Charcoal and fuel – Charbon et combustible

©R. Bourdeix, 2021, section CCSC.

For illustrating this section, we can produce on request at least one large size HD poster (up to 180x100 cm in size). These posters should be adapted to each country, on a case-by-case basis, in order to prominently feature locally produced coconut products, and to promote the marketing of these local products.


Coconut shell is the hardest part of coconut, located inside of the coconut husk, and protecting the coconut meat. Normally coconut charcoal created by the different process of burning coconut shells from mature coconut. Coconut Shell Charcoal are mainly use to create active carbon which got so many industrial and commercial applications. Activated carbon finds prominent use in chemical, petrochemical, food & beverages, pharmaceutical, mining, and automotive industries for air purification, water treatment, decolorization of chemical products, solvent purification, odor removal, etc… The global activated carbon market is projected to grow from $3.12 billion in 2021 to $4.50 billion in 2028 at a CAGR of 5.4% in forecast period, 2021-2028

Due to its high heating capacity, coconut charcoal is widely used for barbecue as a alternative for normal coal. Many food producers now tend to use coconut charcoal for prepare traditional foods and barbecues.

Due to moisturizer and purification qualities, coconut charcoal is also used to create soaps and natural teeth whitener.

Recent research showed that the livestock that have had charcoal added to their feed has increased the milk production rates. For pigs its use to increase the weights of it and able to reduce the diseases.

Coconut charcoal is used to laid with sand as another biomass material, before the grass are get planted. This get a good quality grass and most of global golf courses developers are now using this technology.

There are basically 6 steps to prepare coconut shell charcoal:

1. Collecting. The production of coconut shell charcoal begins with the process of collecting coconut shells from various sources, especially among coconut milk production activities.

2. Drying. Usually coconut shells are dried so they will directly to be processed into coconut shell charcoal. If the coconut shell is wet or damp, the Charcoal Vendor's will first dry under the sun.

3. Carbonisation. To convert coconut shell into coconut shell charcoal, the chemical process involved is carbonisation. The ideal temperature to convert coconut shell into a coconut shell charcoal is from 450 °C to 55O °C. There are 2 approaches to carbonisation, the direct method and the indirect method.

  • Direct methods are like using drum kiln, brick kiln and pit kiln. With these method, after all the shells are burned into the charcoal. Then, the kiln will be closed to prevent the presence of oxygen from continue burning the charcoal to ash. The best thing about these method is that the setup costs are relatively lower.
  • The indirect method is like using a retort of brick or steel. Retort can be operate batch by batch or continuously. The best thing about this method is that the fuel used is syngas that was generated from coconut shell biomass itself during the carbonisation process and the setup cost was very high.

4. Cooling. All prepared charcoal will be cooled naturally without watering. This is to ensure that the charcoal produced does not contain unacceptable levels of moisture.

5. Screening. All the charcoal that is ready goes through the filtering process. This is to ensure that the charcoal is clean from any impurities such as incomplete carbonisation, husk charcoal, foreign matter such as stone, wood, iron and various wastes. After this screening, we will get high premium quality charcoal with below specifications:

  • High Fixed Carbon — Min 72%
  • Moisture Content — Max 10%
  • Ash Content — Max 3%
  • Volatile Matter — Max 15%
  • Calorific Value — Above 7000 Kca//Kg

6. Packing and Labelling

Activated charcoal is used in gas masks to filter the air for safe breathing. Only high-quality carbon makes it possible. Carbon obtained from burning of coconut shell is used in gas mark production to filter out toxic substances in the air. More, coconut carbon was used as a cleaning material at Fukushima nuclear site in Japan.