Possibilities for utilization of tobacco stems for production of energetic briquettes

Abstract

Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.) belongs to the group of plants that produce agricultural raw material. Besides leaves, which are used to satisfy the passion for smoking, tobacco can be used for producing oil and biodiesel, because it contains 30-40% of vegetable oil. Because of its content of citric acid, tobacco can be used for production of dyes and varnishes. Seed cake contains high percentage of proteins (35-44%) and can be used as livestock feed. Because of the high contents of lignin (40-45%) and cellulose (28-40%), tobacco stems can be used for production of energy briquettes, which makes tobacco obtain a new usability value. The aim of the experimental researches presented in this paper is to define the possibilities for production of briquettes from tobacco stems and wood raw material and to evaluate the impact of this kind of raw material on briquettes properties. For this purpose five models were made: O-control model: 100% wood raw material (BW); model T-I - 25% tobacco stems (TS) : 75% BW; model T-II - 50% TS : 50% BW; model T-III - 75% TS : 25% BW and model T-IV - 100% TS. The results of the research show that density of the briquettes is within the limits of 526.61 kg/m3 for model T-IV, to 782.73 kg/m3 for control model-O. The ash content is a little lower than the standard values and it ranges from 0.32% for O-control model, to 2.17% for model T-IV. The sulphur content is much below permissible content (0.08%), and it ranges from 0.003 to 0.008%. These briquettes, according to the low calorific value are classified in II and I class. In the smoke of the burned briquettes, minimal quantity (0.005%) of nicotine is identified

Chemical Analysis of Different Parts of Date Palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) Using Ultimate, Proximate and Thermo-Gravimetric Techniques for Energy Production

“…The HVs of the eight date palm residues were found to be in the range of some well-known biomass fuels reported in the literature, i.e., common reed (18.9 MJ/kg) [4], Calotropis procera (19.5 MJ/kg) [64], vine prunings (18.7 to 19.2 MJ/kg) [6], corncobs (17 MJ/kg) [1], and tobacco stems (17.8 MJ/kg) [2]. The heating values of bio-char produced from FEB ranged from 23 to 26 MJ¨kg´1 [65].…”

“…1 As a percentage of the oven-dried weight. 2 As a percentage of the free-extractives oven-dried weight. 3 Fengel and Wegener [31].…”

“…New renewable resources including corncobs [1], tobacco stems [2], rice waste [3], common reed [4,5], vine prunings [6], and date palm midribs [7], are getting more and more popular as alternative materials to solid wood harvested from natural forests for bioenergy production. Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.), one of the most important non-wood renewable resources in the Middle East, used mainly for its fruit, fiber and as a construction material [7,8] could also be considered a raw material for energy production.…”

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“…Preliminary phytochemical screening of aqueous, ethanolic and methanolic extract of the stem of Nicotiana tabacum was done in order to reveal the presence of the flavonoid so that the antioxidant activity of aqueous and methanolic extract can be observed. In the previous studies, it was observed that the stem of Nicotiana tabacum consist of 0.005% nicotine 19 which signifies that any other secondary metabolites such as flavonoid would be in large amount. For this flavonoid was quantified by the aluminium colometric method in to calculate the number of flavones.…”

“…As far as the stem of tobacco is concerned, production of briquettes has values of tobacco stem which consist of only minimum quantity of Nicotine i.e. 0.005% 19 . It has been reported that extracts of seeds have shown antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus.…”