A comparative analysis of emissions from bagasse charcoal and wood charcoal

Abstract

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere and is in need of cheap cooking fuel source. Currently, lump charcoal, the cooking fuel of Haiti, is made by carbonizing trees in ditches before selling the charcoal at market. However, Haiti is now 98% deforested and must find a way to prepare their food that does not destroy their land. The idea for this new fuel comes from compressed and extruded carbonized bagasse, which was produced using an extruder developed in a senior product development class at MIT. Using this bagasse fuel, experiments were conducted to compare the combustion characteristics of the bagasse charcoals with wood charcoal. Unfortunately, the heat released by the bagasse charcoal did not compare favorably with that of the wood charcoal, failing to raise 1 L of water to boiling while the wood charcoal raised the water to boiling for 25 minutes. Since the bagasse charcoal performed similarly to Kingsford brand charcoal, the emissions released were compared between these two fuels. Based on their averages, the bagasse charcoal emitted 1.4 times more CO, 1.6 times more SO₂ and 2.3 times more particulates but only 17% of the NOx emitted by Kingsford.