Opportunity of Jatropha Curcas Waste As Biofuel

In the last decades, the development of Jatropha curcas plants has been an increasing trend significantly. Several countries in Asia, Africa and South America develop bio diesel from its seeds.

Studies on conversion of this plant into bio diesel has been conducted by many researchers in the world. Jatropha Curcas waste, such as cake seed, sludge, and shell, has been potential to convert into solid fuels. Some researcher converts its material into biogas through an anaerobic digestion system in digester.

As reported many authors, that the cake seeds of Jatropha curcas contain around 61-67% crude oil per unit weight. Meanwhile, the content of raw oil is around 33 to 39 %. This means that there is a high possibility to extract Jatropha Curcas waste into energy both from shell and cake seed.

Combustion is a chemical process to convert solid waste into heat energy. The process includes drying, pyrolysis, and char combustion. In the pyrolysis process, carbon monoxide rises to the peak level and gradually decrease until char combustion reactions stopped.

The products of biomass combustion consist of carbon dioxide, water, ash, sulfur oxide, carbon monoxide, unburned hydrocarbon particles, nitrogen oxide, smoke and soot. It is an opportunity to form Jatropha Curcas waste as briquettes and uses for fuel.

This fuel can then be used in rural areas for cooking. If the production this fuel is high, it can be used for commercialization. It means that its briquettes send to the combustion reactor to heat a boiler system and produces electricity.

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Prospect of Jatropha Curcas as Energy Plant (3)

Solid fuel from physic nut waste

Physic nut seed contains the oil around of 25-35% of the total unit weight. This form of waste has a crude oil content of 75-65%. Waste can be processed into solid fuel through a process of densification. The process of carbonization or non-carbonization can also be applied to improve the quality of these solid fuels.




In the carbonization process, waste is inserted into the reactor in order to remove moisture, volatile matter and tar. After this process, they are sent to the densification process. This process forms the material into briquettes using a press machine.

There are two types of press machine used, is hydraulic and screw machine. Densification product is densified material called briquettes. This fuel can be used as solid fuel. Briquettes can be easily burned into the furnace or conventional stove. In commercial production, briquettes used to burn water in the boiler. Steam generated, is sent to a steam turbine. This steam spins the generator wheel to produce electricity.

Gas fuel from physic nut waste

The gas fuels can be produced through an anaerobic digestion process. This process is a chemical process involving microorganisms without the presence of oxygen in a digester. This process produces the methane, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide and a small amount of gas. Methane is the largest composition compared with other gas products. This process can be classified into two types: dry and wet anaerobic digestion. The Differences between these anaerobic processes are the ratio of biomass and water used in the digester.

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