ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL EFFICIENCY OF RICE HUSK FUEL BRIQUETTES. FACTORS INFLUENCING ICP/SCP: CASE OF MOROMBE DISTRICT, ATSIMO ANDREFANA REGION.

ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT

The district of Morombe is the rice granary of the Atsimo Andrefana region with 15,675 ha of rice growing area for a production yield of 3t/ha. Paddy rice contains 21% rice husk, which represents a potential resource available at each harvest and which can be used for energy purposes. The rice husk has no particular use other than for cooking bricks for only 3% of these resources. Given this observation and the high cost and even degradation of local forest resources, the use of rice husks for domestic energy purposes is a local priority. The present research work aims to provide the local population with an ecological, hygienic and alternative source of energy to wood energy from the local resources that is the rice husk. The methodology adopted for the realization of this work consists of going through the following stages of activities: bibliographical and webographic research, field visits to see first hand the local reality on the availability of the resource to be exploited, surveys on local culinary habits and the processing and analysis of the data collected. The result of this work has made it possible to have an annual resource of 9,875t in rice husks. The average monthly charcoal consumption per capita is 12.6 kg, or 63 kg/month/household of 5 people. Their culinary habits are very energetic (150 kg/year/capita in charcoal) compared to the national average (100 kg/year/capita in charcoal). The lower calorific value (LCV) of rice husk briquettes varies according to two important parameters: the binder and fine matter content. For a binder content varying from 4% to 10%, the minimum ICP increases from 3512.13 kcal/kg to 4284.77 kcal/kg, but the maximum ICP varies from 3542.13 kcal/kg to 5293.72 kcal/kg. The higher the binder content, not exceeding 10%, the higher the ICP. On the other hand, for fine material with a percentage varying from 25% to 75%, its optimal content is 50% to have a better PCI with a minimum and maximum PCI varying from 3704.73 kcal/kg to 5293.72 kcal/kg. The use of rice husk briquettes instead of charcoal for a household of 5 people will make it possible to preserve respectively every year: 1,008 ha, 0.89 ha and 0.43 ha of eucalyptus forest for rice husk briquettes with a binder content ranging from 4%,5% to 10% binder with an average ICP (4%,5%,10%) of 3452,415 kcal/kg, 3661,25 kcal/kg and 4789,24 kcal/kg respectively.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.