[Stoves] Charcoal from waste - home cooking or other markets? (Re: Crispin, Anand Karve)

[ajheggie at gmail.com]

[Default] On Thu, 13 Oct 2016 09:46:26 -0500,Paul Anderson
<psanders at ilstu.edu> wrote:

>Rebecca, I do not know of any "small, reasonable size" method to make 
>raw sawdust directly into charcoal. 

As I said Chardust in Kenya initially did it in a simple down draught
burner.


>Of course it can be done in 
>scientific laboratories, and probably in some expensive pyrolyzer-style 
>large burners at some sawmill that wants heat, or in some fluidized bed 
>gasifier that sprays in the sawdust (utilizing its small particle 
>size).  I hope that somebody has a brilliant idea someday for a small 
>inexpensive method, but not being done yet, as far as I know.

There have been many ways to pyrolyse sawdust, I was told of one where
the sawdust was metered into the exhaust of a diesel generator, I bet
that made some smoke.

One can envisage a simple vortex burner of high thermal mass being
initially heated up by the sawdust and later the sawdust would
centrifuge to the side and then down whilst the offgas burned  in the
upper area, the radiant heat from the walls then further carbonising
the sawdust as it fell.

Alex has shown how a chip stoker can be set to produce char and make
use of the heat, whether the char produced is marketable is another
matter.

In the Chardust case it looks like there is still lots of vendor's
waste char fines which is easier picking than making fresh from
sawdust.

Andrew