Charcoal is a relative cheap source of energy for stoves and cauldrons, having the advantage of being neutral with respect to CO2 emissions. The conventional process to produce charcoal is through methods such as earth pits or brick kilns, in which the energy required to produce the carbonization is obtained from the combustion of a part of the wood, which leads to a considerable decrease in the net production of carbon, combined with lack of control of the temperature of the process, leading to products of lower quality and a maximum yield of 200-300 kg per ton of wood used.
In this paper we present the design of a solar oven capable of producing charcoal out of wood, together with its construction and evaluation. The design does not require solar tracking throughout the all-day.
The prototype built has a collection surface of 1.37 m2, and can obtains 70 g of charcoal out of 180 g of wood, in approximately five hours, in a sunny day and with a typical irradiance of 800 W/m2, which corresponds at an efficiency of 380 kg per tonne.
Keywords
Solar energy; Charcoal,