[Stoves] Char retort question

[reecon at mitsuminet.com]

I have developed an incinerator that i believe is carbon neutral. It runs on firewood and attains 2000 oC.It actually runs on firewood and can burn even wet material. I think it is also based on pyrolysis principle. When i was in India, we developed the charcoal making unit based exactly on what u have described below David G. Levine 
Regards,
Musungu Wycliffe.
Reecon, Kenya.

----- Original Message -----
From: ajheggie at gmail.com
To: "Discussion of biomass cooking stoves" <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Sent: Friday, May 31, 2013 11:39:18 AM
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Char retort question

[Default] On Fri, 31 May 2013 00:30:27 -0400,"David G. LeVine"
<dlevine at speakeasy.net> wrote:

>Let me start with "This is something I think I remember seeing."
>
>Given a mass of biological matter (no, I don't care if it is twigs, 
>grass or tree stumps), put it in a horizontal 55 gallon drum with a band 
>clamped head and a pipe from the top of the head down and under the drum 
>with holes in the pipe which is parallel to the drum.  Once filled 
>(maybe not full either), a fire is started with scraps until the gasses 
>coming out of the pipe burn.  This means the heating becomes self 
>sustaining and the carbon is unlikely to be vaporized, but the gasses 
>driven off are used, not wasted.  Suddenly the pollution is reduced and 
>the efficiency goes up.
>
>1. Does this ring a bell in anyone else's mind?
>
>2. Does this sound like a viable approach?

Yes it's the system originally developed by Lurgi for coal pre WW2 and
has been revived many times, in England Robbie Webster promoted it
about 10 years ago and I suspect the Adam Retort uses a similar
feedback path. The limitation is the poor surface area through which
the heat can pass, not a big problem with dry wood.

It is viable but think of the timeline of how pyrolysis develops, the
offgas does not evolve evenly and its calorific value changes during
the process, this tends to mean most of the heat from the offgas is
happening after the main charge is carbonised. Yury Yudkevitch
addressed this problem by having a series of cylinder retorts feeding
a central offgas manifold which then heated the "oven" space in which
the cylinders sat, removing cyclinc=ders and replacing with fresh in a
batch sequence.

AJH

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