Reed, cane

Reed, cane

 Reed - a perennial herb of the cereal family. Thickets of high plants (up to 4 meters) with gray-green leaves and fluffy panicles of inflorescences are familiar, perhaps, to everyone. It is often called rushes, while the present cane belongs to the family Cyperaceous and looks different (the main difference - the inflorescence in the form of the Sultan).

 Reeds, occupying a huge area on the banks, and especially in the armholes of the rivers, often referred as “marshes". Currently, the widespread cereal with yields of green mass of 20 tons per hectare is used mainly to feed the horses and cattle (before flowering). Cane can be used for weaving baskets and furniture, roofing (this material is called "canes") as a source of cellulose - for paper production.

 However, the most profitable is the use of reed for the production of fuel briquettes and (or) pellets. This is due to the following:

 1. In the cane biomass moisture content reaches 50%, but after air drying, as well as through harvesting in the winter it drops to the level of 20-25%. This fact allows the reed pellets and briquettes with minimum energy consumption for drying of raw materials.

 2. Reed has a high calorific value (about 2 times lower than that of oil).

 3. Reed has a high content of lignin - a polymer that is a normal natural binder, improving physical properties of pellets and briquettes (density, strength, abrasion resistance, etc.).

 4. Unlike oil and coal, reed has a low content of sulfur and other contaminants.
 5. The minimum cost of cultivating cane (up to their lack of it), you need only the costs of its collection (harvesting). Reed rightfully belongs to renewable energy sources. This perennial plant is able to give the first crop is harvested, after two or three years after landing or appearance self. In the future, "fuel crops" can be harvested annually, with the reeds are steadily widening.

Characteristics of this type of feedstock for biofuels would be incomplete if we did not observe a rather high content of silicon. Silicon attached to this plant resistance to shock the bacteria and insects, provides water repellent and, at the same time, making it easily inflammable. But like many things in our lives, the silicon content in the reed has a negative side: silicon creates certain difficulties for crushing and compacting the material, as well as the burning of reed present in the technology of production of it pellets and briquettes. Practice has shown that standard equipment intended for recycling common materials (such as timber, grain, etc.), or poorly suited for the processing of reed, or do not apply. However, equipment manufacturers experienced that addresses the above-described specific, successfully deal with it.

Now the mobile plant made by us on production of briquettes from a reed successfully works in Moldova (to look in "Our works"), from the Customer the letter of thanks is received.