We will be taking the 1 ton biochar plant to the Portland area later this week. We are working with a small engineering/fabrication firm in a small town west of Portland called Newberg. We will depart Halfway on Thursday and drive to Portland delivering the plant to the engineers on Friday morning.

We will be first discussing modifications needed to the plant to resolve the char in the oil issue. We will look into cyclone modifications and possibly some high temp filtering systems. These modifications will be then completed and we will then go back to Newberg to test the plant and see if we have in fact solved the problem.

In addition either during these modifications or after we have these modifications in place we will develop controls and monitoring information systems.

A.  Some testing or monitoring of oil flow to be sure that biooil in the cooling system doesn't back up if an obstruction occurs.  This would entail a system in the top of the main venturi to automatically shut off the biooil pump and set of an alarm if oil backed up. Second would be flow monitoring of biooil in tubes leading into venturis with a warning in case a plug occurs.

B. Pressure monitoring of gasses inside the reactor and if excess pressure should occur a pressure relief  system should also be installed. 

C. Monitoring system in place that would monitor and document particulate estimates in smoke in the gas stream going into the biooil cooling system.

D. Installing a gas flow speed monitoring system into cyclones since flow speed is critical to proper cyclone function.

There are some of the modifications currently under discussion to get this plant running better.