Said, Mahir M.John, Geoffrey R.Mhilu, Cuthbert F.2016-05-132016-05-132014-03http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11810/2029The trend for material and energy recovery from biomass-waste along with the need to reduce green house gases has led to an increased interest in the thermal processes applied to biomass. The thermal process applied to biomass produces either liquid fuel (bio-oil) or gaseous fuel. One of the biomass wastes that are produced in large quantities in Tanzania is rice husk. The behaviour of this waste is important to any designing of thermal handling equipment when subjected thermal environment such as burning or thermal degradation. Due to this it is imperative to establish thermal characteristics of the rice husk pursued in a laboratory to understand its thermal degradation behaviour. The thermal degradation was conducted in a thermo-gravimetric analyzer from room temperature to 1273 K at different heating rates. The activation energy was 180.075 kJ/mol and suitable heating rate for high degradation of rice husk is 10 K/min, and gives 77.20 wt% of volatile release which is the suitable heating rate for pyrolysis and energy released was -4437 J/kg, although it has been recommended that the rice to be used for gasification since it contains high amount of char.enGasificationKineticsPyrolysisRice huskThermal degradationJournal Article