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

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Andrew and All

There are two serious wastes of char fines available everywhere: at the
point of production (because no one wants to transport unsaleable fines) and
at the point of retail. Cecil Cook reported on the value chain and where
everything went when he studied Maputo for ProBEC. Reports are available I
am sure.

Regards
Crispin


[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

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