An investigation on the performance of sawdust briquette blending with neem powder

This paper discusses the performance of the sawdust and neem powder briquette and its blends. In the first set of experiments, the sawdust and neem powder briquettes are produced by manually operated hydraulic pelletizer in the pressure range of 7-33 MPa. The strength of briquettes is investigated by the shatter index, impact resistance, durability index and water resistance test. The calorific value and water boiling tests have been also conducted to study the performance of the briquettes. The result shows that the neem powder briquette has significantly higher strength, but lower calorific value compared with the sawdust briquette. Also the performance of the briquettes increases with increase in pressure. Thus the maximum pressure of 33 MPa is used for the second set of experiments. In the second set of experiments, the neem powder is blended with the sawdust in the ratio of 100:0, 75:25, 50:50, 25:75, 0:100 (Sawdust:Neem powder). The study shows that the sawdust with neem powder as binding agent has considerably increased the strength of the briquette with a little reduction in burning rate.