Design of a bagasse charcoal briquette-making device for use in Haiti

Charcoal made from bagasse, the fibrous remains of sugarcane production, has the potential to serve as an alternate cooking fuel in Haiti, where the reliance on wood has led to severe deforestation. Current production methods for charcoal briquettes range from laborious hand- forming to expensive industrial machinery. Thus, there is a need for an intermediate technology. This thesis describes the development of an affordable, locally manufacturable, briquette-making device that produces higher quality charcoal than hand-formed briquettes. The device is intended for small-scale briquette production in rural villages to supply charcoal to local markets. Since little is known about the materials properties and characteristics of bagasse charcoal, several production possibilities have been considered and evaluated. The most important finding during this process was that impact loading is more effective than steady compression because the required forces are not easily achievable by simple mechanisms. The final concept is a pile driver press, which uses a hammer to strike a metal piston and drive it into a tall channel to compact a column of charcoal. Several briquettes can be formed at once by using thin spacers to separate sections of charcoal within the channel.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Vechakul, Jessica

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• David Wallace and Amy Smith.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/32966

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/32966