[Gasification] Charcoal Gasifiers

Anand Karve adkarve at gmail.com
Mon May 9 03:34:07 CDT 2011


Dear Tom Miles,
  We have designed a portable T-LUD type of portable kiln, which can
convert any dry agricultural waste into charcoal. The kilns are taken
to the place where waste biomass is available, and one carries back
only the char,weighing just 30% of the original biomass. We are
currently using this system mainly for producing charcoal from
sugarcane leaves, because, one can get these leaves almost daily over
a period of about 150 to 200 days. The window of availability of all
other sources of agricultural waste is rather short.  The powdery char
is briquetted and sold to our customers, who use our Sarai cooking
system, which uses charoal as fuel. We tested this charcoal in a
brazier in which we had made arrangements to introduce steam into the
burning coal. We got a nice and totally smokeless blue flame. That
would be the so called water gas, containing a mixture of CO and H2.
We are already using a wood gasifier based electricity generation
system in a village, and I have asked my colleagues to test this
gasifier with charcoal instead of wood. Since we make our charcoal
from agriculture waste or from leaf litter from a forest, or even from
leaf litter from avenue trees, there would not be any dearth of
biomass.
Agricultural waste is a neglected source of energy. India produces
annually 800 million tonnes of it. Since it is a by product of
agriculture, it costs nothing extra to produce it. Until now, the
farmer never got any money for the agricultural waste, and therefore
he just burned it in situ or allowed it to rot in situ. But our
technology opens up the possibility for the farmer to convert his
agricultural waste into money. Now, if the briquetted char could be
converted into water gas and used as fuel in an internal combustion
engine, it would help our economy in a great way. We import into India
annually 120 million tonnes petroleum. If one compared the energy
content in the agricultural waste with that of the imported petroleum,
it would appear, that our agricultural waste contains almost 2.5 times
the energy  contained in imported petroleum. One can convert
agricultural waste into wood gas, charcoal gas, water gas, and to some
extent even biogas. All of these fuels can be used in internal
combustion engines and be able to replace petroleum.
We have already introduced our charcoal making technology into East
Africa through some local NGOs and entrepreeneurs, but have not got
any feedback from them.
Yours
A.D.Karve




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