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

Wed Oct 19 08:47:27 CDT 2016

Dear Rebecca Vermeer,
i think transforming sawdust (and wood chips) into charcoal briquettes is 
quite common on an industrial level.
Check this factory, i visited them 9 years ago in East Malaysia (500 
tons/month production at that time):

http://www.cipta.com.my/v2/source/03products.htm
<http://www.cipta.com.my/v2/source/03products.htm>

They are chopping up left over from chipboard production into sawdust and 
wood chips.
Sawdust is dried, compacted in a piston press (long shaped briquettes with 
a hole in it)
carbonized in a brick kiln.

2 things to mention: there is awkward wear on the piston press, the screw 
needs to be repaired with tungsten rods (welding) every few days.

The briquettes are kind of "sintered" in the kiln, it means kiln 
temperature gets very high (700°C). Sintering makes the  briquette very 
strong (however is reducing the heat value per briquette compared to 
standard pyrolysis as  during sintering a part of the briquette may turn to 
ash).
Best
Chris A.

A series of piston press

A series of kilns

Sintered charcoal driven off from the kiln to a place where it can be 
covered by a large lid.

-----Original-Nachricht-----
Betreff: Re: [Stoves] Charcoal from waste - home cooking or other markets? 
(Re: Crispin, Anand Karve)
Datum: 2016-10-12T17:39:12+0200
Von: "Rebecca A. Vermeer" <ravermeer at telus.net>
An: "Discussion of biomass cooking stoves" 
<stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>

Dear Chris, Crispin,
Do you know of a successful project where wood sawdust is converted to 
charcoal and the charcoal processed into briquettes?
Regards,

Rebecca Vermeer

------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Crispin Pemberton-Pigott" <crispinpigott at outlook.com>
To: "stoves lists.bioenergylists.org" <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2016 4:12:52 AM
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Charcoal from waste - home cooking or other markets? 
(Re: Crispin, Anand Karve)

Dear Chris

Always good to hear from you. The bamboo waste things sounds highly 
replicable in many areas.

I will report separately on the experiments with biochar being made at the 
CAU lab in Beijing, which is on an experimental farm. They have many 
sources for the char and are looking into how it affects plant growth. 

One of the source materials is sewage which contains plenty of carbon. 

Regards 
Crispin

"Charcoal from waste",
i can report from 3 interesting projects in East Africa and Southern Africa 
 transforming waste to charcoal:

1) A project in the East of Kenya near Lake Victoria is transforming 
bagasse from sugarcane can into charcoal. They are using an "adam-retort" 
kiln for the carbonization of the bio-waste. About 100kg  to120kg (dry 
weight) of bagasse fit into the wood chamber of about 2,5 (?)m&sup3;.
About 30kg of charcoal are harvested. Efficiency is about 30% (burnt waste 
fuel in fire box not counted). The charcoal is shaped into briquettes, but 
I have not details about it.
mark.lung at eco2librium.com, <http://www.eco2librum.net,,> 
http://www.eco2librium.net/

2) Another interesting project is done in Kenya near Naivsha.
I cite from their homepage: "In urbanizing communities we install modern 
container-based toilets in people's homes for free and charge a small 
monthly fee to service them. Then, instead of dumping the waste, we 
transform it into a clean burning alternative to charcoal. Our dependable, 
user-focused, and vertically integrated sanitation services address the 
full sanitation value chain and allow families living in urbanizing 
communities throughout East Africa to live a modern and healthy life.

As far as i understood the "pupe" is used as a binder to make charcoal 
briquettes. The charcoal comes from twigs, roots and leaves which is a left 
over from nearby flower farms. The twigs and leaves are carbonized in an 
"adam-retort" kiln. Unfortunately i don't have any further details.
 Catherine Berner | Technical Lead  catherine at sanivation.com
www.sanivation.com <http://www.sanivation.com/>  |

3) In Malawi / Zimbabwe a project is using bamboo left overs for 
carbonization. I am not sure if the bamboo-char is used itself or it is 
compacted into briquettes. What's interesting is that they made essays with 
an industrial steel retort and a brick built "adam-retort" kiln. The 
industrial steel retort has less volume and its costs including transport 
300% more that the brick built kiln
and they prefer the brick built kiln.
(citation. "...The metal retort  stores approx. 330kg of bamboo (adam: dry 
or wet ??) and yields about 80kg – 100kg charcoal but uses almost as much 
firewood as the brick retort so efficiency conversion rate is low..."

On the brick kiln i got the following information, i assume the wood 
chamber has a volume of about 3m&sup3; :
" ..It is very successful.  The community group built it entirely 
themselves on provision of the materials.  The recovery rate is very high 
– approx. 800kg bamboo (adam: dry or wet ??) giving 250kg charcoal and 
using around 100kg firewood or less.   (adam: 800kg --> 250kg, folllows 
100kg --> 31kg)..".
louise.bleach at googlemail.com,   
http://bio-innovation.org <http://bio-innovation.org>

Cheers
Dr. Chris ADAM
biocoal.org

-----Original-Nachricht-----
Betreff: [Stoves] Charcoal from waste - home cooking or other markets? (Re: 
Crispin, Anand Karve)
Datum: 2016-10-04T16:43:48+0200
Von: "Nikhil Desai" <pienergy2008 at gmail.com>
An: "Discussion of biomass cooking stoves" 
<stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>

Moderator: I changed the subject line. This is in response to Crispin's 
comment about Anand Karve's work. 
---------------

Crispin: "That is what is so inspiring about AD Karve?s work on charring 
waste biomass to produce a high quality fuel. He even produced the extruder 
and the Sarai stove to go with it. That is a museum quality piece of work - 
to be studied... "

I take your word for it, but I also had this suspicion a few years ago that 
what Anand Karve was proposing in terms of converting waste biomass for 
charcoal was worth more attention, not primarily as a fuel choice issue but 
as a waste management issue. In dry regions such as much of India, leaf and 
tree waste along with other open biomass waste is a major problem in 
municipal waste management. Why, just driving by Gandhinagar - the capital 
of Gujarat state where I lived - a few months ago I saw huge piles of leaf 
waste in numerous parks that have been created by the state government to 
make the city "green". All those leaves will be burned in the open, 
contributing to air pollution (not reported in peer-reviewed literature so 
it must not exist) that damages biota health here and now. On the other 
hand, such burning will release organic aerosols that supposedly cool the 
atmosphere, so it is most definitely "green" for the "global environment" 
advocates. 

Open organic waste - including leaves, tree debris, food waste - is a huge 
headache for local governments. On the other hand, urban trees have 
multiple benefits including air filtering
<https://www.accessscience.com/content/urban-tree-leaves-remove-fine-particulate-air-pollution/BR0116141> 
, favorable changes in ambient temperatures (thus impacting building energy 
demand; I did some work for Cinncinnati Gas and Electric climate options 
20+ years ago), and I also happen to like urban forestry, gardening, food 
production (if land, water, and air quality so permit). 

A new paradigm of urban/peri-urban biomass production, utilization, and 
waste management needs to emerge, and energy analysts have much to offer. 

Unless they leave the field to WHO and EPA. 

The question is, do Indian customers care to advance to cleaner charcoal or 
convenient LPG?

As I mentioned in the previous post, the commercial potential may not lie 
in household cooking but in water heating (peri-urban, rural) and 
commercial/institutional cooking and heating (water/space). 

****

Crispin: "But he is promoting charcoal consumption -  very offensive to 
some. Shall we forgive him too? :)"

Asking forgiveness from sinners of cooked science? You must be joking, Mr. 
Pemberton-Pigott. 

I note your emoticon, but this is no laughing matter. I think it's time to 
stop blaming direct use of solid fuels for presumed envionmental ills.

It's the process that matters. Converting primary solid fuels into an 
energy service can be "dirty process" or "clean (or cleaner) process."

Extending Kirk Smith et al (AREE 2000 on India) to all processes of solid 
fuel transformation, not just final combustion, and counting all emissions, 
could well show that investments at all steps of the fuel cycle can deliver 
small-scale direct use of solid fuels at a lower emission rates than the 
"traditional" processes (unprocessed solid fuels with relatively 
uncontrolled combustion and no emissions capture or ventilation). 

I will send you and Ron an e-mail about solid fuels and "dirty fuels"; you 
decide if it would add rancor or value to this List. I too prefer gas, 
electricity, and solar (thermal or soon enough, induction cooking via PV). 
There are markets for those. But until the 3 billion people we bleed our 
hearts and research funds on get to that nirvana, reducing the PICs and the 
drudgery of cooking should be the prime goals of research on solid fuels 
use. Banning solid fuels should be limited to some areas and some users. 

Nikhil

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