Abstract: 

The global expansion of macadamia production leads to an increasing risk of the by-products such as nutshell causing environmental pollution. The combination of energyand biochar production from macadamia nutshell is a propable solution to utilize agricultural residues and generate high-value biobased adsorbents that offer numerous applications in environmental remediation. In this study, the obtained experimental results on the properties of macadamia nutshell highlighted its suitability as feedstock for biomass gasification with the relatively low moisture content and ash content of 5.62% and 0.99%, respectively.The volatile matter content of macadamia nutshell was found to be significant at 82.59%, and its higher calorific value was identified to be 18.71MJ/kg. The SEM, BET analysis of the solid waste suggested that the char surface has a relatively large porosity, the surface area is 783.04m²/g. Moreover, the FT-IR analysis showed little functional groups retaining on the char surface.

Keywords: Biochar, macadamia nutshell, gasification, sustainable agriculture, adsorbent