Design of Combustion Equipment for Residual Biomass at Laboratory Scale

In the rice industry, energy losses are evident; almost all of them use fossil fuels for drying, generating large electricity and diesel consumption. The owners do not find other solutions to close their businesses due to irreparable economic losses, and few industries have started to change their technology by using ovens that use rice husk as fuel, which is the main residue of the plant. To minimize the consumption of the mentioned factors, the design of a laboratory-scale combustion furnace has been proposed and uses two energy sources, biomass and electricity. A heat exchanger was used to heat the air to the drying chamber. The methodology implemented for the resolution of this project was the heat transfer analysis and the biomass combustion process in the furnace, using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The theoretical results obtained in the simulation showed that the design of the heat exchanger reached a value temperature of 54 °C, the furnace reached an average combustion gas temperature value of 220 °C, and the temperature of the walls was from 50 to 67 °C. Once the prototype was built, complete combustion was evidenced, taking advantage of the heat capacity of the biomass and 60% efficiency during the experimental trials. The implementation of this project includes a beneficial result in reducing factors that affect not only the environment but also the economy of the country.