Performance Evaluation of the Effect of Binder on Groundnut Shell Briquette

Densification of biomass is often required to combat the negative handling characteristics of these low bulk density materials. A high-quality densified product is strongly desired, binding agents are usually added to comminuted biomass material to improve the quality of the resulting briquettes. Many materials naturally possess such binding agents; however, they may not be enough or available in a form that can contribute to product binding. The briquettes were prepared from groundnut shell with different cassava starch as binder in varying percentage (5, 10, 15 and 20%) by weight. The prepared briquettes after sun drying for 21 days were subjected to water boiling test for assessing the quality and suitability of briquetted fuel as domestic fuel. The groundnut shell briquettes burnt with good flame and observed 14.47 to 18.46% thermal efficiency while that of wood is 10.31%. The average burning rate of the briquettes ranges between 0.587 and 0.881 kg/hr while that of wood (V) is 1.166 kg/hr. The average specific fuel consumption of the briquettes ranges between 0.067 and 0.267 J/g while that of wood is 0.332 J/g. The boiling time for briquettes is between 14.80 to 23.15 minutes and 13.05 to 19.08 minutes for cold and hot start respectively while for wood are 28.05 and 19.20 minutes for cold and hot starting respectively. Comparatively briquette with 20% binder performs better.