Final Report - Ohio Department of Transportation

1.2 Carbonization Research at Case Western Reserve University
Interest in carbonization at CWRU grew out of interactions with a former graduate student
whose family is in the palm oil business. The work originally focused on identifying beneficial
uses for harvest byproducts. Efforts examined the production of fiberboard from palm fronds
and husks (currently disposed of by open burning), the extraction of chemical products for the
palm oil (e.g. β-Carotene), the production of biodiesel and the production of methane from oil
processing sludge. Extending this to carbonization to produce useful soil amendments occurred
in the progression of ideas.
To examine the potential of palm harvest waste carbonization, two pyrolysis reactors were
constructed. There is a wide variety of technical sophistication being applied to pyrolysis
research. Several researchers have used sophisticated benchtop reactors to explore the kinetics
and thermodynamics of the process. Much of the work noted in Table 2 originates from this
effort. However, these reactors use very small samples (a few grams) that have been processed
(ground, shredded, pulverized) to small particle sizes. They can produce valuable data, but are
not appropriate for “production” carbonization. To produce larger quantities, reactors must
accommodate larger volumes of less-processed feedstock. Production reactors range from crude
units constructed from steel drums to sophisticated mobile and fixed production plants (Fig. 3).
Fig. 3 – Examples of
“Production”
Carbonization
Reactors
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