Parameters Affecting Biomass Densification Process of The Rice Husk.

Densification of biomass is often necessary to combat the negative storage and
handling characteristics of these low bulk density materials. A consistent, high
quality densified product is strongly desired, but not always delivered. Within the
context of pelleting and briquetting, binding agents are commonly added to
comminuted biomass feedstocks to improve the quality of the resulting pellets or
briquettes. However in this study, author chooses to make the densification process
binderless by only manipulating the parameters during the densification process. The
load applied and the particle size of the rice husk is the manipulating variables in this
experiment. The rice husk first is being milled by the miller and the distribution of
the size ranging up to 500 11m. The rice husk is then being divided into three sizes
100 11m, 355 11m and 500 11m by using the sieving machine. For each sizes, authors
set the weight of the sample to be constant which is 0.5 g. Auto pallet machine is
used for densification process with the load applied starting from 500 kg to 1000 kg
with the intervals of IOOkg. A proper medium is necessary to hold the pallet prior to
the hardness test. The pallet had undergone a hot mounting process where a resin is
added to the hot mounting machine to provide a medium for pallets. After hot
mounting process, the pallets with a resin as a medium are being tested by the
Rockwell Hardness Machine. From the value of hardness obtained, as the
load/applied pressure increased, the hardness of the rice husk also increased. The fine
size of rice husk give better hardness compared to the medium and large one, but the
combination of both fine and medium particle size give better hardness among all the
stzes.