Investigation of energy extraction and characterization with value added product from biomass

Abstract

Energy demand around the world has been increasing rapidly especially in the developing countries. Considering global issues of sustainable energy and reduction in greenhouse gases, renewable energy is getting increased attention as a probable alternative source of energy. There are nine general sources of energy on earth; these are geothermal, nuclear, fossil, solar, biomass, wind, wave, hydro and tidal energies. Biomass resources are often locally available and conversion into secondary energy carriers is feasible with lower capital investments. Rice husk has a great potential to be used as a source of renewable biomass energy, some value-added material like activated carbon and electrically conducting carbon can be extracted. The major portion of rice husk is consumed by burning in traditional rice parboiling boilers, and some portion is used for making briquette fuel. Thermal energy production by burning rice husk is rather poor. The other use of rice husk is the briquette production. But the briquette production system is very much electricity intensive. The other use of rice husk is value added product preparation from rice husk such as activated carbon and conducting carbon. Furthermore, before going to the application of rice husk, it is needed to go for detailed analysis of different properties such as physical and thermo-chemical analysis of rice husk from different varieties. Based on the above limited information and scope of research of this study was conducted to develop an easy to use and easily transported product that can be accessible to the communities. The main objective of this study is to investigate the suitability of rice husk for achieving maximum energy extraction and for conversion into activated carbon with the particular application to adsorbing colour and dyes from aqueous solutions. The analysis includes moisture content, bulk density, proximate analysis, elemental analysis, calorific values and thermo-gravimetric properties. This study reports that the moisture content in all samples investigated is suitable to serve as feedstock for thermal conversion technologies. Activated carbon is produced from rice husk by using zinc chloride and phosphoric acid as activating agents. The adsorption capacity of rice husk activated carbon varies with different types of the husks. Thus use of rice husk biomass can create enormous opportunity for energy production and value-added product preparation in addition to clean energy production and bio-material preparation for both industrial and daily life use.