COMBUSTION AERODYNAMIC EFFICIENCIES OF SAWDUST AND RICE HUSK BRIQUETTES FOR EFFECTIVE WASTE MANAGEMENT

The two major environmental issues in Nigeria are management of solid and liquid wastes specifically related to commercial, domestic, industrial, and medical waste management. The absence of a coherent waste disposal policy has adversely affected economic development and has created a huge potential in waste management projects in Nigeria since capacity, technical expertise, and infrastructure remain an issue. The waste-to-energy method of management of rice husk and sawdust wastes littered throughout the country is reported in this paper. Briquettes of sawdust and rice husk of 0.2 kg each was loaded into fabricated stoves in order to determine their combustion aerodynamic efficiency, using both the boiling test and constant heating methods. The time taken to raise 2 liters of water to boil varied significantly from 26 to 12 minutes (for sawdust) and 29 to 13 minutes (for rice husk) briquettes. With sawdust briquettes, efficiencies increased from 26.20 to 35.60% (for boiling test) and 7.58 to 8.89% (for constant heating method), for the different stoves. Similarly for rice husk briquettes, efficiency increased from 26.02 to 34.55% (for boiling test) and 8.15 to 9.32%for cons taut heating.