Bio char and syngas production from coconut shell by pyrolysis: An experimental study

Abstract

The usage of coconut in day-to-day life is large. In India, the coconut tree (Cocos nucifera) is grown in 20,96,720 hectares and produces 23,798 million nuts per year. Even though several literatures are available in explaining the use of coconut shell as useful products like preparation of activated charcoal and other products in a large scale, all these have not talked about domestic or community scale usages and waste management. Earlier, in a community scale cooking like that in hotels, restaurants etc., the coconut shell generated during cooking was utilized by burning it for cooking. Recently, due to replacement of biomass with LPG for cooking, the usage of coconut shell has become limited. The coconut shell is thrown out along with garbage. Owing to the inherent cup shape of the shell, it holds water. This acts as a place for mosquito (Aedes aegypti) breeding which will cause many diseases. Hence, this work attempted to utilize coconut shell for production of bio char and hydrogen in a downdraft gasifier in pyrolysing mode. The bio char can be used as a fertilizer for kitchen gardening and hydrogen gas can be consumed along with LPG.