The charcoal conversion rate measures how efficiently biomass material can be converted into charcoal by pyrolysis. It is an important reference index for customers who want to invest in charcoal production because they need to measure the feasibility of opening a charcoal factory from the cost of raw materials, time, labor, energy consumption, etc.
How many tons of biomass materials to get one ton of charcoal
To make this question clear, we use the common case “sawdust to charcoal” to analyze the carbonizing ratio. About the steps of producing charcoal from sawdust, you can reference the below article.
After reading about the process of making charcoal from sawdust, we know that the weight loss happens in three stages: drying, briquetting, and carbonization
Sawdust to Sawdsut briquettes to Charcoal
To get 1 ton of charcoal, we need to carbonize around 3 tons of sawdust briquettes. The sawdust briquettes are carbonized by a carbonization furnace or earthen kiln. In this step, the weight of sawdust briquettes will shrink greatly.
To make 3 tons of sawdust briquettes, we need at least 3 tons of dried sawdust with a moisture of <12%. From sawdust to briquettes, the required machine is a sawdust briquette machine. In this process, sawdust moisture will be reduced little, it can be neglected.
To make sawdust briquettes, the sawdust needed to be dried at <12% moisture. Therefore, the carbonization rate ultimately depends on the humidity of the raw material.
The moisture of naturally dried materials is around 20%. After being dried by the sawdust dryer, the water content can be reduced to around 10%. To get 3 tons of 10% moisture sawdust, we need to dry around 3.5 tons of 30% moisture sawdust.
For the fresh biomass materials, humidity can reach 50%- 60%. It will take 6-7 tons of wet materials to get 3 tons of sawdust with 10% moisture.
The charcoal conversion rate of raw materials at different humidity
For the naturally dried materials (20% moisture), the charcoal conversion rate is 1/4 to 1/3.
For wet materials (50%-60% moisture), the charcoal conversion rate is around 6:1
For sawdust briquettes, the charcoal conversion rate is 3:1
