[Stoves] 4 Charcoal production, improved

[Thomas Reed]

Dear ADK:

What do you do with the volatiles from char making in your portable 
pyrolyzer?

TOM REED

adkarve wrote:
> This refers to the discussion on transport of charcoal. We make charcoal
> from dry leaves that are left behind in the field after harvest of
> sugarcane. If one had a centrally located kiln and if one were to transport
> the leaves to the kiln, the cost of transport would kill the business. In
> our case, the kiln is a portable metallic structure. It is transported to
> the field where sugarcane is being harvested. The char is produced in the
> field itself and transported to the centrally located extruder. The char,
> not being springy and elastic like the dry leaves, can be pressed into sacks
> for transport, and since it is a high value product, it can absorb the cost
> of transport. We have already sold more than a hundred of these kilns and
> they are being used for making charcoal from grass and shrubs growing on
> uncultivated land, cotton stalks, Casuarina needles, leaf litter in
> plantations of mango, cashew nuts etc. We also expect a huge demand from
> urban housing societies, as in most cities, the city administration has
> stopped accepting dry leaves of trees as garbage.  People now burn the
> leaves in the open. But if they realise that they can earn money from the
> leaves, they would start burning them in our kilns.
> Yours A.D.Karve
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at gmail.com>
> To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves <stoves at listserv.repp.org>
> Sent: Friday, March 23, 2007 4:25 AM
> Subject: Re: [Stoves] 4 Charcoal production, improved
>
>
>   
>> Dear Friends
>>
>> Robert emphasizes a good point: transport costs v.s. energy content.
>>
>> Having just done this calculation for a paper, I can report that in
>> Mozambique at least, the cost in foreign exchange to buy fuel for
>> trucks is equal to the local purchase cost of charcoal when the
>> charcoal has to be transported 500 km or more.
>>
>> This means that to access $1000 worth of local biomass-sourced
>> charcoal, they have to spend $1000 on imported fuel to move it from
>> Inhambane province to Maputo.
>>
>> This is another way to look at energy costs.
>>
>> I would caution, Penn, that while charcoal is ordinarily though of as
>> coming from trees, there are many useless (for most purposes) sources
>> of biomass that can be easily turned into charcoal to make a high
>> quality fuel from something people refuse to burn in a stove as a
>> biomass fuel.  Bullrushes come to mind immediately.
>>
>> So your argument is valid for wood, but weaker for non-standard biomass.
>>
>> I feel there is an indefinite future for charcoal because it is a high
>> quality, predictable fuel that can be packaged and marketed over a
>> wide area from a single source.  These are the characteristics of a
>> good product.
>>
>> Best regards
>> Crispin in Matsapha
>>
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>
>
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