Biomass is the major energy source in Ghana contributing about 64% of Ghana’s primary energy supply. The broad areas of energy crops, agricultural crop residues, forest products residues, urban wastes and animal wastes in Ghana supply abundant materials for charcoal briquettes production. Besides, the geographical position of Ghana in Africa has advantages to this industry, because major biomass briquette consumption is done by its neighboring European countries who are unable to produce biomass briquettes without enough raw materials.
Briquetting Technology in Ghana
Briquetting is one of several compaction technologies to form biomass materials into product of higher bulk density, lower moisture content, and uniform size shape with biomass briquetting machine.
The idea of briquetting is to use materials that are otherwise no usable due to lack of density, compressing them into a solid fuel of convenient shape that can be burned like wood or charcoal. The briquettes have better physical and combustion than the initial waste. Moreover, the charcoal briquettes from agricultural waste can be used as fuel in place to ordinary wood charcoal in the rural houses in Ghana and as well in the urban cites too. The good is that the type of cooker or stove needed for using charcoal briquettes is manufactured readily and almost can be found in every home in Ghana and it is referred to as the coal pot.
The Benefits of Charcoal Briquettes
1. Smokeless, protect the environment and human health
2. It exhibits faster heat release and greater heat value
3. Low production cost when compared to purchase price of wood charcoal at local market
4. It can burn for long time (2-3 hr)
5. Improve the combustion efficiency of existing traditional furnaces
CPH Briquettes Production in Ghana
Ghana is the second largest producer of cocoa in the world. Cocoa makes a very important contribution to the economy of the country. It is the dominant cash crop and the single most important export product in Ghana. Cocoa production occurs in the forested areas, namely Western, Ashanti, Brong Ahafo, Central, Eastern region, and Volta Regions, and covers roughly 1.75 million ha. One of the residues produced after removal of the cocoa bean from the fruit is cocoa pod husk (CPH) which has a high heating value as much as17.0MJ/kg.
◆ Crush the cocoa pod husks into powder with diameter less than 5mm, which is suitable for further briquetting. You can choose our wood hammer mill for that.
◆ Dry the cocoa pod husks powder under the sun or with a sawdust dryer to reduce the moisture content to be under 12%
◆ Compress the dried cocoa pod husks powder into uniform briquettes with our CPH briquette machine
◆ The last step is carbonization by furnace. The carbonized CPH briquettes are of high quality and longer burning time.
