Abstract
The use of agricultural and agro-industrial waste as biomass fuel for power generation like briquettes can be an alternative solution to the problems related at their disposal. Briquettes produced from lignocellulosic waste, through a simple process and low cost are an excellent source of cheap energy and environmentally correct, in many cases, ideal for replacing fossil fuels in use today, with significant economic and environmental advantages. The banana cultivation generates a significant amount of waste, but little used, it would be important to add value to them. In this work banana semi-dried leaves were crushed to particles with sizes between 2 and 5 mm and its moisture content was determined. The briquettes were produced in a hydraulic press with compaction pressure of 18 MPa and two different compression times and were evaluated by proximate and ultimate chemical analysis, high heating value (HHV), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), differential thermal analysis (DTA), linear shrinkage, mechanical compressive strength, bulk and energy density. Briquettes presented moisture content of 7.2%, high contents of carbon (44.3 %) and volatile matter (75.3 %), low sulphur and nitrogen contents and HHV of 17.7 MJ/kg. These results are similar for other biomass used to produce briquettes. Under combustion in TGA and DTA analysis, the briquettes showed high loss mass and maximum energy release between 200 and 500 °C. The mechanical compressive strength for 1 second compression was 5.3 MPa and the briquettes density was 0.99 g/cm3. The thermal properties and physicochemical characteristics of the banana leaves briquettes demonstrate its potential for use as biomass fuel.
