Conversion of Degradable Municipal Solid Waste into Fuel Briquette: Case of Jimma City Municipal Solid Waste

The study was done to explore the production of charcoal briquettes that could meet the need for energy in the community of Jimma city. The primary objective of this work is to produce charcoal from the most promising wastes. Under these objectives the main activities which performed were sorting waste, characterization of wastes that can easily degradable, designing carbonizer equipment, manual press molding machine, and characterizing charcoal briquettes. Degradable municipal waste was collected from Jimma city. The charcoal production process includes a collection of degradable municipal waste, drying, carbonization, crushing and sieving, binder preparation, binder – charcoal mixing, briquette charcoal (compaction and drying), and packing. The test result of degradable municipal solid waste for its density, % of moisture, % of volatile matter, % of ash, % of fixed carbon, and caloric value of was determined as 157.3kg/m3, 18.15%, 66.95%, 4.07%, 10.83%, and 18.5MJ/kg, respectively. In the same way the test result for charcoal briquette for its density, porosity weight index, shatter resistance ,moisture content, volatile matter, ash content, fixed carbon content, and caloric value was obtained as 50.06kg/m3, 29.05%, 92.3 %, 9.87%, 29.4%, 3.21%, 57.52% and 27.0MJ/kg, respectively. These results show in the range compared with others reported in literature. Therefore, there is the possibility to convert Jimma City degradable solid wastes into charcoal briquette using starch as a binder. We can increase the quality of charcoal briquette rather than polluting the environment.