Development of High-Efficiency Charcoal Furnace with of Stainless Wire-Mesh Porous media

Abstract

This research article aims to study the influence of the installation of the stainless wire-mesh type of porous media on the temperature inside charcoal furnace. The project procedure was divided into 2 steps. Step 1 was the generation of a mathematical model to study the airflow characteristics inside the heat conduction pipe installed in the stainless wire-mesh type of porous media. The pores per inch (PPI) were analyzed by 6, 10, and 20. Five pitch distances (LP) were studied: 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 cm. As result, there were 16 cases in this step. For step 2, the experiment to examine the performance of the 200-liter charcoal furnace installed the stainless wire mesh porous media. From the analysis of the model, it was found that the distribution of airflow in the heat conduction pipe installed the stainless porous media at the case of PPI = 20 and LP = 50 cm gave better. The air-flow velocity in the pipe became lower than the pipe without porous media. Therefore, the experimental case was based on the results of analysis resulting in there existed only 6 cases. In the experiment, it had the interesting point that the average temperature in the furnace gave maximum level at 197 ^oC at the condition of PPI = 20 and LP = 10 cm. The temperature was higher than the furnace without porous media of 48 ^oC. However, the production time of charcoal compared with the furnace without porous media gave decreased by 42 minutes at the condition of PPI = 10 and LP = 50 cm. Moreover, agreement of analysis results and experimental data was acceptable at the criteria level.