College of Engineering and Technology

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Browsing College of Engineering and Technology by Author "Abraha, Abraha Misghina"

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    Characterization of coffee husk as domestic and industrial fuel for coffee growing areas
    (Unversity of Dar es Salaam, 2011) Abraha, Abraha Misghina
    Most of the population of Ethiopia, like that of other Sub-Saharan African countries, depend on traditional biomass for cooking and have no access to electricity. Fossil fuel costs are very high as Ethiopia is land locked. There are large amounts of coffee husks in coffee growing areas which are left unused. In most cases, they are either left in the fields or disposed by burning in open air and this causes severe environmental problems. A comprehensive study was carried out on three representative coffee growing sites of the country: West Harargie zone, Gede’o zone and Jimma zone to analyze the utilization of these coffee husks for domestic and industrial fuel applications in coffee growing areas. Survey shows that the average annual coffee husk production of the sites is: 14,000 MT for West Harargie, 18,955 MT for Gede’o and 28, 310 MT for Jimma. The minimum average LHV was found to be 16.4 MJ/kg for coffee husk (dry process) and 17.4MJ/kg for coffee husk (wet process). In general, coffee husk was found to have better thermo-chemical properties compared to other agro-residues, especially calorific value. Technological analysis shows that the suitable technologies to utilize coffee husks for fuel in coffee growing areas are gasifier stove for domestic applications and in-house consumption electricity generation for coffee hulleries via gasification. Economic and environmental analysis using RETScreen Software shows that the selected technologies are viable to be undertaken. Therefore, utilizing coffee husk for fuel using modern thermo-chemical conversion technologies has to be considered in coffee growing areas