FINIC uses agricultural waste to produce charcoal with new equipment

By zainab.joaque@awokonewspaper.sl
SIERRA LEONE, Freetown: “Our forests are disappearing at an alarming rate as youths have turned to charcoal making as a means of livelihood and they are not made knowledgeable about other options without the cutting down of trees” said Foday Melvin Kamara, Managing Director of Fomel Industry and National Industrialization Centre (FINIC).
FINIC, a technology generation Enterprise is using agricultural waste such as rice husk, palm kernel shells, cacao pods, corn cobs among others to produce charcoal. In addition to such abundant supply of such waste, elephant grass – a rich source of biomass – serves another adequate supply but is never used to solve our energy needs for the kitchen.
This Kamara says is unfortunately left to fuel bush fires across the country with damning consequences. “Technologies that facilitate the transformation processes of those agricultural waste, as easy and simple as they can be, are unfortunately eluding our people. My people suffer for lack of knowledge” he said.
FINIC has kick started a campaign to bring to the awareness of our people about the rich energy resources elephant grass and by-products of processed crops have to offer. FINIC being a hub for the design and manufacture of appropriate technologies in Sierra Leone, has just invented an amazingly fast briquettes press.
Manual means of pressing briquettes employing conventional means, is a drudgery ridden process. To speed up things, FINIC has invented an amazingly fast manual briquettes pressing machine.
The machine has a hopper and a magazine with the same features as the clay bricks making machine. The hopper holds the powdered bio-char or none bio-charred material awaiting to be pressed. The magazine ensures that the quantity delivered to the pressing chamber is almost always uniform.
Each pressing operation amounts to 21 briquettes being produced. Each weighs 107 grams, and has dimensions of 8 centimetres long and 5 centimetres in diameter.
Each pressing operation that lasts for about a minute, will produce briquettes that will weigh a total of 2.2kg when fully dried. In an 8-hour day operation, over 50 bags each of 20kg, will be produced. ZIJ/30/12/2021