Sweet Sorghum Bagasse

Fibre reinforced polymer composites has been used in a variety of application because of their many advantages such as relatively low cost of production, easy to fabricate and superior strength compare to neat polymer resins. Reinforcement in polymer is either synthetic or natural. Synthetic fibre such as glass, carbon etc. has high specific strength but their fields of application are limited due to higher cost of production. Recently there is an increase interest in natural fibre based composites due to their many advantages. In this connection an investigation has been carried out to make better utilization of bagasse fibre for making value added products. The objective of the present research work is to study the physical and mechanical behaviour of E-glass fibre reinforced with bagasse fibre based hybrid composites. The effect of fibre loading and length on mechanical properties like tensile strength, flexural strength, hardness of composites is studied. I. INTRODUCTION The development of composite materials and their related design and manufacturing technologies is one of the most important advances in the history of materials. Composites are the material used in various fields having exclusive mechanical and physical properties and are developed for particular application. Composite materials having a range of advantages over other conventional materials such as tensile strength, impact strength, flexural strengths, stiffness and fatigue characteristics. Because of their numerous advantages they are widely used in the aerospace industry, commercial mechanical engineering applications, like machine components, automobiles, combustion engines, mechanical components like drive shafts, tanks, brakes, pressure vessels and flywheels, thermal control and electronic packaging, railway coaches and aircraft structures etc, When two or more materials with different properties are combined together, they form a composite material. Composite material comprise of strong load carrying material (known as reinforcement) imbedded with weaker materials (known as matrix).The primary functions of the matrix are to transfer stresses between the reinforcing fibres/particles and to protect them from mechanical and/or environmental damage whereas the presence of fibres/particles in a composite improves its mechanical properties like tensile strength, flexural strength, impact strength, stiffness etc. Composites can be classified according to different criteria. Depending on the type of matrix materials, composite materials can be classified into three categories such as metal matrix composites, ceramic matrix composites and polymer matrix composites. Each type of composite material is suitable for specific applications. When the matrix material is taken as metal like aluminium, copper, it is called as metal matrix composite.

Sorghum Bagasse in recent years has emerged as a promising feedstock for production of biofuels and value-added products following various biological conversion pathways. However, adequate conservation is critical for utilising Sorghum Bagasse as a feedstock for fuel production around the year in bioenergy plants. Therefore, this study aims to examine the pressure drop as a function of airflow velocity and construct Shedd's curves for energy Sorghum Bagasse. The ambition was to facilitate large-scale drying systems for biomass conservation. The Bagasse was prepared by extracting the juice from the harvested sorghum and passing through a juicing machine. Afterwards, it was manually chopped and stored on a wooden platform having 2.44 m2 area in a 55-gallon drum at a depth of 0.57 m. The airflow velocities (0.24–1.32 ms−1) caused a pressure drop (9.96–346.23 Pa) across the empty drum. The different pressure drop in the drum containing Sorghum Bagasse (19.92–263.25 Pa) was due to various airflow velocities (0.043–0.799 ms−1). Pressure drop was further increased with increasing airflow velocity, and it was found in line with the values of pressure drop for ear and shelled corn, as reported in ASABE standards. Shedd's curves for Sorghum Bagasse samples were developed, as these curves can be used for designing large-scale aeration systems for chopped energy sorghum. The whole production chain of biofuel by conserving biomass can be improved by the findings of this work, thus allowing the biomass to be used more economically around the year in bioenergy plants.

Sorghum Bagasse in recent years has emerged as a promising feedstock for production of biofuel and value-added products following various biological conversion pathways. However, adequate conservation is critical for utilizing sorghum bagasse as raw material for fuel and fiber around the year in biofuels plants. The biomass conservation using drying method depends on different parameters such as energy efficiency, heat integration, emission control and dryer performance. The pressure drop phenomenon in drying systems for biomass conservation has been reported in few studies only. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the pressure drop as a function of airflow velocity and construct Shedd’s curves for energy sorghum bagasse with an ambition to develop large-scale drying systems for biomass conservation. The bagasse was obtained by extracting the juice from the harvested sorghum and passing it through a juicing machine. The bagasse was manually chopped and stored on a wooden platform having 2.44 m2 area in a 55-gallon drum at a depth of 0.57 m. A fan equipped with a regulator to control variable speed was attached to the plenum, having the ability to generate airflow up to 2.15 ms-1. The airflow velocities (0.24 to 1.32 ms-1) caused pressure drop (9.96 to 346.23 Pa) across the empty drum. Similarly, the pressure drop in the drum containing sorghum bagasse ranged from 19.92 to 263.25 Pa due to airflow velocities ranging from 0.043 to 0.799 ms-1, respectively. Pressure drop increased with increasing airflow velocity, and was similar to the pressure drop values for ear and shelled corn, reported in ASABE standards. Shedd’s curves for sorghum bagasse samples were developed; these curves could be used for designing large-scale aeration systems for chopped energy sorghum.