Although the first prototype of the rice hull carbonizer was able to perform its intended function, there were some problems encountered which called for design improvement. One of these problems is the bridging or caving in of rice hull such that mixing or stirring of the rice hull bed had to be done more often. With the first prototype, this was quite difficult to do. Moreover, I wanted to attain a much higher operating temperature since I will be using the heat generated for some applications. Hence, the second prototype of the rice hull carbonizer (with pictures above) was designed and fabricated. With this prototype, I was able to attain temperature readings within the range of 700 to 800 degrees C which is already appropriate. This prototype is much easier to operate especially in terms of stirring or agitating the rice hull bed so that the bridging or caving in of rice hull is no longer a serious problem.
Here are some of the pictures and video cuts taken during one of the test runs conducted.
Pictures taken at the top of the carbonizer before (top) and during (bottom) operation.
Video No. 1: Starting (Firing) the Carbonizer
Video No. 2: Harvesting the carbonized rice hull
The next program of activity would be the development of the heat recovery component. Watch for an update!
CleanEarth/02August2009
Hi,
ReplyDeleteThis is an enteresting site. Good luck to your endeavor.
Ricardo, Take care getting temperatures above 600C encourages the formation of Crystobalite in the silica a known Hazardous material. Keep the bed temperature low and burn the "smoke". It has lots of combustible gas and tars so that is where the heat recovery should be concentrated on. Steam boilers and steam engines are notoriously inefficient and dangerous if not built and maintained correctly. Try to find an old design for a sterling engine that can run directly off the hot air. Im sure there are a lot of designs that are simple and out of patent that would work admirably in this sort of situation.
ReplyDeletehi..its very interesting one....a great help for our thesis....hehheheh
ReplyDelete.......nice one! its a great help for my design project!
ReplyDeletesocz nicomment na ka anhi no? klaro au!
ReplyDelete