Author(s): Kaito Murakami
Email (s): e21m5806@soka-u.jp
Institution or organization of origin: Soka University
Country: Japan
Abstract
Lake Tana in Ethiopia has been negatively affected by overgrowth of water hyacinth in the lake ecosystem and local people by the lake have been suffering from it. Effective utilization methods of collected water hyacinth biomass are urgently needed to be developed. On the other hand, traditionally, charcoal made from Acacia trees is widely used as cooking fuel in Ethiopia. Therefore, production of biochar from water hyacinth could mitigate waste problem of the collected biomass and use of biochar as fuel could reduce use of Acacia charcoal and deforestation. Charcoal briquettes are solid fuels that can be produced by mixing powdered charcoal with binders. The biochar used were Acacia (ACB, unknown pyrolysis temperature) and water hyacinth with pyrolysis temperatures of 400◦C and 800◦C (WHB400 and WHB800, respectively). Each biochar, molasses or clay as binder, and dried water hyacinth as organic matter (OM) were mixed in a ratio of 6:4:0 and 6:3:1 by weight. In terms of calorific value, WHB400:molasses:OM (6:4:0) biochar briquette showed 17.4 MJ kg-1 , which was the closest calorific value to that of ACB:clay:OM (6:3:1) biochar briquette used in Ethiopia. It can be concluded that WHB400 with molasses as binder in mixing ratio of 6:4 has potential to be used as an alternative fuel in Ethiopia.