International Journal of Engineering Research and Technology. ISSN 0974-3154, Volume 12, Number 8 (2019), pp. 1227-1238 © International Research Publication House. http://www.irphouse.com 1227 Performance Evaluation of Briquette Produced from a Designed and Fabricated Piston-Type Briquetting Machine Ikubanni Peter Pelumi 1* , Omololu Tobiloba 1 , Ofoegbu Wallace 1 , Omoworare Oluwatoba 1 , Adeleke Adekunle Akanni 2 , Agboola Olayinka Oluwole 1 and Olabamiji Taye Sola 1 1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, Landmark University, Omu-Aran, Kwara State, Nigeria. 2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria. Abstract Briquetting is an effective way of utilizing agricultural residues as an efficient, effective and clean energy for rural and sub- urban communities. Thus, the need for a locally manufactured machine that is accessible and easy to operate. Therefore, a piston-type briquetting machine was designed and fabricated in this study. The performance of the machine was also evaluated by compacting sawdust and rice husks into briquettes in which the efficiency and capacity of the machine were 85.7% and 68.56 kg/h, respectively. Sawdust and rice husk were mixed in the ratios 100:0, 94:6, 92:8, 90:10 by weight and was bonded using an organic binder at constant proportion for all the samples. From the result, the density (820 - 870 kg/m 3 ), moisture content (5.76 – 12.09 %), drop to fracture (8 – 20 times) and water resistance (93.75 – 94.24 %) increased as the rice husk particles increased in the briquette while porosity decreased with increased rice husk particles in the briquette. More so, volatile matter, ash content, fixed carbon content and heating values decreased as the rice husk particles increased and sawdust particles decreased in the briquettes. It could be concluded that the machine would be useful to compact quality solid fuels that would be able to withstand handling, transportation and storage challenges. Keywords: Briquette; sawdust; rice husk; proximate analysis; ultimate analysis; piston-type briquetting machine I. INTRODUCTION Energy plays an important role in order to have a meaningful economic and social development in any nation [1]. The continuous depletion of various non-renewable energy resources available and the greenhouse gas effects necessitates for increased interests in renewable energy. Agro-wastes (biomass) are vastly and hugely available in many developing countries yet they are left untapped as useful fuel. Biomass is a biological material derived from plant or plant-based materials [2]. Biomass has become an important alternative renewable energy due to its low greenhouse gas, low cost of production and low acidic gas emissions [3]. Hence, biomass energy research has attracted world-wide interest. Biomass is one of the most commonly and readily available renewable energy resources and serves as feedstock for bio-energy and can be used to generate heat, electricity and other forms of energy [2, 4 – 5]. Biomass resources such as wood and wood wastes, agricultural crops and their processing residues, municipal solid wastes, animal wastes, and so on are found to be very abundant [6 – 8]. II. RELATED WORK Briquetting is a solid fuel production process through which biomass is compacted to become fuel that can be useful for both rural and semi-urban sectors [9]. Through densification, the density of biomass materials could be increased and volume reduced [10 – 13]. Various studies on briquettes have indicated improvement in densified biomass produced [9, 14 – 15]. Agricultural residues both field or process residues [9] which are plant biomass (lignocellulosic materials) are considered to be the most promising, abundant and underutilized biological fuel resources. It has been found to be useful and cost-effective source of renewable energy. Such agricultural wastes that have utilized for briquette fuel include palm oil mill, sawdust, rice husk, rice bran, Areca leaves, rice straw, sugarcane leaves and so on [1, 3, 5, 9, 16 – 18]. Rice husk is the outermost layer of the paddy grain. Aside other lignocellulosic constituents present in it, it is very rich in silica. The abundance nature of rice husk has made it a strong attractive material for production of high-valuable bio-product such as biofuels, electronics, particle-board composites and absorbence [16, 19 – 21]. More so, sawdust is a residue obtained from processed woods and generated yearly in millions of tons [21 – 26]. Nazari et al. [27] utilized agro-waste material in producing biomass briquette. Rice husk and banana residue at various percentage compositions and sizes were utilized for briquette production. This study was conducted to assess the combustion performance of the biomass composite briquette which was produced. The composite briquette was densified at constant and controlled temperature as well as pressure by varying the particle size and ratio of the raw materials. From the combustion performance results, it was reported that biomass composite briquette utilized has the tendency to be used as solid fuel. Solid biomass fuel obtained from rice straw and rice bran was prepared and characterized by Chou et al. [3]. A rice straw smashing machine was developed. The biomass was compressed and characterization at room temperature was done. It was reported that hot-pressing temperature has significant effect on the air-dry density and the compressive strength of the briquette.