Abstract
One of the most environmental concerns is the climate change because of the greenhouse gasses, such as CO2, N2O, CH4, and fluorinated gases. The big majority of CO2 is coming from burning of fossil fuels to generate steam, heat and power. In order to address some of the major environmental concerns of fossil fuels, a number of different alternatives for renewable energy sources have been considered, including sunlight, wind, rain, tides and geothermal heat and biomass. In the present study, two different biomass products (three leaves and grasses) were collected from the local sources, cleaned, chopped, and mixed with corn starch as a binder prior to the briquetting process at different external loads in a metallic mold. A number of tests, including drop, ignition and mechanical compression were conducted on the prepared briquettes before and after stabilizations and carbonization processes at different conditions. The test results indicated that briquetting pressure and carbonizations are the primary factors to produce stable and durable briquettes for various industrial applications. Undergraduate students have been involved in every step of the project and observed all the details of the process during the laboratory studies, as well as data collection, analysis and presentation. This study will be useful for the future trainings of the undergraduate engineering students on the renewable energy and related technologies.