The development of pyrolysis reactor unit for processing bagasse and vinasse mixture into biochar

The increased industrial waste significantly caused environmental pollution problems. Bagasse and vinasse were solid waste and liquid wastes generated from the sugar and bioethanol industry, respectively. Due to the high level of organic matter in bagasse and vinasse, these materials are highly potential to be converting into biochar. However, the converting equipment from bagasse and vinasse waste into biochar has not widely reported in the literature. This work aims to (a) develop a pyrolysis reactor unit to produce biochar from a mixture of bagasse and vinasse waste using the pyrolysis method, (b) to determine the effect of the addition of vinasse to the yield biochar produced, and (c) to determine the effect of the addition of vinasse to the characteristics of the resulting biochar. Biochar was produced by comparing the mass ratio of bagasse and vinasse using the pyrolysis method in a pyrolysis reactor. The evaluated biochar characteristics included yield percentage, pH, water, ash, C, N, P, Na, and K contents. The pyrolysis reactor unit has been successfully manufactured equipped with a thermometer, thermocouple, and a reactor that has initiation, drying, and combustion chambers. The analysis result of produced biochar was biochar from bagasse-vinasse (9:1 w/w) had higher yield (9.4%), water content (8.2%), and ash content (13.6%) compared with the biochar from pure bagasse (6.8%; 7.0%; and 4.8%, respectively). The morphological surface by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) showed the bagasse-vinasse (9:1 w/w) and pure bagasse biochar has similar sharp fractal shape. The darker colour of bagasse-vinasse (9:1 w/w) than pure bagasse biochar indicate that vinasse was absorbed onto bagasse. Element analysis by Energy Dispersive X-Ray was evidently showed that the vinasse addition affected in increasing of the amount of element-content in the produced-biochar in this work.