Converting the de-oiled cashew nut shell into usable products (e.g. briquettes) will address the problem of waste disposal. The study was conducted to develop an environment-friendly fuel briquette sufficient to resist impact during handling and transport and produce the required heat for domestic cooking and also for industrial application. Piston-type and screw-type briquetting machines and three levels of binding agent were used in the production of de-oiled spent cashew shell-based fuel briquettes. The produced briquettes were subject for physicochemical, mechanical and thermal properties tests. Results showed that the best formulation that is required to produce a good quality de-oiled cashew nut shell fuel briquettes using both piston-type and screw type briquetting machines is 10 % binding agent with briquette density, shatter resistance and compressive strength of 0.87 g/cm 3 and 0.83 g/cm 3 , 99.54 and 99.89 % and 43.97 and 101.82 kPa, respectively. The total electricity consumption is 150.91 kWh per ton of briquettes while LPG consumption is 1.32 kg. It is concluded that the energy values and combustion qualities of the briquettes produced in this study are sufficient enough to produce the required heat for domestic cooking and a potential for industrial application.

Carbonized rice hulls (CRH) and carbonized corn cobs (CCC) obtained during the utilization of PHilMech designed biomass furnaces were used as raw materials in the production of fuel briquettes. Two types of briquetting machines were used in the experiments and cassava starch was applied as binding agent during the formulation of samples. The briquettes were evaluated in terms of their physical and thermal properties. Results showed that the average density of CRH briquettes produced in screw-type machine was higher than the briquettes produced in piston-type machine. This observation can be attributed to the higher pressure applied in the screw-type machine. However, the briquettes made from the piston-type machine were found to be more durable compared to the one produced in screw-type machine, which can be associated with the high concentration of binding agent as required when using the piston-type machine. The optimum formulation using piston-type briquetting machine is 10% binding agent for CRH and 12.5% for CCC. For screw-type briquetting machine, 2.25% binding agent is ideal for both CRH and CCC. The resulting energy values and combustion qualities of the briquettes produced from the carbonized based fuel briquettes were sufficient to produce the required heat for industrial application.

Manual analysis of rice and corn is done by visually inspecting each grain and classifying according to their respective categories. This method is subjective and tedious leading to errors in analysis. Computer vision could be used to analyze the quality of rice and corn by developing models that correlate shape and color features with various classification. The PhilMech low-cost computer vision system (CVS) was developed to analyze the quality of rice and corn. It is composed of an ordinary scanner as the image acquisition device and a computer with image-processing software. The performance of the CVS was compared to the traditional manual method being adopted by the National Food Authority (NFA) and the Agricultural Machinery Testing and Evaluation Center (AMTEC). The performance testing and evaluation showed that the accuracy of obtaining the results in classifying rice and corn using the CVS was comparable to the manual method of analysis. But, the processing time to complete the analysis using the CVS technology (6-7 minutes) was 5-8 times faster compared to the manual method (30-60 minutes). The developed CVS will automate the existing practice in determining the milling quality of brown rice, milled rice, and yellow corn and minimize the tedious and subjective manual method of evaluation.