A MODEL OF ECOLOGICAL CHARCOAL PRODUCTION THROUGH HERBACEAOUS PLANTS IN THE URBAN COMMUNE OF NZEREKORE, REPUBLIC OF GUINEA

The world is confronted to various environmental problems caused by anthropogenic activities, mainly deforestation. This is why promoting the use of herbaceous plants in charcoal production will contribute to the fight against deforestation. In this paper we propose a simple model for producing ecological charcoal using herbaceous plants. The choice of the herbaceous species, the collection, weighing, drying, carbonization, crushing, sieving, kneading, compacting and drying of the briquettes are the different process which allowed us to produce this ecological charcoal based on herbaceous plants. 180kg of soaked weight of herbaceous gave us 90kg of dry weight, carbonized and crushed we obtained 8kg of powder and 1 kg of residue. These 8 kg of herbaceous powder allowed us to produce 156 briquettes of charcoal. A comparison of the physicochemical parameters of our ecological charcoal was made with the charcoal consumed in the urban commune of Nzerekore (wood charcoal). The Results showed that our produced charcoal model releases heat more slowly than wood charcoal, heats up more slowly than wood charcoal and its maximum temperature and heat quantity are higher than that of wood charcoal. The maximum temperature (98.9°C) is reached at 20 minutes for ecological charcoal (charcoal from herbaceous plants) and 97.9°C at 10 minutes for wood charcoal.