With the growing population and the relative cost of conventional fuels, biomass resources, especially forest and agro-residues, can serve as an alternative and affordable energy source for the significant majority of the global population. Hence, this study investigated the physical and combustion properties of briquettes produced from a blend of carbonised sawdust and wheat offal at 20:80, 40:60, 60:40, 80:20, and 50:50 ratios (carbonised sawdust: wheat offal), using inorganic starch as a binder at 3%, 6%, and 9% inclusion levels. The study adopted a 3×5 factorial experiment in a completely randomised design and the briquettes produced were analysed based on their physical and combustion properties. The physical properties investigation revealed density ranged from 0.437 to 1.109 g/cm3.and the moisture content ranged from 3.14 to 9.87%. Briquettes made from an 80:20 biomass mixing ratio have the lowest moisture content (3.14%) and the highest compressed and relaxed density 1.109 g/cm3 and 0.601 g/cm3, respectively). While the average volatile matter, ash content, fixed carbon, and heating values of the briquette ranged from 20.29 to 32.90%, 3.99 to 13.43%, 49.92 to 70.58%, and 28.158 to 31.029 MJ/kg, respectively. Briquettes made from a 20:80 biomass mixing ratio have the highest volatile matter content (32.90%), while those made from an 80:20 ratio have the highest fixed carbon content (70.58%) and heating value (31.092 MJ/kg). Findings of the study revealed that the briquette produced exhibited desirable properties, and that 80:20 biomass mixing and 6% binder inclusion produced briquettes with the most desirable characteristics and are thus recommended for producing quality composite briquettes from agricultural and forest-based residues
Sotannde et al. (Tue,) studied this question.