AbstractThis work involved the production and thermal characterization of biomass briquettes produced by blending a major agricultural waste with coal dust. In the work, nine different compositions of coal dust/groundnut husk briquettes were produced using starch as the binder while Ca(OH2) was incorporated as the de-sulphurizing agent. The ash content, volatile matter, fixed carbon, moisture content, compressive strength, ignition time, calorific value, water boiling test and burning rate were carried out to determine the physical, mechanical and thermal properties of the briquettes produced. The results showed that moisture content values are in the range 2.43 - 6.44%, for compressive strength 7.72 - 10.85 N/mm3, for ash content 24.18 - 29.15 %, for calorific value 21714.17 - 25027.18 kJ/kg, for fixed carbon 16.77-53.22 %, for ignition time 22.23-45.20 s, for water boiling test 1.50-4.99 min and burning rate 16.10-28.32 g/min. These are appreciable values for the thermal properties of the bio-briquettes. Therefore, the agro-wastes briquettes are beneficial for heating purposes rather than open incineration of the wastes.
Animal bones have been used to produce carbon char for quality assessment of activated carbon over non activated carbon (used as sample control) as influenced by method of activations (acid and heat). In this study samples analyzed were carbonized in a closed crucible at 400°C and ground into powder after cooling. 200g of each of the crushed samples was activated using 250ml of 2 M Hydrochloric acid for one hour at 80°C and another 200g was activated by thermal method at 120°C for 3 hours. To obtain the optimum weight lost of the carbons, the carbonization period was varied from 0.5-3hours. From the result, increase in carbonization time caused an appreciable increase in the percentage weight loss, this reached a maximum value at a carbonization time of 2.5 hours for both carbon samples at a corresponding percentage weight lost of 63%, 58%, 54% and 62% for cow, donkey, chicken and horse bones respectively. The percentage of carbon yield of cow, donkey, chicken and horse bones upon acid activation are in increasing order of cow (48.92%) > horse (48.64%) > donkey (46.34%) > chicken (44.80%) bones and horse (37.03%) > cow (36.21) > donkey (34.96%) > chicken (30.18%) upon heat activation. Among the bone samples, chicken bone has the least ash content of 12.84%, 11.05% and 15.84% for acid, heat and non-activated samples respectively. The difference in bulk densities of acid activated and heat activated carbons are infinitesimal. The order of increasing bulk densities is cow (0.80g/m 3) > donkey (0.78g/m 3) = horse (0.78g/m 3) > chicken (0.49g/m 3). The heat activated carbons shows higher percentage of hardness than the acid activated and non-activated carbons. This study indicated that activated carbons from Cow, Donkey, Chicken and Horse are effective as adsorbents with those obtained from chicken having better features of adsorbents.
As a low cost adsorbent source, a mixture of activated animal bones has been investigated on their efficiency in chromium ion removal from aqueous solution. Adsorption parameters such as contact time, biosorbent size, pH, biosorbent dosage, temperature and concentrations were investigated. Maximum adsorption of hexavalent chromium occurred at 35minutes, 53µm size of adsorbent, pH = 6, 70mg/L of chromium ion, 3g of adsorbent dosage and 303K. The experimental data from the adsorption processes were all tested with Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms. Both isotherms showed good correlations. The higher value of R 2 = 0.9938 from Freundlich isotherm over the R 2 = 0.99 value of Langmuir isotherm showed a better fitness of the adsorption process to Freundlich isotherm over Langmuir model. It can be concluded that any activated carbon from the bones of Cow, Donkey, Chicken and Horse are effective and can be used in industries for removal of hexavalent chromium.
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