Ferramenta para determinar a distância limite de transporte de lenha para viabilidade de produção do carvão vegetal

Abstract

Brazil is the largest producer of charcoal in the world, and its market has significant production numbers. When observing the characteristics of the charcoal production chain, it is noted that a large part is composed of small producers, who in turn have difficulties in managing their production, especially in cost management. Several studies in the area of Forestry Engineering address the technical issues of charcoal production, but there are few studies that aim to contribute to production management. In this way, Production Engineering collaborates with its theories and management tools, especially in cost management, with the aim of helping small producers to obtain better production results through more assertive decision-making in the acquisition of raw materials in the process. of charcoal. One of the most impacting costs is the transport of firewood, which is the raw material for charcoal, and one of the factors directly related to the cost of transport is the distance to transport the wood from the forest to the carbonization square. The producers empirically know the distance limit for the search for the raw material, which still makes their production viable, but this is not exactly known. In the present study, a survey of the main variable transport costs was carried out through the literature, equating the transport cost portions, charcoal production costs, relating to the sale price of charcoal and the cost of purchasing the raw material and a tool was developed in Microsoft Excel which, by inserting the aforementioned parameters, determines the limit distance for transporting the raw material to the carbonization square that makes charcoal production possible. The use of the tool is also demonstrated through realistic, pessimistic and optimistic projections where it is observed that the higher the cost of wood, the smaller the limit distance and the higher the sale price of charcoal this limit distance increases.