Pros and Cons between the two kinds of charcoal making technologies

In the charcoal market, there are a lot of different kinds of charcoal products, which are produced from various biomass materials, such as wood sawdust, bamboo powders, stalks, peanut shells, rice husks, even coal, etc. About the carbonization ways, some people use traditional carbonizing kiln, and some people adopt fire-proof bricks and steel furnace, and some use tunnel kiln. In recent years, lifting type carbonization furnace and continuous carbonization furnace are popular, which are developed and have higher efficiency than the traditional ones. Regard to the production process, there are two types, one is forming first, then carbonizing. The second is carbonizing first, then forming. Here we mainly talk about the differences of this two processes.

For making charcoal briquettes, no matter which process we adopt, the forming principle just has a slight difference. However, the charcoal quality and the production cost are the investors’ main concerns.

1. First forming-then carbonizing process: that is also called traditional way of making charcoal. The first step is to prepare the raw materials, commonly the sawdust or bamboo are the best choice. If that is wood logs or trunks as raw materials, those kinds of materials need to be crushed first, then dryed and finally can be compressed. After that, the finished briquettes will be carbonized through carbonizing process to get charcoal briquettes. which

2. Frist carbonizing-then forming process: the process is easier than the first one. First, no matter which kind of materials users adopt, powder shape, wood logs, or wood chips, all of these should be carbonized first, then use the crusher to process them into powders, finally the charcoal powders will be formed into briquettes to get finished product-charcoal briquettes. As the charcoal can be easily crushed and consume less electricity, this process costs less than the first one. Furthermore, the charcoal is easy to be formed, no need big pressure, so the technology is simple and operators can master the technology well. So the total investment is less than the first one.

However, due to the different procedures of the two processes, the way they squeeze molecular bonding is also different, the traditional technology (first forming-then carbonizing ) works by high temperature and pressure extrusion of lignin melt combination, and the second technology (carbonizing first-briquetting second)must add adhesive for molding. 

Due to adding some adhesives, so the ash content of the second technology will be higher than the first technology, these binders or adhesives are mainly tapioca, lignin or other chemical components, the de-ashing and burning effect will not as good as that of the first technology.

So, whatever the investors choose, it depends on the target market requirements. To be short, the quality of the traditional making charcoal technology is better than the second technology(carbonizing first-briquette second), but the price of the second one is much lower than the former, so long as the market can accept it, they are good products.