Increasing the Reliability of the Automatic Coal Feeder to Reduce Carbon Emissions of Brick Kilns in Bangladesh
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, has recently been reported to be the most polluted city in the world. Nearly 60% of black carbon emissions in Bangladesh originate from the usage of coal in brick kilns, causing severe, long-term health problems. Brick kiln workers, called firemen, currently scoop coal into the kiln through portholes manually and intermittently. This doesn’t allow for the coal to entirely combust, making for very inefficient use of this polluting resource. Based on previous years of ME170 work, our team has designed an updated version of an Automatic Coal Feeder (ACF), designed to hold coal in a funnel, and gradually dispense the coal, allowing for a more complete combustion and efficient use of coal. Our prototype is made up of several subsystems. The housing, which consists of the funnel and the surrounding barrel, serves to carry the load of the coal, taking it off of the rotary components and protecting the system from external dust and other debris. Below the funnel sits our “sandwich mechanism” which contains the motor, drive wheel, feed wheel, and top and bottom plate. The motor is attached to the drive wheel, which is connected to the feed wheel with a chain. The feed wheel contains six feed holes that take in the coal from the funnel and dispense it into the kiln. Our prototype also has several declogging mechanisms. In the funnel, we designed a fan to disrupt clogs and within the feed holes we have a tapered insert that prevents clogs in the feed wheel. Our team’s goal this year was to increase the reliability of the ACF. To that end, we increased the number of holes in the top and bottom plates, selected a new motor, created a new tensioning system, and implemented roll pins to drive rotary elements. We changed the design to have the funnel supported from an oil barrel, added a “secondary funnel” to reduce coal spillage, replaced ball bearings with oil-embedded bushings, thickened the bottom plate, and modified the existing declogging fan. The ACF is currently able to be consistently loaded with over 13.5 kg of coal and run for multiple hours without failure, which has not been achieved in previous years. Throughout long-term testing, we found a large variance in the motor current, which may be due to coal buildup in the sandwich. We also tested a feed rate of 144 grams per rotation of the feed wheel with baseline coal moisture level, which requires a feed wheel rpm of between .83 and 2.08 rpm to reach our requirement of 2-5 grams/second. We also found in coal moisture testing that there is a possible negative correlation between coal moisture percentage and feed rate. Future steps include more testing surrounding clogging, long-term reliability, and feed rate with varying moisture, and design changes to solve the coal buildup in the sandwich and decrease required torque in the system.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Publication date | March 22, 2024; 2024 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Kiernan, Joel |
|---|---|
| Author | Wilmans, Talie |
| Author | Woehrle, Nick |
| Author | Wu, Song |
| Advisor | Horne, Stephen |
| Advisor | Kim, Hansub |
| Sponsor | Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment |
Subjects
| Subject | Bangladesh |
|---|---|
| Subject | Mechanical engineering |
| Subject | Brick Kilns |
| Subject | Automatic Coal Feeder |
| Subject | Reliability |
| Genre | Text |
| Genre | Report |
Bibliographic information
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- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred citation
- Kiernan, J., Wilmans, T., Woehrle, N., and Wu, S. (2024). Increasing the Reliability of the Automatic Coal Feeder to Reduce Carbon Emissions of Brick Kilns in Bangladesh. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/nq534jm3145. https://doi.org/10.25740/nq534jm3145.
Collection
ME170 Mechanical Engineering Design
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