High-Yield Biomass Charcoal

Abstract

The theoretical yield of charcoal from biomass lies in the range 50−80% on a dry weight basis. In spite of the fact that mankind has been manufacturing charcoal for about 6000 years, traditional methods for charcoal production in developing countries realize yields of 20% or less, and modern industrial technology offers yields of only 25−37%. Moreover, reaction times for the batch process in an industrial kiln are typically 8 days. In this article we describe a practical method for manufacturing high-quality charcoal from biomass that realizes near-theoretical yields of 42−62% with a reaction time of about 15 min to 2 h, depending on the moisture content of the feed. Because of its high efficiency, this technology can help to reduce worldwide deforestation and pollution, while providing greater amounts of a desirable, renewable fuel and chemical resource to mankind.

Agricultural bio-char production, renewable energy generation and farm carbon sequestration in Western Australia: Certainty, uncertainty and risk

“…Conventional low efficiency production can result in losses of 80 -90% of biomass weight (wet basis) and most of the energy content of the original biomass (Antal et al, 1996;Okello et al, 2001). If not produced according to sensible environmental parameters, the biochar industry can lead to excessive deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, particulate air pollution, and local health problems.…”

“…Obtaining these excellent conversion figures are dependent on the production technology used and the initial biomass feedstock properties (Mok et al, 1992;Antal et al, 1996). In addition to the production of solid carbon, around two-thirds of the energy "lost" in the conversion process can be captured as a useful gas, or used as a source of heat (Antal et al, 1996;Antal and Gronli, 2003). Therefore the myriad of uses and the higher efficiency of modern available technology has the potential to provide a profitable incentive to sustain local biomass resources (Lehmann et al, 2006).…”

Using biomass for climate change mitigation and oil use reduction

“…We assume a coal-to-coke conversion efficiency of 80% by dry weight (Eikeland et al, 2001), and a biomass-to-charcoal efficiency of 37% (Antal et al, 1996). We assume that charcoal is made from primary roundwood because of the larger size of biomass raw material needed.…”

From “Sirups” to Biocarbons: A 30 Year Research Cooperation for Better Biomass Utilization with Michael J. Antal, Jr

“…Since the mid-nineties MJA and his coworkers developed modern methods to produce high-yield charcoals [27][28][29][30] and our cooperation shifted towards the investigation of the charcoals that were produced in Hawaii. The first of this series dealt with the TG, TG-MS and FTIR characterization of high-yield biomass charcoals.…”