vehicle tailpipe emissions are normally in the 400-500F (200-260C) range for a car. At the manifold temperatures are much hotter. 300-600C (570-1100F) is in the range for charcoal production but 600C is more the engine grade charcoal. At 300C you basically get brands.
It may not work for making engine grade charcoal, but it definitely will knock the moisture out, create shrinkage, and make an engine grade charcoal production faster. The closer you are to the manifold the hotter you are, but numbers are all over the place in the google search for the temperature which of course depends on engine and fuel, and probably rpms. And of course some people are saying like 1200F and 1200C.
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Thanks for your input and sharing your experiences Ron, yes all that water vapor in the air must adventually condense out some where.
If the engine exhaust temperatures are high enough to initiate wood gas production from the dry chips, then i think there is a possible method to use that gas in conjuntion with the exhaust gas to produce very high temperatures to form charcoal whilst running with out mess.
I will draw a sketch of the contraption and everyone can have a look and let me know what they think?
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Basically this is turning the muffler into a charcoal retort. If the exhast gas temperatures are high enough to initiate wood gas production the wood gas is diverted to a flaring nozzle and ignited. The inner sealed container holding dried wood chips is in a constant vacuum by the venturi effect created by the fast flowing engine exhaust. The wood gas production is then used in conjuction with the engine exhaust temperature to produce very high temperatures to form charcoal. The flare has air holes or air access to allow oxygen to ignite the flare.
This is a quick sketch just to roughly illustrate my thoughts. If this or a modified version of it could be used to produce good quality charcoal whilst running it would remove a lot of time and wasted energy form our current charcoal production.
No doubt there is problems with this, but could they be ironed out to create a working unit?
Roscoe
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