The importance of renewable natural resources in the world is growing. In the production process of charcoal it is possible to increase the overall efficiency of transformation of eucalyptus wood in charcoal. In industrial process cooling time of the charcoal mass varies from 6 to 8 days, using the natural cooling of the charcoal mass, and the temperature for the opening of the mud ovens is about 60 ºC and the initial temperature of the charcoal mass is around 480 ºC. Thus, it was studied a system of cooling oven carbonization using injection of steam, with the goal of reducing the cooling time of the charcoal. It was built an oven type container in a test scale with the following dimensions 3.0 x a 2.0 x 1.6 m, as well as a system burner for exhaustion gases from the wood carbonization, instrumented thermocouples type K and a data acquisition system at the Laboratories of the Energy Area and Pre Processing of Agricultural Products of the Agricultural Engineering Department of Federal University of Viçosa, Viçosa, Minas Gerais, Brazil. It was built an oven container type on a laboratory scale of dimensions equal to 3.0 x 2.0 x 1.6 m and a firing system of gas exhaustion from the carbonization of wood, instrumented with temperature sensors type k, connected to a data system acquisition. It was also used a boiler to generate steam for the fast cooling of the oven. The cooling time of the coal mass was reduced to about two days by the injection of water vapor when compared to the natural cooling process.
charcoal production; vapor use; energetic optimization
