[Stoves] Upgrading charcoal by washing it

[Anand Karve]

Dear Neil,
the porosity of charcoal comes from the cellular structure of the plants
and I assume that even after charring the minerals remain trapped in the
cells. Therefore I felt that soaking charcoal in water and washing it might
selectively remove the minerals, leaving behind carbon of a higher purity.
I am conducting experiments on char to test this hypothesis.
Yours
A.D.Karve

***
Dr. A.D. Karve

Chairman, Samuchit Enviro Tech Pvt Ltd (www.samuchit.com)

Trustee & Founder President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)

On Wed, Sep 21, 2016 at 10:46 PM, <neiltm at uwclub.net> wrote:

> On 21 Sep 2016 at 9:26, Anand Karve wrote:
>
> > Dear Stovers,
> > we have developed a TLUD process for making charcoal by charring
> > agricultural waste. Since a lot of the agri-waste comes from grain crops
> > belonging to the family Poaceae, the ash content is rather high due to
> the
> > silica in the plants. Mineral coal is washed in order to reduce its ash
> > content and to increase its calorific value. I was wondering if the same
> > can be done in the case of charcoal.I can of course conduct a few
> > experiments and find the answer, but I would be grateful to the list if
> > somebody knows the answer and provides it to me.
>
> I used to quench my TLUD char with water, but because it is porous, it
> then had to be dried.  Now I 'quench' the char by placing it in  biscuit
> tin and excluding the air.  It cools very rapidly.  When the tin is
> getting full I riddle the contents with a fine mesh which gets rid of all
> the ash, but retains quite small particles of char which I burn on my
> BBQ, sometimes with the assistance of a computer fan, at least at start
> up.  Whether you might have issues of scale and type of char, and amount
> of ash that might mitigate against doing it that way I can't say.  I
> can't see any advantage to using water to wash the char from
> microgasifiers.  Coal, AFAIK is not porous like charcoal, so might dry
> more easily?
>
> Best wishes,   Neil Taylor
>
> > Yours
> > A.D.Karve
> > ***
> > Dr. A.D. Karve
> >
> > Chairman, Samuchit Enviro Tech Pvt Ltd (www.samuchit.com)
> >
> > Trustee & Founder President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute
> (ARTI)
> >
>
>
>
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