Automatic Coal Feeder Integration to Increase Kiln Efficiency in Bangladesh

While coal usage is declining in the West, it is drastically increasing in developing countries. Over 8000 coal-fired brick kilns produce billions of bricks a year in Bangladesh, releasing harmful pollutants and wreaking both the environment and local communities and causing an increase in respiratory diseases and related deaths in the area. In Dhaka, the emissions of coal-fired brick kilns contribute to 60% of airborne pollution.

The ME170 Mechanical Engineering Senior Capstone class has assigned this challenge of improving the efficiency of these kilns for four years now. Work done in this time has been spent devising an automatic coal feeder (ACF) to deliver coal at a steady rate. Currently, workers feed powdered coal into kiln portholes in clumps, a method that contributes to inefficient combustion and greater pollutant production. However, with the ACF, along with other changes, kilns can operate with 21% less fuel input.

We build off of previous work to improve the feasibility of automatic coal feeding through two avenues: 1) allowing one ACF to feed multiple portholes, reducing the required ACFs from 70 to 18 per kiln, vastly increasing the economic viability and 2) improving mobility of the ACFs, allowing workers to easily move and deploy an ACF to new portholes as the firing zone continually migrates around the kiln. Furthermore, our design is easily manufacturable and repairable, using simple manufacturing techniques and readily available materials. Together, these pave the way for thousands to be built and maintained across Bangladesh, reducing pollution and respiratory illness.