This briquettes story is not worthy of being pursued as an industry strategy

Jan 08, 2015 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
I refer to a very misleading letter in the Stabroek News of 6th January written by Mr. Suresh S. Narine a director of the Institute of Applied Science and Technology, entitled “The Institute of Applied Science and Technology has demonstrated the suitability of replacing firewood with briquettes in GuySuCo’s boilers”, and all I have to say is “God help us” because these people can’t!
The use of briquettes as a substitute for firewood was never a concern of mine. In fact if they were conducting the experiment at Uitvlugt and they were burning wood rather than bagasse, it meant that the supply of cane to the factory was so intermittent that they were buying wood to start up the factory after these frequent out of cane stoppages, since Uitvlugt, as are all estates, is designed to be powered using loose bagasse. Not briquettes.
The reality of the situation is that most if not all estates have a shortage of bagasse since they are just not operating as continuously as they must to conserve bagasse. Which is why I say that this briquettes story is not, in my opinion, worthy of being pursued as an industry strategy, in view of the universal shortage of bagasse, due to the numerous stoppages for out of cane reasons being experienced by the Guyana industry today.
If this scientist can take me to any factory which has surplus bagasse today, I would gladly accompany him. And I did say that GuySuCo did not inform us that they were doing this operation, and on what location, to compress the bagasse to briquettes, and in the long letter written by Narine, I do not see where in GuySuCo it was being done.
If he is thinking of going to the various sawmills to collect the sawdust to make briquettes, I would probably listen, and in fact some enterprising businessman could perhaps look at this possibility. But everyone must understand that it is just a measure to start up the factory in cases where there is no bagasse in the logie, and as soon as the canes begin to pass through the mills, the bagasse begins to come into play to generate power as the boilers were designed to do.
In any event, the GuySuCo boilers are specially built, and placing briquettes on the floor of the boiler and igniting it there is not efficient. We have to accept that to start the factory in the absence of no bagasse we have to use wallaba firewood, and Narine is just recommending a way to circumvent that problem, he does not address cost – just that IAST are trying briquettes instead of firewood three decades after someone else established that it can be done.
But to plan for these briquettes as an ongoing operation during normal grinding in view of our other problems is ridiculous, and this attempt to obscure the matter by IAST is beneath contempt. Once available, surplus bagasse can be made to do anything, I for example saw in Jamaica many years ago a block to use in the building of houses which was made from compressed bagasse.
Editor, the boilers in our sugar industry work this way. As the bagasse becomes available from the mills it is put on to a conveyor belt and is taken to the top of the boiler. At the bottom of the boiler there is a 100-200 HP fan blowing air as an updraft to the falling bagasse coming in from the top. The entrance to the boiler of the air is protected by what we in the industry call a top hat – an inverted hat to prevent blockage by the bagasse falling from above. The air updraft then allows the bagasse to burn “in the air” close to the boiler tubes located at the top of the boiler. Factories with inexperienced operators or boiler feeders who are burning the bagasse on the floor of the boiler, rather than this up “in the air” close to the overhead boiler tubes that must happen for the system to work properly, soon run into low steam problems.
So Director, thanks for telling us what we already knew, that bagasse is a fuel which most sugar enterprises use for powering the fuel hungry factory operations. Remember, Editor, that firewood is only used in extreme circumstances where there is no surplus bagasse, and that compressed bagasse cannot power our boilers unless you create a hurricane inside the boiler to allow the briquettes to be burnt overhead when we throw them in from the top.
Actually the only thing I found of interest in Narine’s letter is the following (and I don’t think that even he appreciates its importance): “2011 [GuySuCo] generated 1,190,667 tonnes [of bagasse]; in 2012; 1,025,439 tonnes; and in 2013, 898,406 tonnes. Anyone see a trend here? They are generating less and less bagasse since they are probably grinding less and less cane per year. So we are back to the real problem, there are no canes in the fields, that’s what we should be concentrating on!
Could you people keep your eye on the ball?
Tony Vieira

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