Comparison of the cooking efficiency of charcoal and eucalyptus sawdust briquettes.

Abstract

The study was aimed at making a better quality of briquettes from eucalyptus sawdust for efficient cooking in comparison to the available charcoal and is guided by the following objectives, to determine the time taken to boil a certain amount of water at a particular interval, to determine the proper ratio of the sawdust and loam soil for quality heating as compared to charcoal and to determine the time of lighting both charcoal and the produced briquette. This study mainly focused on efficient use of the sawdust after cutting trees for other purposes for example roofing rather than being left wasted. The research was motivated by; the need to produce an affordable and efficient source of fuel for cooking so as to help the local people who cannot cope with the rapidly changing prices of charcoal, fire wood and other forms of fuel energy for example electricity, the need to conserve the environment as the study looks at; reduction in cutting down of trees for fire wood, the need also to create an income generating business for the local people and help people who don’t have tree plantations to also access fuel. Experimental methods were used by heating one liter of water in the sauce pan using the designed briquettes made from different ratios of soil and sawdust and the variation of temperature with time for every 20 minutes after one minute were noted. A Graph of temperature against time was plotted to analyze the results of the study considering temperature of water and time taken to heat up the water. The researcher therefore found out that better quality of the briquettes was made from a mixture of sawdust and loam soil in the ratio of 1:5 respectively as it is observed by figure 4.2.