Process Design and Operation of a Wood Charcoal Retort

  • Wassim W. Ayass
  • Hiba Kobeissi
  • Rachad Mokdad
  • Elie Shammas
  • Daniel Asmar
  • Joseph Zeaiter
Short Communication
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Abstract

An efficient approach for the development of a compact integrated wood charcoal retort was designed. The key fundamental requirements to guarantee efficiency and productivity are initially investigated via CFD simulations to identify the temperature and velocity profiles inside the unit. The final compact design is comprised of a double vessel arrangement where the wood to be carbonized is placed in the central vessel (i.e. carbonizer). A flue-gas recycle line leaves the outer vessel (i.e. combustion furnace) to preheat the wood in the carbonizer during startup. This design allows the syngas/methane leaving the carbonizer to be re-circulated into the combustion furnace to provide the necessary energy. The integrated compact retort system is further tested experimentally; only 2–3 h were needed to achieve complete carbonization of oak wood. Various temperatures are achieved during operation, the maximum of which is at 900 °C. The charcoal yield ranged between 37 and 46% on a dry basis, and the charcoal carbon contents were between 73 and 87%.

Graphical Abstract

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Keywords

Biomass conversion Process design Charcoal production Computational fluid dynamics Process optimization 
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Notes

Acknowledgements

This work was fully funded by a grant from the Munib Masri Institute. We thank Lana Yassine for the graphical abstract design and Jaclyn Parris for proofreading the manuscript.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  • Wassim W. Ayass
    • 1
    • 3
  • Hiba Kobeissi
    • 2
  • Rachad Mokdad
    • 2
  • Elie Shammas
    • 2
  • Daniel Asmar
    • 2
  • Joseph Zeaiter
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of Chemical and Petroleum EngineeringAmerican University of BeirutBeirutLebanon
  2. 2.Mechanical Engineering DepartmentAmerican University of BeirutBeirutLebanon
  3. 3.Department of Life Sciences and ChemistryJacobs UniversityBremenGermany

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