Bay City News
Pull a burning log out of a campfire and it will send a smoky plume of carbon and ash into the air. Place that log in a 1,500-degree fan-blown kiln and the carbon and ash will lock down inside the coal.
That’s the mechanical principle behind the Tigercat 6050 Carbonator being used by the fire fuel reduction team in the East Bay Regional Park District this year.
District fire officials unveiled the machine that creates “biochar” Tuesday ahead of the fuel reduction season.
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Anthony Chabot Regional Park is the site of the largest eucalyptus reduction project in Northern California and is the largest in park district history. According to the district, the use of the new carbonator to break down biomass is directly benefitting the communities of Oakland and Castro Valley by reducing truck traffic as well as the risk of forest fire.
“If we were to dispose of that biomass traditionally, we would be trucking the timber all theway to a cogeneration facility near Sacramento,” said Assistant Fire Chief Khari Helae with the park district. Instead, they can process the biomass on-site.
Deep in the park, green felling machines slash, rip, rake and grab young eucalyptus trees and stack them in a staging area next to the idle container-sized carbonator. By November, the smokeless incinerator will be burning 60 to 80 tons of biomass every 12 hours.
In a process called pyrolysis, the wood is burned at extremely high temperatures, under a curtain of fanned wind in the absence of oxygen. The charred wood is cooled with water and mechanically crunched into bits of dense porous coal, about the size of construction gravel.