K.C. SOMARATNA

Coir dust earns millions for Lanka

Ravi LADDUWAHETTY

Sri Lanka is now earning over rupees two billion in foreign exchange annually from the export of coir dust. Coir dust was a waste product lying around within coir fibre mills. Millers were willing to pay and get this waste removed from their premises, so that they could use the land for more productive uses.

Many attempts to dry and briquette this coir dust for use as a substitute for firewood had already failed when K.C. Somaratna, a chemical engineer and now a management consultant and then applications engineer at Haycarb started work on drying coir dust. He succeeded where others failed.

The elated Somaratna told the Daily News how he had managed to dry the coir dust and obtained a price, which enabled the industry to sustain itself and contribute to the export earnings of the country.

Currently K.C. Somaratna heads his own management consultancy firm called Somaratna Consultants (Pvt) Ltd., which provides consultancy services on a wide range of management systems.

Q: So, you pioneered a project, which ultimately became an annual Rs. 2 billion industry. Can you elaborate?

It was in 1986, when the then Haycarb Managing Director, Rajan Yatawara (later Hayleys Group Chairman) recruited me as its applications engineer. I had to guide and supervise the Research and Development efforts of the company including the manufacture of a value added products from coir dust.

Haycarb was not the only company, which was working on coir dust; there was Ceylon Tobacco Company Ltd., Ceylon Electricity Board and Industrial Development Board. They wanted to convert coir dust into briquettes and use it in place of firewood.

But all these early players including Haycarb were struggling to dry the coir dust which had about 90 per cent moisture. Without drying this to 20 per cent moisture they could not compress coir dust to a briquette, which would retain its shape and size.

I am happy that these initial attempts at drying coir dust failed because if they had succeeded, they would have briquetted and burnt all the coir dust in place of firewood which was only Rs. 1.50 a kg at that time, and we may not have had any coir dust left to earn the foreign exchange we earned subsequently.

Q: How did you overcome this difficulty of drying?

We did a literature survey, which also included a book called ‘Biomass Gasification’ which had a lot of information and theoretical equations on gasification of biomass and also addresses of a significant number of agglomeration machine manufactures.

These machines could yield either pellets or briquettes of different shapes (cylindrical, cubical) and sizes. So we knew that the only limiting factor in the realization of our objective was the drying technology.

Q:So what technology did you use finally?

We looked at the most abundant source of solar energy. A survey done indicated that intensity of solar radiation would be about, I believe, 24 kilojoules per square meter per 24 hours in the area of our interest. Many persons, millers had tried to dry coir dust by cutting a part of the coir dust heap and laying it on the ground and this did not yield positive results.

Q: What made you think that solar energy could still be used despite these findings of millers?

This is where my chemical engineering knowledge came to use. I knew that this failure of drying at ground level was due to boundary layer effect and the high relative humidity of ambient air at ground level close to coconut husk pit. So we looked at drying coir dust at the top of the coir dust heap itself.

There would be near perfect exposure to solar heat. So we measured the air velocity at the top of a coir dust heap. I think it was about 15 kms per hour at the heap where we did our trials.

Then we calculated the amount of coir dust that could be dried in a day using (a) the known value for intensity of solar radiation (b) area of the top of the heap (c) packed wet density of wet coir dust (d) initial and final (expected) moisture level of coir dust. This worked out to be a coir dust layer only one inch in thickness.

When the air at the top of the heap after drying is taken to the edge of the heap a new layer of air takes its place. So we did not have the problems encountered in drying coir dust on the ground.

So I put a note to Yatawara in November, 1986 ( I think), giving these results and suggesting that we rake a layer at the top of the coir dust heap in the morning using 6-8 people and then turning this raked material using their feet during the day.

We used to start work at about 6.30 in the morning and when we collected the material at about 5.30 in the evening, the coir dust had dried to the levels anticipated.

Q: What did you do with the coir dust briquettes and how did you convert it into exports?

Malcolm Edwards of Eurocarb told us that this material could be used as a moisture retainer in the horticulture industry in the West instead of the peat bricks, which were being used at that time for this purpose.

Fortunately for us, that was perfect timing, as there was tremendous resistance to the use of peat for this purpose from environmentalists. So when we got the prices of these peat bricks we found that this would yield better returns than the use we had anticipated.

Q:Then you made the briquettes and started exporting to the west and that is how it happened?

We still had to overcome four challenges. One, to make a machine for briquetting, which Mr. Ananda Hettiarchchy current MD of Haycarb took over, the second to establish the collection processes which again Mr. Yatawara and Mr. Hettiarchchy took over. I, with my team had to establish the quality control and assurance systems and I had also to handle the challenge of pricing under Mr. Yatawara’s guidance.

We did not price it on a cost plus margin basis; instead we priced it very close to the price of peat blocks.

In fact when we first quoted to Haycarb Holdings, Australia, we quoted a price equal to that of sugar at that time.

It is this pricing strategy, which really helped the industry to sustain itself and to bring in a significant foreign exchange.

The total revenue from the export of coir dust bricks was more than two billion rupees last year according to figures available at the Coconut Development Authority.