Effects of Pine Needle (Pinus pinaster) dust on the performance characteristics of sub-bituminous coal briquette for Energy Generation

Research Article

Effects of Pine Needle (Pinus pinaster) dust on the performance characteristics of sub-bituminous coal briquette for Energy Generation

A.U Ofoefule, J.C. Igweagwu, M.N Ugwu, C.D. Mgbadike, C. Esonye

Corresponding Author : A. U. Ofoefule

Department of Pure and Industrial Chemistry, University of Nigeria Nsukka, Enugu State, Nigeria.

Email ID : akuzuo.ofoefule@unn.edu.ng

Received : 2019-01-22 Accepted : 2019-01-22 Published : 2019-04-12

Abstract : The effect of pine needle (Pinus pinaster) dust (P) on sub-bituminous coal (C) briquette for energy generation was studied in terms of combustion characteristics, emission profile, and thermal degradation properties. Briquettes of 100% of the pure coal and the biomass were first produced. The ratio for the blending was 1:1 for the binary combination of the biomass with coal. The feed stocks were dried to a moisture content of 5-10% and ground to a particle size of 0.8 mm. Desulphurization, homogeneity and binding were achieved by addition of calcium hydroxide (Ca(OH)2), water and starch, respectively. The briquetting was done using a manual briquetting machine at 5Mpa pressure for 2 h after which they were dried using solar drier for 10 days to obtain low moisture content. Proximate analyses, combustion, emission profile and thermal degradation properties of the coal, biomass and the blend were determined. The combustion and emission analyses showed that the blended briquettes had better combustion characteristics than the single coal briquettes in terms of burning rate (2.96 g/min), time required to boil water (32 min), specific fuel consumption (109.67 g/litre) and thermal efficiency (33%). The concentration of CO and CO2 emitted by the coal briquette was the highest (0.6 ppm and 80 ppm respectively) even though they were within the permissible range stipulated by the World Health Organization Ambient Air Quality Standard (WHO-AAQS) and National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) which is 35 ppm for CO and 600 ppm for CO2. Blending the biomass with coal reduced the concentration of the CO (0.6 ppm) and CO2 (33 ppm) evolved during combustion. The particulate matter (PM) emitted by the combination of the biomass with coal was (3051 µg/m3) which is higher than the permissible range in the atmosphere as stipulated by WHO-AAQS and NAAQS stipulated at 150 µg/m3. The blending reduced the concentration of PM evolved when compared to single coal briquette (1475 µg/m3). General results show that combining the pine needle dust with coal briquette improved the combustion, emission characteristic and thermal stability of the briquette.

Keywords : Coal, briquette, pine needle, combustion characteristics, emission profile

Citation : A. U. Ofoefule et al. (2019). Effects of Pine Needle (Pinus pinaster) dust on the performance characteristics of subbituminous coal briquette for Energy Generation. J. of Physical and Chemical Sciences. V7I2:02 DOI : 10.5281/zenodo.2639876

Copyright : © 2019 A. U. Ofoefule. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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