Experiment on Influent Parameters on Wood Vinegar Burning Process

Abstract

This research aims to develop a burning tank for making charcoal and experiment for the wood vinegar burning process using wood as raw material. To design, and operation of such a burning tank for making charcoal require a detailed understanding of parameters that affect the system performance. In the research, the device designed for testing and developing a burning system that can improve the distillation rate of wood vinegar. The developed system consists of two tanks, a burning tank for making charcoal, and a distrillation tank for collecting wood vinegar. The burning tank for making charcoal made of steel with 400mm diameter and 600mm long for containing 15-20 kg of wood provides tight airflow and has two exhaust ducts attached to top and bottom of the tank side. The distillation tank for collecting wood vinegar has 24 copper pipes with a diameter of 12mm, and 400mm long, resulting in a condensing surface area of 0.36 m2 The condensing pipes installed in 65 litres tank contains cool water with a temperature of 30 °C to 40 °C, used as media for removing the heat from those pipes surface. In the experiment, four influent parameters are investigated; two kinds of woods, three fire conditions of airflow rate, three moisture contents in woods are varied and two positions of exhaust duct are observed. The developed system tested by using 15 kg of Eucalyptus and River tamarind wood within 8 hours, producing 6.39L of yield wood vinegar. The experiment results show that the interaction between the new model designed and parameters significantly effect on the yield percent of wood vinegar collected. That is the effect of the prototype and those parameters can increase the wood vinegar 16 times compared to the conventional system.