelletizing technology helps to reduce the above said problems and improves the effectiveness of biomass as combustible fuel. In the present study, briquettes were produced by using rice husk and carbonized rice husk with starch and bentonite clay as binders. The bulk density and compressive strength of briquettes produced were determined. It was observed that bulk density values of briquette samples increased with increase in binder percentage in the mixture up to 6% and decreased with further increase in binder concentration. Similar trend was also observed for compressive strength of briquettes. Proximate analysis of briquettes was evaluated as per the standard methods. A mathematical equation to estimate calorific value of biomass briquettes based on the proximate analysis of briquettes was developed by using regression analysis. It can be inferred that the predicted data from the proposed model closely match with the experimental data with a R2 value of 0.94 and root mean square deviation (RMSD) of 0.0659. Keywords: Briquettes, Regression analysis, Binder, Compressive strength, Bulk densit