What is The Process of Making Charcoal? – 3D Video
How Is Charcoal Made? – Detailed On-site Description
Opening
Dear friends of Beston. Welcome to my show. I’m Fredo Wang and today is 7th Sep of 2021. Today we are at one of our site, operational site of carbonization plant. I’m going to take you inside to see the charcoal machine in real. Before doing that I would like to give you a brief about this project. The raw material they are using are saw-dust and wood pellets. And the capacity of which is 1 ton/h by input and 300kg/h output of charcoal. Now let’s move our steps and come inside.
Raw Material
Now we are inside and you can see the overview of this plant. Before we start to walk you through the step after step from the beginning to the end. We first will talk about the raw materials.
For our carbonization plant we can take three kinds of raw materials. For most cases we will take biomass. Biomass carbonization is to convert the biomass into charcoal, it can be made to barbecue or shisha coal, or even active carbon with further process.
The second kind of material we can take is sludge. The sludge are mainly drainage/river sludge which contains a lot of organic. The purpose of that is mainly for disposal to get the tipping fee from government.
And the last kind of material we can take is the waste plastic. The waste plastic carbonization will turn the waste plastic into the solid fuel for burning in the later.
After the type of materials there are also several requirements for our system. Because we have a continuous system so the two requirements of the raw materials are there. One is about the size. We require the size to be under 20mm. And if your material is bigger than required, we will equip the crusher for you. The second is the moisture of the material. If your material appear to be more wet than required. The moisture requirement is 15% by moisture. So if your material is more wet we will equip the dryer for you. From 15% -45% of the moist we will equip one dryer. From 45%-70% of the moist we will equip two dryers for you.
And once you have a project and you specific about the material and capacity, we can already make a proposal for you. Now let’s move to the process.
Feeding
To start with is the feeding process. The feeding is being done together with a hopper and belt conveyor. The combination of hopper and belt conveyor make sure the material will be feed inside steadily and constantly. The conveyor we are using is big angle belt conveyor with compartments. So that the material will be feed inside steadily and spread out in an uniform way.
Drying
After the feeding the material will drop into the next section. The next section will either be the reactor itself or the dryer depending on the project itself. For example this one they don’t have the dryer here. But for instance if you do, the material will first drop into the dryer and go one way up from the front to the end, drop to the next belt conveyor before transfer to the reactor. The dryer that we are using is heated by the hot smoke generated from the combustion chamber under the reactor system. And hot smoke will go through the dryer and finally reach to the de-dusting system. And inside of the dryer we have a structure called scatter shaft. The shaft will throw the material into the air to have a fully touch with the hot smoke so to effectively dry out the material.
At last the material will drop from top of the conveyor to the Air-Lock valve. The utilization of Air-Lock Valve is to make sure no air will come into the system. So we use all these device in every entrance and exit of the vessels including reactor and the dryer.
Reacting
Now behind me is the main body of our reactor. In Beston Group‘s design, the reactor will reach to the continuous function. The machanism of which will be keep feeding and keep discharging. The entire time that takes from material entering into the system from entering to the discharging will only take 20 minutes. To reach to this goal we have two major know-how. One is the double tube reactor design, another is the double combustion chamber design.
Double Layer Reactor: First we will take a look at the reactor. The material drop from the top of the conveyor and enter the reactor. First it will drop into the inner tube, and then it will travel all the way from the front to the end and drop into the outer tube. Then the material will travel back from the end to the front again and being discharged. The feeding and discharging are from the same side. The reason why we take this design of double tube design is to save space for the traveling. So the traveling route is very long while the space needed is very limited.
Double Combustion Chamber: Second we apply this double combustion chamber design. It has two benefits. One is that the reactor will have three point support. So there is an extra support at the center of the reactor. So that after a long time use the reactor will not be deformed. And second is the two chambers can be manipulated by PLC separately. So the temperature inside can be different so to make sure the carbonizing will be fully done.
Material of Reactor: At last, material-wise, our reactor will apply 310s stainless steel in the fire zone. Like i said we have two combustion chambers, and in the area the reactor will be made by stainless steel, so that the life span of our reactor will be 8-10 years. And after that a simple reinforcement of the reactor will make it last longer.
Discharging
After the reaction, the material, which is now charcoal, will be discharged from the bottom of the socket. With two cooling discharger it will reduce the temperature to less than 35 degree centigrade. Then you can choose to use a briquette line or the Shisha making line to make it a shape. Or you can simply store it. But the tips are, because there’s charcoal pilling temperature so please store it in a closed environment.
Syngas
During the process the syngas will be generated. The syngas of our system will be outside from the top of the socket. And then it will transfer to the cyclone de-duster to remove the dust. Then a hydro-seal to balance the pressure and prevent the back fire from happening. Then the syngas will be direct back to the combustion chamber for burning. So the heating is provided by the syngas after pre-heating. That means the system is self-sufficient and after the pre-heating for two hours the for the entire next week you don’t have to use yuor own fuel.
De-dusting
The hot smoke from each combustion chamber will come out to our de-dusting system. If there is a dryer, the hot smoke will first go through the dryer before it reaches to the de-dusting system. If you do not have a dryer it will directly go to the de-dusting system. The de-dusting system consists a cyclone de-duster to remove particles and dust, then it has a spray tower. The spray tower consists of ceramic absorption and water spray. So at last when the hot smoke release to the air it will be mainly hot vapor.
Controlling
With our PLC system we can achieve the smart control. For example when the feeding material’s moisture and temperature become bigger then the system will recognize and adjust the temperature in the combustion chamber, so to secure the carbonizing will be fully done. In this way the managing labor will be saved mostly. So you can grab a cup of tea and enjoy your afternoon.
Drying Section
Now we are seeing the drying system that our customer equipped by themselves individually from our carbonization system. I will walk you through the process. First the feeding will be done by the belt conveyor. The belt conveyor will transport the material and drop it into this trommel screen. The screen will separate the big matters and the small matters. Big ones we will take it out for crushing, and the small ones will drop to the bottom and another belt conveyor will transport it to the silo. Those two silos with the screw feeder will feed the material separately into different dryers. And after drying the material will get sucked out by this big pipe and into the cyclone duster and another silo here. And similarly from this dryer the material will drop from there. These two ports will discharge the dried material and send it out to be stored.