
The main source of Energy in many African countries is wood and a large part of this is wood is used for cooking either as wood logs or charcoal for cooking. Due to the large amount of wood the forests will be depleted in many countries if the consumption continues at this high level. At the same time agricultural waste residues are being burnt in the fields and the energy potential of this raw material is lost.
C.F. Nielsen has developed a Village Concept consisting of a briquetting press combined with down-sizing and drying equipment. The idea is that all agricultural raw materials/waste from a village can be used. The Village Concept can handle most agricultural- and wood based raw materials. In order to collect raw materials, raw material should be exchanged for finished briquettes, so that for example 100 kg of raw materials could give 30 kg of briquettes. The rest of the raw material will be used as fuel for the Village Concept and what is left will be sold to other customers to cover the cost. The focus will be to collect agricultural based raw materials such as peanut shells, coffee husks, rice husks, bagasse, corn stalks etc.
Many customers in Africa is used to using charcoal and it will take some time to get them to switch to briquettes. Due to this C.F. Nielsen has added an option to produce charcoal from briquettes.
As power is required for the concept C.F. Nielsen has teamed up with a partner, so that a small gasification “power plant” can be supplied, which will produce enough electricity to give power to the Village Concept and during night hours it could produce power for other purposes such as light etc.
In the following you can see pictures of the Village Concept combined with the carbonization unit and small power plant.