Design of an extrusion screw and solid fuel produced from coconut shell

The objectives were to design an extrusion screw to produce biomass solid fuel in a cold extrusion process, and investigate the effects of molasses used as a selected adhesive on the physical properties of extruded products. The material employed consisted of crushed coconut shell char and coconut fiber char mixed at a ratio of 40:60. The ratios of molasses in the mixture were 10:100, 15:100 and 20:100 (by weight) and the extrusion die angles were 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 degrees gradation per experiment. The experimental results showed that the newly designed screw could function properly in the output range 0.75-0.90 kg/min, which is close to the design value. Regarding the molasses's effect on solid fuel properties, increasing the share of molasses was positive for both output and strength of the resulting briquettes, whereas the results of increasing die angle showed decreases in both output and strength. The compressive strength varied between 2.49-2.87 MPa in all circumstances, which was considerably higher than acceptable industrial level. Furthermore, the extruded solid fuel showed excellent resistance to impact force. Regarding energy consumption, the amount of electrical energy used in the extrusion process was insignificant, ranging between 0.040-0.079 kWh/kg

A novel vortex-fluidized bed combustor with two combustion chambers for rice-husk fuel

A novel vortexing-fluidized bed combustor (VFBC) using rice-husk as fuel was developed and presented. The combined characteristics of vortex combustion and fluidized bed combustion are the main features of the VFBC, which was designed to achieve high thermal capacity (MWth m-3), high thermal efficiency and low diameter to height ratio. The VFBC comprises a vertical cylinder chamber and a conical base, which provides a bed for incompletely combusted fuel. The overall dimensions are 1.10 m in height and 0.40 m in diameter. To evaluate combustor performance, the specific feed rate of fuel and mass flow rates of the primary, secondary, and tertiary air were varied independently of one another. The combustion appeared into two zones characterized by different combustion behaviors, i.e. 1) vortext combustion above the vortex ring and 2) fluidized bed combustion below the vortex ring. The fluidized bed zone has uniform temperature distributions across the cross-section of the combustor. The swirling of air above the vortex ringand the vortex ring itself played important roles in preventing the escape of combustion particulates. Bottomash appeared as fine black and grey particles of ash, which ranged in size from 200 to 600 µm. Fluidizationcould be initiated without the assistance of any inert material mixed into the bed. The experimental resultsindicated that thermal efficiency did not depend on the secondary or tertiary airflows, but was significantlyinfluenced by the excess air resulting from the combined total of the three airflows. The introduction of thetertiary airflow helped maintaining the temperature inside the combustor within acceptable levels. According to experimental conditions, i.e. a specific feed rate of 240 kg h-1m-3 and excess air (157%), it was found that the VFBC could achieve an exit gas temperature of 1060ºC, thermal efficiency of 95%, and thermal capacity of 0.91 MWth m-3. The amounts of CO2, CO, and O2 gases emitted were directly related to thermal efficiency, and the amounts of CO and NOx were 50 and 380 ppm, respectively