The advantage of briquette press
Briquette fuel is the answer to the ever-increasing energy crisis. The briquette press is an alternative to natural coal is easily manufactured from agricultural and forest wastes. With a low cost and high calorific value of about 4000 kcal/kg, the raw materials give superior briquettes particularly because of negligible ash contents while burning. The manufacturing process is extremely simple. Raw materials are fed into a hopper are forced-fed between the punch and die, resulting in high compression and hence high temperature.
Millions tons of forestry wastes and agriculture residues are available every year, which are not being utilized. A substantial portion of these residues goes waste and this even causes environmental pollution. On the other hand there is scarcity of fuel for domestic and commercial needs in the rural areas, which result in indiscriminate felling of trees in the forest areas. It is possible to prevent or at least reduce the deforestation due to fuel needs by providing alternative fuel as traditional fuel like coal, kerosene and gas etc. are beyond the reach of the people in rural or forest areas. Utilization of agro/forest wastes by conversion into fuel would help in resolving fuel problems.
Several briquette press technologies have been developed for conversion of biomass into fuel such as compaction of agro-waste into briquettes taking advantage of lignin present in the biomass as binder. But this technology has not become popular due to use of high pressure extruders/hydraulic presses, which require high-energy input to operate these machines. Fluidized bed combustion/charring of biomass and briquette the charred biomass using external binder are feasible.
Numerous charcoal production systems and improved techniques have been developed and are available for briquette press application from cottage level to commercial level using drum and mould methods to brick beehives, retorts and extruders. Appropriate process route has to be identified keeping in view the socio-economic and ecological factors.
Contact by with MSN
