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

Ken Boak ken.boak at gmail.com
Thu Oct 13 18:38:21 CDT 2016


Hi All,

Tonight, the evening temperatures in the UK demanded a bit of extra heating.

Not having any firewood available at the moment for my woodstove and back
boiler - I went to my local superstore on my way home from work and parted
with $6 for a 10kg pack of 12 sawdust briquettes.

http://www.tesco.com/direct/fuel-express-long-burning-heat-logs-12-pack/203-4633.prd?source=others

These are 64mm "octagons"  length 230mm and with a 20mm hole through the
centre. Mass is 800g per "log"

Colour is a shiny dark chocolate exterior skin where they have been hot an
extruded under pressure.

They light easily and soon burn efficiently.  In 3 hours - I burned 6 of
them.

At $0.50 each - they are a bit pricey compared to other fuels - but you can
buy a pallet of 1 ton for (1000 pieces) for about $370 bringig them down to
$0.37.

If you go on Alibaba  - you will find this product for about $80 - $120 per
tonne.

Specification is here

https://www.bioglow.co.uk/woodmix-pini-kay-briquettes


Hopefully this weekend I will be able to do a controlled pyrolisation of
some of these - and see what the char is like. I have a 100mm diameter
bore, temperature controlled tubular electric furnace that heats to 1200C -
as used by semiconductor industry.

Stay warm,

Ken

london

On 13 October 2016 at 23:14, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

> 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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