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Message: 3
Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2014 12:22:29 +1300
From: Doug<[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Gasification] Size of blower and tumbler required to dry
chip in a solar kiln
Message-ID:<[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Hi David,
My question is aimed at using a solar kiln to dry chip for use in a
biochar system or gasifier/combustion bioenergy system, Doug. This would
use material from waste woody biomass streams in regional Australia.
Likely to be a mix of eucalypt, conifers, acacias and exotics.
> From a application perspective, anything is possible, but you need to sort
your chip if you want the best result, and size does matter for most application
of the final charcoal. Drying the chip before making charcoal would speed up the
char making, but to include this activity internally to the timber kiln would not
be beneficial if the main kiln timber being dried is hardwoods. You can boil water
out of pine, but you need steady humidity and temperature for the hardwoods.
Solar kiln drying timber is well established with drying schedules for
hardwoods and softwoods. They tend to use different drying schedules
compared to a conventional kiln. But an interesting aspect to this work
would be how these drying schedules would apply to chip from different
species as against timber.
And I suspect a blower would also be necessary but again I don't have a feel
for what
size of fan would be suitable for this scale. Hence my query.
Again if you have battery power, using truck radiator fans is an option for the
plenum
I guess that would raise questions about how suitable a truck radiator
fan would be for this application, how long they would last and so on.
Tinkering is fun but I think COTS (commercial off the shelf) fans are
cheap. If I can size a unit designed for this task and volume I'm likely
to have less fuss in operation. I know some guys who do commercial HVAC
systems so they may have some guidance.
Given that I don't recall anyone pre-drying chips for charcoal production, it
would seem a unnecessary step, unless the charcoal making system has this
requirement.
Obviously useful for small scale conmbustion systems and gasifiers. If
you can dry cheaply before char making this means that considerably less
thermal energy from combustion is being used to drive off water in the
charcoal manufacturing step. I would have thought this would be useful
with respect to charcoal manufacture time and yields. The financial
analysis is straightforwards as to whether the extra cost of the kiln
and tumbler is justified. If a kiln is already in use for timber drying
but not full-time ie time available for other uses the cost to the char
drying of the kiln is proportionate. Solar kilns can be commercial
systems or vernacular. A number of US universities and several NGOs have
solar kiln designs.
Have you identified a system to make the char?
Initial system would be vernacular :) AKA 44 gallon drum based
Bye for now
David
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