# NoIdead pyrolysis schematic variant



## kjavanb123 (Nov 18, 2013)

All,

I am trying to build a pyrolysis (incinerator) unit very similar to NoIdea's post regarding this. I plan to heat it up emoty first to red hot, then drop the shredded boards inside the crucible inside the unit, put the top, that way sny smokes will be burned while circulating the unit.

Please comment.

The unit schematic;



The actual body for this test unit;



Regards,
Kevin


----------



## ericrm (Nov 18, 2013)

i dont know how much this is of importance for you and all the others that do want to treat motherboards and such. but it will stink. whatever how hard you will try to burn and reburn your gaz. unless theyr is no one around you to smell it, it will stink. take that into consideration.

i might be in error but kjavanb123 i think you have money? why dont you simply buy the autorisation to burn the material, pay someone to design a fully operationnal system, and start your business .

your design wont work.... you didnt put an exit for the gaz so theyr will be no oxigen able to reach your fire in...


----------



## bswartzwelder (Nov 18, 2013)

Two thing. First, what did you make your pyrolysis chamber out of? On my computer, it looks a lot like aluminum which will not work very well. 

Secondly, I tried to heat something up in a crucible in an enclosed chamber which was heated by charcoal supplemented with forced air. It seemed like the crucible would not allow enough heat to pass through to melt the material. I then took out the crucible and placed it directly onto the burning charcoal and the material inside the crucible melted with no problem. That really blew my mind because when the crucible was inside the enclosed chamber (chamber made of 3 or 4 inch steel pipe and suspended over top of the burning charcoal), the outside of the chamber was almost yellow hot. Being totally enclosed, there wasn't an easy way for the heat to escape.

Let us know how things work out. I was originally planning on doing a large load of chips in a pyroceram (Corning ware) dish inside the closed off chamber. Since that time, I have been wondering if I will be able to get enough heat to do it properly. In my original design, I was going to use a blow dryer to force air into the combustion chamber. I was afraid I might have to use some sort of speed control to slow it down. After my experiment, I used the blow dryer on the highest speed to get the maximum amount of heat from the setup and adjusted my original design to allow for 2 blow dryers to get even more air into the combustion chamber. The combustion chamber on the unit I designed is quite a bit larger than the small homemade forge which I experimented with.


----------



## kjavanb123 (Nov 18, 2013)

bswartzwelder said:


> Two thing. First, what did you make your pyrolysis chamber out of? On my computer, it looks a lot like aluminum which will not work very well.
> 
> Secondly, I tried to heat something up in a crucible in an enclosed chamber which was heated by charcoal supplemented with forced air. It seemed like the crucible would not allow enough heat to pass through to melt the material. I then took out the crucible and placed it directly onto the burning charcoal and the material inside the crucible melted with no problem. That really blew my mind because when the crucible was inside the enclosed chamber (chamber made of 3 or 4 inch steel pipe and suspended over top of the burning charcoal), the outside of the chamber was almost yellow hot. Being totally enclosed, there wasn't an easy way for the heat to escape.
> 
> Let us know how things work out. I was originally planning on doing a large load of chips in a pyroceram (Corning ware) dish inside the closed off chamber. Since that time, I have been wondering if I will be able to get enough heat to do it properly. In my original design, I was going to use a blow dryer to force air into the combustion chamber. I was afraid I might have to use some sort of speed control to slow it down. After my experiment, I used the blow dryer on the highest speed to get the maximum amount of heat from the setup and adjusted my original design to allow for 2 blow dryers to get even more air into the combustion chamber. The combustion chamber on the unit I designed is quite a bit larger than the small homemade forge which I experimented with.



Yes the material for the chamber is steel, and it is being added refractory inside of it. Since this is used as pyrolysis, I like to try this out in small scale. Then ball mill, separate metals and ash, melt the metals.


----------



## kjavanb123 (Nov 18, 2013)

ericrm said:


> i dont know how much this is of importance for you and all the others that do want to treat motherboards and such. but it will stink. whatever how hard you will try to burn and reburn your gaz. unless theyr is no one around you to smell it, it will stink. take that into consideration.
> 
> i might be in error but kjavanb123 i think you have money? why dont you simply buy the autorisation to burn the material, pay someone to design a fully operationnal system, and start your business .
> 
> your design wont work.... you didnt put an exit for the gaz so theyr will be no oxigen able to reach your fire in...



I could not find the experties or the equipments here locally, so I need to come up with something myself with the help of this forum.


----------



## Platdigger (Nov 18, 2013)

So, I can see were the fresh air would come in through the blower, and the gasses
are being recycled by what looks like a venturi effect. So fresh air and fuel keeps
coming in but no exhaust. At least not that I can see in the diagram.
Ok, now I see what has to happen. Your piro can would have the inverted funnel on it,
while the fire would exhaust around the can out the top.


----------



## Platdigger (Nov 18, 2013)

I drew up an image in paint, and then realized I have no idea how to post it.
Not real important as I think you can easily visualize what I am saying here.


----------



## kjavanb123 (Nov 18, 2013)

Platdigger,

Air is inverted throgh the blower and until all smokes are emitted from the boards, enough oxygen is mixed with fire.


----------



## glondor (Nov 18, 2013)

The airflow will not follow your arrows as designed, the blower will pressurise both pipes equally. I don't think even a separate entry to the firebox will work, as it will still equalise pressure throughout. I think you need a separate afterburner for the exhaust smoke.


----------



## glondor (Nov 18, 2013)

If your exhaust was routed to the INTAKE of the blower, with a fresh air make up system, it would work as the blower would be "vacuuming" the smoke from the chamber, You would need some sort of cooling stack though, to stop the hot smoke and gasses from cooking your blower.

A small venturi port on the exhaust system could act as a frash air make up system.


----------



## Pantherlikher (Nov 18, 2013)

You need to have the exhaust go somewhere. You are recirculating it through the system which will pressurize the system till something fails...Blower or burner. But you will also get "dead air" instead of O2 going through the chamber. Causing the whole set up to cool down the more it runs.
Your exhaust...Exit... needs it's own chamber to burn gasses for at the minimum of 1 second.

Make a 55gal drum into a wood burner and pipe the gasses through it. Get good burnning in the barrel and it will burn just fine...

B.S.


----------



## glondor (Nov 18, 2013)

Ya, A semi- closed loop would never work.... Afterburner seems the only way.


----------



## bswartzwelder (Nov 19, 2013)

Just a thought. If the exhaust gasses are routed through the blower and then injected into the combustion chamber you have a possible explosion in the makings. The gasses from the pyrolysis unit go through the blower and mix with air from the atmosphere. This gas/air mixture then goes into the combustion chamber. Before getting to the combustion chamber, the air/gas mixture goes through the blower. If the blower motor has brushes, those brushes give off sparks. The combination of a volatile gas mixed with air in the presence of sparks.....well, it sounds like the combustion chamber in the engine on your average car. Be safe.

On my design, air from the blower feeds directly into the combustion chamber. Between the blower and the combustion chamber is a "wye" pipe fitting. It will act like a venture effect and suck the gasses out of the pyrolysis chamber, mix them with air, and feed them into the combustion chamber without the gasses ever passing over the spark producing motor in the blow dryer. 

NoIdea actually said once his setup was up and running he could shut off the fuel supply and the gasses produced enough fuel to keep the unit running. When the unit started to spit and sputter like it was going out, he turned the fuel supply back on to finish the cooking process.

Another great idea he had was to put a little water in the pyrolysis chamber at the beginning. As the water boils and expands, it drives out all the oxygen in the unit keeping it safe from explosion. Once the water is gone, the gasses produced go unmixed until they enter the combustion chamber. Better safe than sorry.


----------



## kjavanb123 (Nov 19, 2013)

All,

Thanks for your posts and suggestions, after reading them, this is what I came up with, since oxygen is blown to the combustion chamber by a blower, therefore this is an incineration system, so here is a picture of my concept incineration unit and its after burner.
The barrel is going to be filled with charcoals, which are going to be ignited and red hot, then I am going to run the incineration unit with a crushed motherboard for the testing. The plan is to have an exit pipe at the left end of barrel, while the toxic smokes comes in throgh the pipe attached to the chamber, through the hot charcoal, which I am assuming would give the smokes more than one second burn, then exit from other end of the barrel.
If this works out fine, I am going to invert the exit from the barrel into another barrel filled with water, so the burned smokes cool down, then exit the water barrel to air. Please advise.




Thanks for your comments
Kevin


----------



## bswartzwelder (Nov 19, 2013)

Just one question. Why do you want to heat everything up to red hot before you put in the motherboards? Why not just put the motherboards in and then fire it up? OK, that's two questions. But opening up a system to put the motherboards in while it is red hot will mean that the gasses exiting the pyrolization/incineration chamber will have oxygen. At some point the oxygen/gas mixture will become combustible. If the flame from your combustion chamber backs up into the chamber where your motherboards are being processed, it could cause an explosion.


----------



## skippy (Nov 19, 2013)

Kevin, problems I see with the design in your picture 

1 Tars cool and condense in the corrugated tube before they get to the drum.
2 The drum is huge in comparison to your pyrolyzer - you need your drum to be red orange hot to get full combustion
3 The size of the drum and lack of insulation make reachin temperature very difficult. Also steel, even stainless really doesn't handle those temperatures very well.
4 If your drum is full of coals, the coals will effectively scrub all the oxygen out of the barrel resulting in an afterburner that doesn't burn your pyrolysis gases. You need enough free space in your afterburner to ensure the gases are inside for long enough to be effective. You need enough oxygen. You need to be able to add oxygen as needed to your afterburner chamber
5 You need a blower or a chimney effect to keep the exhaust gases to flowing


If you are serious about making your own pyrolysis and afterburner for commercial use, you should read up on burner design, heat transfer, combustion engineering. If that's to much for you to handle then 

1 hire an expert (if there isn't one locally fly one in and or work with them over the internet)
2 buy a turnkey system


----------



## skippy (Nov 19, 2013)

Deano made a good little setup for small scale incineration, but it's not for someone commercially burning boards, but for someone working on some chips as a hobby. 

I have an idea for those who may want to try their hand at incineration and afterburners. How about you test your apparatus out with pyrolyzing wood first. When you get effective clean, smokeless functioning, you may be ready to try something like chips. 

Incinerating whole boards you are likely releasing lead and other volatile metals, volatile metal chlorides and fine aerosol metals oxides. Perhaps precious metals will be lost. All This stuff should be 
captured. 

Also even complete combustion will still leave acids HCL and HBr in the exhaust gas (incomplete combustion will leave the chlorine and bromine in the exhaust as far more dangerous molecules than HCl or HBr). Then there is the question of dioxin formation which takes addition parameters to be monitored. An incinerator and or pyrolyzer that doesn't or can't be shown to take care of all of these pollutants is not something that should be used on more than a lab scale.


----------



## kjavanb123 (Nov 20, 2013)

All,

Thanks for your all your comments. I finally found a consulting company locally who is advising on filter systems and furnace, will post results soon.

Best regards,
Kevin


----------



## skippy (Nov 20, 2013)

Good to hear Kevin - If you want system that is economic that seems the only reasonable way. I hope your consultants give you good service.


----------

