Tigercat 6040 Carbonizer Creates Organic Carbon

Tigercat’s 6040 carbonizer is an environmentally friendly wood debris reduction and conversion system. The machine inputs unprocessed clean wood debris in a continual feeding process amounting to 15-20 tons per hour, and produces a high-quality organic carbon. It is an ideal solution for converting unwanted logging residue into a useful, high grade organic carbon that can be left onsite as a soil additive or marketed for many different commercial uses.

Traditionally, woody residues generated from logging operations have been hauled offsite to a grinding facility, or open burned on site, processes that are costly and carbon-emitting. The 6040 is a mobile track driven off road capable machine that processes the material onsite and reduces it by 90%. Transport costs, if required, are minimized. In cases where the product remains on site as a soil additive, there are no associated transport costs at all.

The 6040 incentivizes the removal of forest waste by sequestering carbon and creating carbon-negative markets for woody biomass. Carbonizer owners are not looking at woody biomass as a problem, but instead as a base material with potential for multiple value-added product streams and opportunities.

The carbonizing process captures 20%-30% of available carbon in the feedstock and sequesters it for thousands of years, furthering the goals of greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction. The innovative continuous conversion process operates at high throughput levels and produces very low emissions because the gasses are combusted in the controlled combustion zone.

Organic carbon, commonly known as biochar, has many uses. Used in soil remediation, it can absorb heavy metals and other soil contaminants. Organic carbon is a useful additive in the commercial production of compost, allowing for slow release of nutrients and improving soil water retention. Organic carbon also retains moisture and lessens the negative impact of drought conditions. Other industrial uses of organic carbon include air and water filtering applications, remediation of water bodies and landfill leachate. 

The Carbonizer utilizes an over-air supply, providing a cap over the entire top of the carbonizing chamber for loading debris to pass-through, eliminating the need to pre-process. A secondary air supply, located at the base of the machine, produces a static pressure to define a high temperature and turbulent combustion zone at the top of the machine, just beneath the over-air supply. This high temperature and turbulent secondary combustion zone provides a residence time for volatiles to achieve total burn-out before being exhausted opposite the manifold along the length of the machine in a defined exhaust zone. 

This secondary combustion zone generates heat, which is retained in the machine’s thermal ceramic sidewalls, keeping an elevated (1090°C/2000°F) and constant temperature throughout the entire primary chamber. 

The primary combustion zone at the base of the machine above the grates provides an area of residence that includes constant high temperature and depleted oxygen for pyrolysis to occur. 

The organic carbon drops or detaches from the parent material in the primary combustion zone, through the grates, and into the chamber beneath the grates. Organic carbon is immediately quenched in a contained and internal water bath, then mechanically augured to the rear of the machine. It is discharged onto a conveyor and fed into a non-combustible storage bin of choice. 

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