Although the inorganic compounds are concentrated in the fine
fraction, they are present in the gross fraction that will produce ash
after briquette burning. Therefore, it is important to know the ash
composition and component concentrations for further processing.
The chemical composition of the fly ash is shown in Table 1. A comparison
of the chemical compositions of the sugar-cane bagasse
ash (SCBA) used in this work with other SCBA data in the literature
(Eriksson and Prior, 1990; Teixeira et al., 2008) show differences
due to variations in the soil where the sugar cane was grown. Most
of the ash comes from syngenetic minerals (minerals within the
plant tissue before it burns), reflecting the mineralogical composition
of the soil in which the plant material grew (Tixeira et al.,
2002). These chemical ash compositions are unchanged by the
combustion process, and the major phase in SCBA is crystalline silica
(Teixeira et al., 2008).