Development of water hyacinth briquetting machine

Briquetting technology is one of the renewable sources of energy that was developed to address problems concerning global warming, energy catastrophe, as well as solid waste management. Nigeria has abundant supplies of biomass resources and unrestricted solid waste, whose potentials are yet to be fully tapped for energy generation. It is, therefore, necessary to convert these waste into a product that will provide alternative energy to the people rather than constituting environmental problems. The study was undertaken to develop of hyacinth briquette machine and examine the properties of fuel briquettes produced from a mixture of waste paper (WP) and water hyacinth plant (WHP) using corn and cassava starch as a binder. WP from the academic environment and WHP harvested from the surface of fresh waters were used. Briquette machine was designed using a screw type extruder to convert the processed WHP and WP into solid briquette for domestic consumption. Samples of WHP was harvested, ground, dried and mixed with WP. The mixture was poured into a hopper. The physical and combustion properties of the briquette were determined at varying WHP and WP-binder ratios of 100:10, 100:15, 100:25, 100:30 and 100:45, 100:55 using corn starch as the binding agent. It was discovered that the binder ratio 100:25 demonstrated the most affirmative value of biomass energy than others. It was also observed that the cooking time for the briquette produced using WHP and WP was 40min/kg with SFC of 0.4kg/kg. The designed machine has production efficiency of 84% and also produced smoke-free WH briquettes with high resistance to mechanical action, better handling and efficient fuel characteristics for household use.