Investigation of Bio-Waste As Alternative Fuel For Cooking
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Abstract
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Nigeria has a vast natural resources especially
forestland with the majority of its households relying on solid
biomass such as charcoal and firewood as their cooking fuels.
Combustion of solid biomass is a significant source of
particulate and carbon monoxide emissions. However, the
increasing demand and use of charcoal and firewood has led to
an escalation of deforestation and the emission from the
combustion of these fuels have been highly correlated to
harmful health effect among other related problems. Bio-waste
as an alternative fuel for cooking in Nigeria is still in its infancy
and hence the need for this research. The research was carried
out using binders (starch and spent oil) and biomass (rice husk
and sawdust) to produce Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) often
referred to as pellets. Properties such as moisture content (%),
ash content (%), tensile strength (N/mm) and higher heating
value (kJ/kg) were determined for the RDF. Prior to the
production of the RDF, the moisture and ash contents of rice
husk and sawdust were 5.72% and 17.14%, and 15% and
10.23%, respectively. After the production of the RDF from rice
husk, moisture content, ash content, higher heating value, and
tensile strength of 0.908%, 11.5%, 6160.7 kJ/kg and 508.7
N/mm2 of tensile strength, respectively, were obtained. Also, for
the RDF produced from sawdust, moisture content of 0.93%,
ash content of 16.5%, higher heating of 7808.1 kJ/kg and tensile
strength of 576.8 N/mm2 were measured. These results were
found to be in agreement with previous studies on RDFs
sourced from bio-wastes. Conclusively, the RDF seems to be a
good substitute to wood as cooking fuel and would also reduce
greenhouse gas emissions and thus save our environment from
effects of climate change.
Keywords
TD Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering, TJ Mechanical engineering and machinery