How Much Wood Does It Take to Make 1 Ton of Charcoal?
When it comes to carbonization furnaces, many customers ask: how much raw material is needed to produce one ton of charcoal?
In fact, there is no fixed answer, because the consumption of raw materials varies greatly depending on the type of biomass.
There has long been a traditional saying:
A thousand catties of wood make a hundred catties of charcoal, with one tael of ash.
This refers to the old earth kiln method, but the ratio is still roughly similar today.
The exact ratio also depends on your raw material:
For sawdust-based BBQ briquette charcoal, the conversion rate is about 2.2 tons of wet briquette raw material to make 1 ton of finished carbonized BBQ charcoal.
For log charcoal, the ratio depends on three key factors:
- Hardness of the wood
- Moisture content
- Specific density / weight
For hard, low-moisture wood such as jujube wood, pear wood, oak, lychee wood, and longan wood, the ratio is roughly 3.5 tons of raw wood to produce 1 ton of charcoal.
For fresh, high-moisture wood freshly cut from forests, the ratio rises to about 4 tons of wood per ton of charcoal.
For low-density soft wood such as waste elm and poplar, the consumption is also around 4 tons of raw material to make 1 ton of charcoal.