Biomass thermal conversion is an attractive method for generating synthetic gas to run engines or to produce useful end products such as charcoal. Carbonaceous byproducts are typically inexpensive or free to source. Unfortunately, biomass byproducts come in a wide array of shapes and sizes, and extra machinery is usually required to pre-process the feedstock into forms acceptable to gasification or pyrolysis machines. This processing equipment is often expensive and difficult to operate, which challenges the ultimate attractiveness of biomass thermal conversion solutions.
Thus, there is a need in the field of biomass thermal conversion for system capable of utilizing a wide range of fuel shapes and sizes, without feedstock preprocessing on the front end. This invention provides such a solution through a novel “reactor-internal” fuel processing solution that reduces a wide range of input biomass feedstock to a common size of granulated char.