| Summary: | Biomass can partly replace or reduce coal consumption in power generation, hence
reducing the agricultural waste disposal issues and environmental pollution generated by
fossil fuel emissions. Pelletization is among the techniques for utilizing biomass and has
the advantage of being low cost and easy handling. In this research, broken rice was used
as an organic binder at 5%, 10% and 15% and three different moistures (14%, 17% and
20%) were applied for rice husk and rice straw-based pellet, and the evaluation of pellet
durability has been conducted. The results show that the addition of broken rice as a
pellet binder significantly improves biomass pellet durability. The highest durability of
rice husk-based pellet achieved was 99.4% with the binder addition of only 10%. For
rice straw-based pellet, the binder percentage is directly proportional to pellet durability
up to 15% of binder addition. The result shows a similar trend for the effect of moisture
on pellet durability. For rice husk-based pellet, the optimal moisture addition is 17%,
while for rice straw-based pellet, the durability increased as the moisture increased with
the highest durability of 98.9% at 20% moisture addition. Rice straw requires more
binder and moisture to enhance the pellet durability because raw rice straw contains less
natural lignin and cellulose content than rice husk.
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