The Torbed® reactor consists of an empty cylindrical reactor chamber where a rotating and high-speed flow of process gas entrains the raw material, carrying it in suspension on a ‘bed’. This extremely turbulent environment creates a very intense contact between the hot process gas and the feed material, yielding a highly efficient and quick heat-to-mass transfer.
The Torbed® reactor technology has several major advantages over other torrefaction technologies:
- High impact velocities provide quick and efficient heat and mass transfer;
- Accurate and rapid control of the reaction process, making the process easy to manage;
- A high velocity drop or gradient through the bed means that ungraded material (i.e. a broad range of particle sizes) can be processed;
- Contrary to other fluidized-bed technologies, the Torbed® technology does not require a separate material to create the residential bed, because this is formed by the biomass itself;
- Process gas recirculation at high temperatures is simple due to a very low internal pressure drop, resulting in energy savings;
- Torbed® reactors are driven completely by the displacement of process gas and there are no moving parts inside the reactor, which results in high performance capabilities and low maintenance costs;
- Torbed® reactors are compact: the installations have the smallest footprint of all comparable technologies. This translates into a relatively low capital expenditure for a given output capacity.
These advantages make the Torbed® reactor technology ideally suited for torrefaction process.
The Torbed® reactor has been used successfully in many other applications ranging from snack and cereal processing to calcinations of catalyst support materials.
*) TORBED is a registered trademark of Mortimer Technology holdings Ltd.
