Author(s)

Wondwossen Bogale^1,2

¹University Industry Linkage and Technology Transfer, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
²Addis Ababa Institute of Technology, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Ethiopia is the second largest flower exporter in Africa. However, finding effective solutions for flowers waste management that are economical, efficient and environmentally friendly is a very difficult task. In this paper, a novel technology to recover energy from flower waste with the objective of producing biochar from flower waste by using pyrolysis has been presented. The pyrolysis reactor has been designed, manufactured and tested. Characterization of the flower waste has also been done by estimating the ultimate and proximate analysis. Besides the energy content has been measured by using Bomb calorimeter. Detailed proximate analysis has been performed and the energy content of the biochar has also been measured. The result shows that 10 kg of biochar is produced by using 18 kg of flower waste with a conversion efficiency of 55.5% and approximately 310.8 kg of biochar can be generated daily. Based on the result, the measured value of lower heating value of the produced biochar is 26.54 MJ/kg and approximately 392.2 kg of firewood is replaced daily. Thus, by adopting this innovative technology and producing biochar, the amount of flower waste is reduced from going to the landfill, energy is recovered from flower waste, income is generated from the selling of the produced biochar and the energy problems of the society is solved and finally environmental impact of the flower waste is reduced.

Biochar, Briquette, Flower Waste, Pyrolysis

Bogale, W. (2017) Preparation of Charcoal Using Flower Waste. Journal of Power and Energy Engineering, 5, 1-10. doi: 10.4236/jpee.2017.52001.