Dr. Fawzi Ali AlAmrousi: production of charcoal from organic wastes for using as a fuel and soil conditioner

Agricultural, industrial and municipal organic solid waste in Egypt reached to more than 70 million tons annually .Actually we already take advantage of 10% of them in manufacturing home appliances wood , paper industry , organic fertilizer, biogas and other vital industries.

The difficulty and cost of transporting of this waste make more than 90% of them are burned in-situ and resulting manifestations of the harm caused by the black cloud. Present invention has been reached to produce an innovative device in the form of a portable stove made from iron rode and sheets which carried on a vehicle for move them wherever the waste in agricultural fields is founds.

Description of device

A furnace in the form of a parallelogram dimensions give the size of 2 to 5 m 3 (a detailed description of the method and the device in the patent No. 023 399 see chart). We can put waste into the oven in the form of compressed bales. So it can be to place the largest amount from waste in oven. We set fire in the oven through a small hole (fire house).

Where oven doors are sealed and air enters to the oven, in very small quantities during the combustion process “pyrolysis process”. When the ignition start in the furnace heat obtained continuously and changing the waste to charcoal. At the end of the process the produce charcoal represent 30 to 38% from the weight of waste subject in oven.

The obtained gases from furnace are withdrawn as soon as formed by suction via the furnace chimney (stack). Allow to bus these gases throw series connected condensers (three or four heat exchangers) for condensing the obtained volatile compounds to liquid. They accumulated as condensate such as coal tar, phenols, acetic acid, acetaldehyde, formaldehyde, acetone, furfural, methyl and ethyl alcohol. Also dozen of important chemical compounds.

These constituents of 15 to 20% by weight from the virgin wastes. If the collected fluid in the form of a mixture it is similar to Mazot and can be used as a substitute fuel. Also produces large quantities of water up to 50% of the weight of residue in addition to the exit gases are not intensified but flammable that could be used as fuel after charging in special cylinders.

Applications of this invention

Firstly: The charcoal produced can be used in the charcoal industry as a substitution of tree charcoal. If shaping in form of templates with the addition of chemicals and Adhesives and then compressed in mold, in particular to give the same form of trees charcoal or in the form of cubes or any other forms.

The product are more dense than coal trees and even longer charcoal ignition periods and has other innovative features (see the web pages under the title “Al-Amrousi charcoal” Actually the work of the first experimental plant in Egypt for this project was established , see papers attached), and has a very large economic returns.

Secondly: We using the obtained charcoal in the treatment of sand soil and clay soils in the agricultural fields as a soil conditioner.

Where charcoal powder mixed with sandy of modern reclamation soils. Charcoal added by 30 tons per hectare can consist of soil retain water for irrigation for a long period of time availability of ration irrigation. In this case more than 70% of the amount of water used was saved. So we can be grown three times the cultivated land by the same amount of water used now.

In reality water problem is the reason for the failure of TOSHKA project. Thus, this invention is a clear solution for the cultivation of more than 3 million acres in the Toshka, as well as more than three million acres in the East Port Said, and other places of land reclamation sand in Egypt (for more clarification, refer to the patent No. 023 463 it is under the title of “a way to improve the characteristics of sandy and clayey soils using charcoal resulting from roasted organic waste”) can also start a charcoal required by 20 tons per hectare in the case of clay soil.