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Integrated bioethanol and briquette recovery from rice husk: a biorefinery analysis

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Abstract

Rice husk is an important component often ignored in the rice production chain. Despite its considerable ethanol recovery potential, commercialization is still lacking due to high pretreatment costs and waste generation. This study therefore explored the potential of maximising bioenergy recovery from rice husk using the integrated biorefinery approach while evaluating its role in partially offsetting the current regional transportation and wood fuel demand in Ghana. A resource modelling approach was employed to examine the impact of sequential bioethanol and briquette production from rice husk on gasoline and charcoal demand, respectively, for various fuel policy scenarios. The Oti region in Ghana has the capacity to offset their entire gasoline demand with bioethanol from rice husk for a 25% gasoline replacement policy (Et25) as well as offset their entire charcoal demand with briquettes for a 5% charcoal replacement policy (Bq5). Liquid Hot Water and Steam Explosion pretreatments were most favourable for higher bioethanol and briquette yields, respectively. The Volta region could recover the most bioenergy from rice husk among all regions at 11,110 toe using integrated biorefineries, representing 56% and 43.6% gain over separate briquettes and bioethanol production, respectively. Overall, rice husk biorefineries could provide high contributions to energy adequacy and significant reductions in charcoal production.

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Data and materials availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Moses Mensah, Robert Aryeetey and George vanDyck for their continuous technical support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marine Engineering, Regional Maritime University, Accra, Ghana

    Felix Offei & Lilian D. Koranteng

  2. Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana

    Francis Kemausuor

  3. The Brew Hammond Energy Center, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana

    Francis Kemausuor

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  1. Felix Offei
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  2. Lilian D. Koranteng
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Contributions

Conceptualization: [F.K., L.K. and F.O.]; Methodology [F.O. and F.K]; Formal analysis and investigation [F.O. and L.K.]; writing-original draft preparation: [F.O.]; writing-review and editing: [F.O., L.K. and F.K]; Resources [F.O. and L.K].

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Correspondence to Felix Offei.

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Offei, F., Koranteng, L.D. & Kemausuor, F. Integrated bioethanol and briquette recovery from rice husk: a biorefinery analysis. Biomass Conv. Bioref. 13, 7645–7661 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-021-01731-3

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