Determination of Combustion Characteristics of some Agricultural Wastes in Niger State, Nigeria.

Abstract

Agricultural wastes cannot generally be called so because if they are properly managed,they can be sources of income generation. This paper intends to determine the combustion characteristics, combustion rate, ignition point, highest heating value, peak temperature, percentage weight loss, and proximate analysis of some agricultural biomass using Thermo Gravimetric Analysis (TGA). Forty milligram (40mg) of each samples of pre-determined moisture content are reduced to particles size of 25mm using an electric powered blending machine before transferred into muffle furnace. The temperature was raised from ambient to 850k with a linear heating rate of 250C/ min. Results showed that the energy generated by the rice husk, cowpea shell and corn cob were 20.88KJ/g, 18.68KJ/g and 19.51KJ/g respectively when combusted separately. Peak burning profile varied from 630k to 780k while the combustion rate varied from 0.5 mg/min to 2.75 mg/min and ignition temperature also varied from 385k to 600k. These results are useful to design of incinerator, briquette production and production of biofuels from the studied biomass.