Bill,
You have made a larger than normal TLUD and have solved (in at least one way) the problem of variation/ irregularity in the descent of the migratory pyrolytic front (MPF). Your solution is that your unit pushes new fuel in at the bottom and removes the created biochar at the top so that you can have continuous operations. That is great!!
What happens with the insertion of the fuel is that the column of biomass is slightly disturbed (agitated) frequently and the fuel pieces are able to shift into any void, thereby eliminating the irregular decent of the MPF.
You have a great solution and a candidate to be a product for many homes / businesses. It is a solution for people “…who could easily be persuaded to switch from their wood stoves/furnaces or pellet stoves to pyrolytic heaters if we effectively communicate the economic, labor, and environmental reasons for doing so.”
So I am agreeing with your decision that you said: “I have pretty much abandoned any further attempts to develop very large TLUDs in order to focus on the design and production of suitable TLUD appliances.” The applications can often cost more than the production of the heat.
Yes, the TLUD technology provides the desired clean pyrolytic combustion of abundant biomass. Now we need to make it affordable and easy (just set the thermostat inside the house) and available. This can be part of the trillion dollar renewable energy business needed for this century, and the sooner the better. And it is carbon negative by putting the biochar into the soil. Win, win, win, win………. Win.
Keep up the good work.
Paul
Doc / Dr TLUD / Paul S. Anderson, PhD — Website: www.drtlud.com<www.drtlud.com/>
Email: psanders@ilstu.edu<mailto:psanders@ilstu.edu> Skype: paultlud
Phone: Office: 309-452-7072 Mobile & WhatsApp: 309-531-4434
Exec. Dir. of Juntos Energy Solutions NFP Go to: www.JuntosNFP.org<www.juntosnfp.org/>
Inventor of RoCC kilns for biochar and energy: See www.woodgas.com<www.woodgas.com>
Author of “A Capitalist Carol” (free digital copies at www.capitalism21.org<www.capitalism21.org/>)
with pages 88 – 94 about solving the world crisis for clean cookstoves.
From: main@Biochar.groups.io <main@Biochar.groups.io> On Behalf Of Bill Knauss via groups.io
Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2020 4:02 PM
To: main@biochar.groups.io
Cc: Ronal W. Larson <rongretlarson@comcast.net>; dickgallien@gmail.com; Jamie Thsomson <silvercitythomson@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Biochar] Burning rather than preventing pyrolysis gases (Dick Gallien char-making)
Dick,
As Ron informed you, I have played around with scaling up the basic TLUD technology to a 500 gal size and so far haven’t run across any major barriers to size. I sense that you and I both got interested in large pyrolyzers because we wanted to make a lot of biochar and because it is a heck of a lot more fun to work on something that is so ridiculously large that we don’t think anyone would ever think of it. Of course, I have to admit that you beat me to the punch by around 8 years and an order of size larger. Congratulations.
You can see from the video https://youtu.be/5Kfr4NRhJ0s that I made of the 350 gal TLUD back in 2012, that it functions quite predictably and efficiently. Working with Trollworks we also produced a 500 gal unit in 2015 that also worked well when we burned the syngas directly as it exited the top of the reactor. But, when we tried to pipe the syngas down to ground level so as to make it easier to capture the heat from the syngas, we ran into problems we were never able to fully solve. As it also became apparent that we can produce more biochar, produce it cheaper, eliminate most of the labor, and utilize the waste heat most efficiently by producing biochar in people’s homes, I have pretty much abandoned any further attempts to develop very large TLUDs in order to focus on the design and production of suitable TLUD appliances.
There are reports from third world countries that families are producing between a third and a half-ton of biochar per year, per family, just by using TLUDs for all their cooking needs. We believe that in SW New Mexico that we can produce between 3 and 5 tons per year, per household, when using TLUDs for space and water heating, and I find it easy to imagine that a Minnesota household might produce 10 tons of biochar per year. Furthermore, in Minnesota you already a significant number of people who already rely on biomass, for their heat needs, who could easily be persuaded to switch from their wood stoves/furnaces or pellet stoves to pyrolytic heaters if we effectively communicate the economic, labor, and environmental reasons for doing so.
The primary barrier to the production of biochar in people’s homes is a consistent and reliable supply of biomass feedstock. Fortunately, TLUDs have performed vary dramatically in density, size, moisture content, ash content, thereby allowing them to be produced from locally available materials at a very reasonable cost compared to the feedstock needed for pellet stoves.
If you would consider turning all the problem biomass available to you into a feedstock suitable for use in people’s homes, I am confident that you can produce biochar in peoples homes at a cost considerably below what you have anticipated and in quantities that are greater than projected, while offsetting the use of highly polluting wood or fossil fuel heat. I am also more confident that my experience might be some help to you if you would like to consider moving the production of biochar to people’s homes so they can benefit from the heat coproduced by the production of biochar in TLUD reactors.
—
www.ithakajournal.com
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