Investigating the Performance and Combustion Characteristics of Composite Bio-coal Briquette

The awareness of the negative impact to environment due to deforestation, desertification and greenhouse emissions have led to finding alternative energy sources to traditional resources. In this work, briquettes of coal and banana waste (leave and pseudostem) were produced with calcium hydroxide as the desulphurizing agent while starch was used as the binder. Briquettes of varied biomass concentrations were produced by mixing the coal and banana leave and coal and banana pseudostem at various composition ratios by weight; (100: 0, 90:10, 80:20, 70:30, and 60:40). The briquettes were produced mechanically using a manual briquetting machine with pressure maintained at 7MPa. The results of the proximate analysis showed that the moisture content, volatile matter and ash content of the composites briquettes ranges between 6.74 and 9.36%, 25.25 to 39.78% and 6.25 to 8.75% respectively. The carbon content, porosity index, calorific value, ignition time, combustion rate and thermal efficiency of the composite briquettes ranges between 54.16 to 76.32%, 23.42 and 44.48%, 31.62 to 31.43 MJ/kg, 57.24 to 180.96 seconds, 0.035 to 0.083 g/min and 12.73 to 15.63% respectively. The higher calorific value and the lower volatile matter of the composite briquettes in compare with biomass briquettes make them more favorable as a solid fuel. However, the optimum biomass concentration for improving the cooking efficiency is at 35% banana waste