Charcoal Production from Acacia Wood Stumps

After the acacia trees are cut down for paper production, a lot of wood waste is still not being utilized, including the stumps of the trees. Only the logs used for paper production have a diameter of 8 cm above, while the diameter is smaller as wood waste. After the trees are cut down, replanting is carried out and the wood stumps are left just like that. In fact, there are a lot of wood stumps, especially with an area of tens to hundreds of thousands of hectares of acacia forest. If every one hectare is produced 16 tons of acacia wood stumps, then with an area of 20,000 hectares, 320,000 tons of acacia wood stumps will be produced.

There is a difference in the handling of acacia or eucalyptus stumps and energy plantation stumps. On acacia or eucalyptus stumps, after the trees are cut, they have to replant again because their main target is wood products with a certain diameter, namely 8 cm and above. If the wood stump is grown again, it will take a very long time to reach that diameter, so it is not efficient. That is the reason for them to replanting after being cut down. Meanwhile, in energy plantation wood, after the trees are cut down, the remaining stumps are allowed to grow again. The main target of energy plantations is to achieve the highest volume of wood productivity in mass basis. Even after being felled, the number of branches that come out of the energy plantation stumps increases so that the productivity is also high. Apart from being able to be harvested repeatedly without having to replanting each time, productivity remains high because of the large number of coppices or branches, even four times the first harvest. 

The huge volume of acacia stumps is very potential for charcoal production. Acacia plantation companies can create jobs by empowering local communities to take and collect the acacia stumps. The acacia stumps are then processed into charcoal. With proven carbonization technology and high capacity, all of these stumps can be processed and have economic value. With the large volume of acacia stump waste, charcoal production can also be sustainable, just like the production of acacia wood from the acacia forest. Creating large and sustainable employment opportunities is a positive effort that is in line with bioeconomy and community welfare. The wood charcoal produced with this technology is also of high quality, even with a fixed carbon of more than 82% exceeding the European standard NF EN 1860-2.