2. Materials and methods
2.1. Raw materials
Charcoal briquettes are produced from two basic raw materials, charcoal fines and starch. The fines result from the production of charcoal from sustainably managed planted eucalyptus forests or from the steel industry, a major consumer of charcoal (Sablowski, 2008).
Charcoal fines are a material totally lacking in plasticity and therefore need the addition of a sticking or agglomerating material to enable a briquette to be formed. The binder should preferably be combustible, though a non-combustible binder that is effective at low concentrations may be suitable. In our process, starch was preferred as a binder even though it is usually expensive. The starch used was extracted from babaçu pulp in the Amazon region, as a by-product of the babaçu nut-based activated charcoal industry.
2.2. Briquetting process
Basically, briquetting requires a binder to be mixed with the charcoal fines, and a press to form the mixture into a cake or briquette, which is then passed through a drying oven to cure or set it by drying out the water, so that the briquette is strong enough to be used in the same burning apparatus as normal lump charcoal.
The briquetting process considered in this study is described in Fig. 1. First, the fines transported by truck from the production areas were stored in a silo. These fines had a relative humidity of up to 30%. They were screened, then homogenized and hammer milled. Undersized fines (0.8 mm) were rejected and oversized fines (25 mm) were hammer milled again. The resulting powder was blended with the starch paste and fed to the screw. Hot water was added to facilitate feeding the mixture into the briquetting press. The briquettes were dried in a continuous oven at about 80 °C. The starch set through loss of water, binding the charcoal into a briquette, which could be handled like ordinary lump charcoal in domestic stoves.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Raw materials
Charcoal briquettes are produced from two basic raw materials, charcoal fines and starch. The fines result from the production of charcoal from sustainably managed planted eucalyptus forests or from the steel industry, a major consumer of charcoal (Sablowski, 2008).
Charcoal fines are a material totally lacking in plasticity and therefore need the addition of a sticking or agglomerating material to enable a briquette to be formed. The binder should preferably be combustible, though a non-combustible binder that is effective at low concentrations may be suitable. In our process, starch was preferred as a binder even though it is usually expensive. The starch used was extracted from babaçu pulp in the Amazon region, as a by-product of the babaçu nut-based activated charcoal industry.
2.2. Briquetting process
Basically, briquetting requires a binder to be mixed with the charcoal fines, and a press to form the mixture into a cake or briquette, which is then passed through a drying oven to cure or set it by drying out the water, so that the briquette is strong enough to be used in the same burning apparatus as normal lump charcoal.
The briquetting process considered in this study is described in Fig. 1. First, the fines transported by truck from the production areas were stored in a silo. These fines had a relative humidity of up to 30%. They were screened, then homogenized and hammer milled. Undersized fines (0.8 mm) were rejected and oversized fines (25 mm) were hammer milled again. The resulting powder was blended with the starch paste and fed to the screw. Hot water was added to facilitate feeding the mixture into the briquetting press. The briquettes were dried in a continuous oven at about 80 °C. The starch set through loss of water, binding the charcoal into a briquette, which could be handled like ordinary lump charcoal in domestic stoves.
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