Browsing by Author "Suriyakumar, S."

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    Utilization of rice husk and de-oiled cashew nut shell cake agro-wastes to produce ISO standard pellets and its synergistic behavior
    (Elsevier Ltd, 2025) Suriyakumar, S.; Mahalingam, H.; Ruben Sudhakar, R.S.
    The biomass pellet market is experiencing rapid growth, playing a critical role in addressing the escalating energy demand and environmental challenges. In India, pellets are predominantly produced from agricultural residues like rice husk, sawdust, straw, corn stalk, sugarcane bagasse, and groundnut shells. Among these, rice husk (RH) pellets are limited by their high ash content, low calorific value, and high moisture requirements during the pelletization process. These limitations can be effectively mitigated through rice husk co-pelletization with deoiled cashew nut shell cake (CC) that remains unexplored in the literature. This study aims to develop rice husk–cashew nut shell (RH-CC) blend pellets by identifying the optimal blend ratio and pelletizing parameters based on their physical and mechanical properties. RH-CC pellets showed that increasing CC addition to RH improved the bulk density, durability and calorific value. The optimization was performed using the desirability functional approach, based on ISO standards. The optimized conditions for 6, 8 and 10 mm pellets were identified as 84, 88, and 81 °C respectively, at a pressure of 180 MPa and 57 % CC blend for which the results are bulk densities of 684, 693, and 652 kg/m3 respectively, pellet durability of 97.1 %, moisture content ranging from 5.4 to 6.3 wt%, and calorific value of 16.7 MJ/kg belonging to I2 category. Additionally, TGA studies were performed to investigate the synergy of the pellets. Utilizing untreated rice husk in RH-CC pellets provides a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, helping to reduce stubble burning and offering farmers additional income while supporting a cleaner energy future. © 2025 Elsevier Ltd
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    Utilization of torrefied rice husk and deoiled cashew nut shell cake biomass waste for removal of hazardous Reactive Violet 5 dye
    (Springer, 2025) Suriyakumar, S.; Mahalingam, H.; Sudhakar, R.D.
    Torrefied biomass is a renewable, sustainable, carbon–neutral fuel that is replacing coal in many areas. This organic source has increased surface area and porosity, making it an effective adsorbent. Only a very few works have been reported in the literature on exploring the use of torrefied biomass and its ash as inexpensive adsorbents for the removal of dyes. In this work, rice husk and deoiled cashew nut shell cake in its torrefied and ash forms have been employed as adsorbents for Reactive Violet 5 dye removal. Thus, four adsorbents were synthesized and characterized by BET, SEM, XRD, and FTIR. The optimum parameters for maximum dye removal efficiency were 0.8 g/L adsorbent dosage, pH 2.0, and 40-min contact time for batch experiments using 100 mL of 10 ppm dye solution. The maximum adsorption capacity of torrefied rice husk, torrefied deoiled cashew nut shell cake, torrefied rice husk ash, and torrefied deoiled cashew nut shell cake ash were 108.58 mg/g, 88.38 mg/g, 68.0 mg/g, and 29.97 mg/g, respectively. Torrefied rice husk exhibited the best fit with the Freundlich isotherm, whereas other adsorbents fitted best with the Langmuir isotherm. The non-linear pseudo-second-order model gave the best fit. The intraparticle diffusion model showed that adsorption involves multiple diffusion stages. The thermodynamic parameters indicated that the process was spontaneous, feasible, and exothermic. These eco-friendly materials can be efficiently used in dye removal, thus paving the way for torrefied biomass or its ash to be used as low-cost adsorbents for large-scale wastewater treatment. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2025.