Biochar Workshop Part 1, How to Make Biochar
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- Опубліковано 20 лис 2013
- Watch the whole day of the Biochar Workshop led by Bob Wells, soil scientist Jon Nilsson and Patryk Battle. Learn how to make biochar and its many beneficial uses including greatly enhancing soil life and fertility. Discover innovative ways to maximize its uses for dynamically carbon negative farming and gardening. Visit our website for workshops and many free resources for growing food organically at www.livingwebfarms.org
I love that you posted this for free on UA-cam! Thank you so much! Knowledge should not be held back.
I'm so glad I'm not the only one geeking out on biochar
you're not alone!
I use pine cones that are all over the place in my yard. The simplest method on the net. I fill a gallon can with pine cones, drill a hole in the top of the can, then place it in my fire place that I use from fall to spring. In 2 to 3 hours, biochar. The pine cones crush to very fine pieces also. Perfect for biochar. I make a compost tea from soil, compost, worm castings, leaves, lactobacillus, fish amino acid and emulation, pink salt. Basically whatever nutrients I have on hand. I let it brew a couple of days then pour it into the biochar. Let it sit for a month then pour it into my compost bins. I don’t have a large garden so I don’t need a lot. But if I burn 100 fires during the season I can have approximately 50 gallons of biochar.
woah cool thanks for sharing!
I’m wondering if I can turn blackberries into biochar? I’m in Oregon where our blackberries are a huge problem and definitely NOT thornless! We have old canes that can get up to an inch in diameter. Will they make biochar???
@@donteatthefoxgloves377 they will bio charr just fine. Wear good thick gloves though. 👍
@@caledonianson927 Thanks! We’re getting flooding up here in NW Oregon so it’s an excellent time to try it. No way to start an accidental forest fire this week! 🔥💦
@@donteatthefoxgloves377 hallo madam,saya dari Indonesia menawarkan biochar dari bahan arang sekam padi 🙏
A small biochar device might be placed inside and large greenhouse to burn during the day to warm them in Winter and to stimulate plant growth with the carbon dioxide. In this way you can use all of the energy heat and carbon dioxide that you are loosing now. -- J.E. Ante.
With the nails from pallets. You could drag a roofers magnet over the biochar after the burn. That would pull out all the metal. just as roofers use it to clean the stray nails from customer's Gardens and yards after a job.
Don’t let this distract you from the fact that if you want to see an albino squirrel go to 35:35 and look at the maple tree on the top right
that racist rodent :crankey:
And what looks like two are chasing each other at 15:03, and another at 16:48!
you are the smart one, these two are ridiculous
That is awesome. I didn't know there were white squirrels. And the tree is gorgeous!
Frank Smith k
It's amazing how smart resourceful people can be both knowledgeable and brainwashed at the same time.
Can you elaborate?
[Interesting comment.......the brainwashed comment was about maybe his affiliation with FEMA?]
Copied your drum system and my first batch worked perfectly… I am completely amazed it worked.
I made a kiln based on this video a few years back. I used half of a 300 gallon propane tank cut to 6"s higher than a 55gal drum, which sits inside the propane tank.. The lid has a 4.5" stack. It makes charcoal to perfection. Back then, the gentleman that created the video mentions, that he tried to use a chipper to fine grind the char, after crushing it with the tractor. Too much dust was the issue. I do the same, and use the chipper, but first soak the crushed char. No dust and the finished product is really fine. To protect the chipper, run 2-3 loads of dry material through it after grinding the char.
Just so we're clear, some tropical countries almost always make smoke to get the mosquitoes to fly away, especially in poor places, they needed to do that to avoid malaria or dengue
The guy who made this video doesn't care about people. He only cares about the environment.
Vent your stack in a long tube off to a closed chamber and use a good wood like maple for a smoker. Insulate your stack with a secondary chamber of water and vent your water off to create a water distillery.
Combine the two previous ideas and further vent your smoker back through the water barrel and you have just reduced the wasted energy further, along with cleaning all of the exhaust through the water. You'll get some ash in your water chamber that will need to be cleaned every so often but ash is useful too. If you want to put in a bit of extra work with seals and such, you can make this super efficient.
I've seen other videos on this but today I discovered a great community of proactive thinkers.
My hat is off to you all.
The small amount of ash can be saved up until you want to make lye. That in turn may be used in soap making. The fat could be rendered down in pots on top as you are making biochar. There, you’ve used two byproducts of this process! You can throw on a Dutch oven and make stew.
Thanks for the ideas!
Oooooo! Just had another idea...
Wrap piping around the chimney to heat water...
Cool thanks for sharing this important information listening from Bangs Texas
You can also just directly use ash to amend soil. Adds a lot of good minerals.
@@d.w.stratton4078 Hi, thanks for that reminder. I also make a spa bath for my chickens with a little ash, spaghnum moss, & some sand. No extra critters ever visit my feathered friends!
Jh
Some more ideas. Imagine a lean - to next to the house with two or three of these. Piping hot fresh bread for breakfast. A hearty stew or slow cooked roast. Enough hot water for the family to have their shower. Cold climates? Have a sort of shut off or divert valve on top of chimney that opens a duct for hot air to flow through the piping that you can put INSIDE your lounge / living area for radiant heating.
For the home owner that has some organic material (branches, dry grass, leaves etc), there is a simper method that works a treat, doesn't burn up some of the wood ( in the outer annulus) in order to pyrolyze the rest(in the inner drum) and only uses a 200 liter (45Gallon) steel drum. Take the top off the drum but make no other openings in the drum. Start your fire in the bottom of the drum and start to add the branches you have. Save some of the fine material for the finish. Continually adding wood, drives the flammable gases off the wood and the combustion of these gases keeps the oxygen away from the charcoal that is building up on the bottom of the drum. Finish with the fine stuff to keep the heat up and ensure the layers below are well charred. When there is no more flame, tip the drum on it's side, then up on it's open end. Kick dirt around the rim of the drum so that no oxygen can enter. The next morning pull off the drum. You will find even leaves are carbonized and not burnt up. Put one in the palm of your hand and rub it with a finger. It will powder into charcoal dust.
Great Idea.
If you don't want to bother with the barrel, there is the cone pit method. Dig a cone shaped hole on the ground, start with a small pile of wood fire. Keep feeding the fire but keep the fuel level to the surface and not above it. If you see too much visible smoke stop feeding the fire. Eventually the charcoal will fill the pit. At that point you stop feeding the fire and mixe up the content of this pit a little bit and wait until the pit cool down. That way all the leftover wood get charred too. The cone pit method is slightly less efficient than the barrel but it's faster and you don't have to get a barrel.
There are several designs for making charcoal or biochar.
The smaller pieces of wood make better biochar.
Biochar helps in several ways.
It lightens clay soils, absorbs and holds water in sandy soils. The biochar creates a microbiome for living creatures that benefit the soil. The biochar is best precharged by mixing chicken manure or other manure with biochar.
There is some misunderstanding about biochar. First, if you've already got great soil then you're not going to see much improvement in crop output. In fact you may see a bit less if the biochar has not been precharged.
It takes a season of two for the biochar to naturally grow its microbiome. While it does this it uses some fertily from the soil.
So, precharging the biocharge with manure is well worth the effort.
can you add it to your compost pile then use after 6 months-1yr?
Thats pretty special. Come to a video series about biochar, that accurately and in depth describes the entire process from making it, to what it does, and how to properly use it, just so you can tell everyone your own opinion. This is like going to a college class so you can stand up and try to teach the class.
Took screenshot of your comment. Thank you!
Some of it was explained in part two, about sandy soil and the importance of pre-charging. But good to have it here too, for people who won't go to the next part.
You don't have to use animal inputs. You can instead just toss biochar in your compost heap for a week or two and it will be fully loaded with microbes, fungi, and water. Canadian Permaculture does this to great effect.
❤ your presentation from Papua New Guinea 🇵🇬
Awesome! Awe inspiring information and I see why I have been telling people not to burn any wood on their farms, "make d very best biochar!" Thanks 😊 🙏
amazing, very educational! thanks for the vids! definitely going to watch the whole set on biochar.
Some pallets are made from treated lumber. We were allowed to take the pallets home from work but we were warned not to burn them in the house because the pallet themselves were chemically treated
I don't live on or near a farm but I love this stuff. This guy is good.
Thank you, fabulous, clear, concise demo!
Excellent video for a rookie biochar maker like myself. Thank you for taking the time. I'm excited to get started!
Thank you so much! You changed my life . I would of loved to have this information sooner . Thank you so much !!!!!
Human beings learning and developing ideas, ..... beauty!
Great video! I struggle to find gardeners who dont annoy me and who have good information on youtube. Its not as easy as you might think! You presented everything very clearly without any hand-waving and idiocy. Thanks! You just earned a new subscriber.
Excellent comment.
This is really great.
this is my goto 101 to teach people about what i'm doing. thank you.
Thank you for a great presentation, very informative and inspiring. We are in Samoa have been working with digesters, green waste mulch and are now turning to add a biochar system as we have a lot of waste trees etc being delivered to our site. We are also going to re-use the heat for creating a steam process for removing pathogens and other nasty bacteria from dried sewage. Thank you again and all the best in your future ventures.
And best of luck to you, Brenton Ellis. It sounds like you are learning a lot to share with us all.
I clicked for the biochar and discovered a community of proactive as a by-product 🤠
Hey, it's great to see so many people becoming resourceful.
You may by now have discovered black soldier fly larvae production for protein feed for chickens, fish and prawns. The extra benefit of the larvae is they will turn human waste into compost.
@@hahaha9076 WOW... GOT ANY INFO I CAN LOOK UP ON ...BLACK SOILDER FLY LARVAE???.. MUCH APPRECIATED FRIEND
@@MD-cd7em utube is littered with content about thus. From back yard to highly automated systems.
@@hahaha9076 OK..I WILL FIND IT.. THANKYOU
Such a clear, concise, economic speaker, and those two young men. Unbelievable for them to acquire this knowledge at such a young age. Such good men.
Language girl! Please be respectful.
Thank You for sharing
Only started last week. Still have a lot to learn.
Thanks for sharing 👍
Amazed. Thank you for the knowledge.
i'm going to do this.......easy method
in my humble opinion , this project is the best , this one I would really like too try , thank you is not enough
I's like a gasifier where the wood on the inside normally produces the gas to fuel engines, except that the engine in this case is the same biochar furnace itself! Brilliant!
Appropriate Technology with Scientific Methodology. Beautiful.
As a chemist, I like your process and explanation
Me too, but as a gardener, I'm not as interested in the process and explanation as I am in the results.
boy, how time flies when you're learning something interesting!
but hes wrong, do your homework, bio char does nothing. plants dont benefit, give them compost. every study by unintelligent lazy farmers proved plants dont benefit, he read this crap off of the internet, bio char doesnt help plants.
@@franksmith7419 you're an idiot
@@franksmith7419 what a fool u r. Uneducated ass
@@franksmith7419 If you're still out there, Frank, keep reading.
What I do is take a barrel a lot like your outside one, fill it full of wood (big pieces as much as possible up to ~4inch diameter). then fill the space between those with sticks to get the fire going.
Light a fire on the top, let it burn down. As it starts to burn, I keep putting wood in, but every hour or so I reduce the diameter of the feed stock by an inch or so. By the time I finish adding the 1 inch diameter stuff, the 4 inch diameter stuff has mostly charred through to the middle. I let it burn until the last sticks that I threw in have turned to charcoal (you can tell when this is because the big flames of the wood gas go away). At that point you just douse it with a hose until it stops steaming.
If you plan to use it all for biochar, you can crush it, but I use the bigger bits for my charcoal barbecue, so I lay it out in the sun for a few days and rake it with a wide tooth metal rake and take all the medium to large charcoal and store it for the BBQ. The small chips are perfect size for biochar.
Realistically, while this method is a bit less efficient, you also aren't dealing with a smaller airtight barrel, and you get more char per burn (I generally get a third to half a barrel full of charcoal). The method of using the smaller barrel works better for making BBQ charcoal actually, since you can use dense heartwood in the inner barrel and get good quality lump charcoal, but if you want biochar just burn it in the barrel, and if you want both, you'll get plenty of decent lumps along with the small chips in the burn barrel method, and all it takes is a bit of sorting afterwards to separate the larger stuff for the BBQ.
Such an in depth and informative video. 👍
Albino squirrel at 35:31 at the base of the tree to the right of the speaker! Great lecture, im going to start making biochar ASAP!
Lol, cool
I came to comment on that.
thank you so much for this video! very very interesting!!!
Great design. I have been searching a lot on how to utilize the gas out of pyrolysis chamber to optimize the fuel use. This retort design is definitely the answer.. thank you...
I'm very glad to find this video right before i light up my container, looks like i need to adjust many things up before the go.
This is absolutely incredible. Thank you so much for posting this online! Aiming to set one up for our community. Thank you!
definitely great introduction, I got fired up to learn to install them in small settings and show to people who can benefit from it
I gotta try this now!
I've been watching Biochar videos all week and this is hands down the best one!!! Thank You.
QUESTION: I have access to used drums but are we concerned of what chemical was in them? Is there a sterilization process? Burn wood a few times first to clean them? Thank You.
Can you also explain how to attach the duct to the lid?
Nails can be removed by a good magniet 😊
Using the heat can be used to heat water, through the chimney through a brass pipping system.
Can cook😊.
I’ve seen the traditional ways of making biochar on UA-cam it’s amazing.
I’m seeing your cooking implement part is a used beer keg😊
Woodstove and fireplace ash/charred wood is now your plants best friend!!!
I have used my fireplace ash/charred wood in my compost pile. Good stuff.
As Bob Wells discussed, that depends on the pH of your soil. If your soil is acidic, the ash will help to neutralize it, increasing its fertility. A light alkaline soil will have its fertility reduced by ash, though.
Wow !!! I am very impressed and amazed with this process. I live in North Carolina and when I first moved here 30 years ago I was 18 years old. I came from Detroit and when I looked around I knew there was money to be made around me but did not have the knowledge to do anything. Thank you for answering another question I had. Worms and the microorganisms to use to grow. Now with Biochar there is a beautiful way to expand there living and growing area. Amazing what the possibilities around us are. Thank you my friend.
I'm doing research for a client that wants biochar. This is the best video l've seen so far. Will pass it along. Thanks for sharing.
"To me it looks like carbon that need sequestred" excellent quote and shared feeling, thank you much for the kind minded presentation :-)
@@1CT1 yeah you definitely hit your head.
This is great! I think I could totally do this myself!
And about ash: The best carrots I ever had were some we grew that time we worked our wood stove ash into the row before we planted. Who knew?!
Vicki Newby my friend did this. His plants were amazing
Ash can absorb and store the nutrition from compost. Which plant will use later.
I did not knew this.
potassium is key for root health
@@brynnkohler4084 Its also the key to death in lethal injection :shrug:
@@chemicalsmile1039 everything in moderation eh? lol
I appreciate the whole system approach you're following. Have you ever used a coppice lot to produce your feedstock? For instance, one friend would coppice every fourth row in his hazel orchard. He saved on pruning time and got small firewood instead of just small branches. This more than offset the somewhat lower total nut production. I heard of a similar system a Brit in France was doing with apples.
I think I know who you mean. I think his name may be Phil Corbett? He's an advocate of growing apples on their own roots and doing cyclical coppicing, rather than growing on rootstocks. I knew him in Nottingham, UK in the '90s.
Thank you, I'll probably try to make it for my sandy soil at some point. And for the planet, of course.
This is very educational and a lot of help in our environment.
Hi I've watched your video over and over, I'm using this simple setup, it is yielding a good result, I always pick up on small details that I implement. hopefully one day I can use the heat to run a hot house or warm up water for an outside shower. I live in Australia Victoria in the high country of South Gippsland. in the winter it gets down to 0-1 degrees Celsius. the humidity here is about whats at the sub tropic 87% to 90% most of the time yet this is a could climate. Just to make tings wright, charcoal is only charcoal this its charged up with nutrients after that is BIOCHAR
Kind regard from Down Under Endre
Charcoal charged cannot become Biochar, as volatile matter remain in the pores due to oxygen entry in charcoal process.
Thank you for a very clear explanation on how to make a cheap, workable biochar retort.
Amazing information and expertise. Thank you.
Great stuff! Thank you
25:00 I think I would put a few heavy stones on that lid! especially if you were to leave it. Just so that the hot top don't blow off.
Hello Dear Brother, I have seen this video, and It was really fantastic. and you know what you are talking about. you also explained it very effectively. you are also confident for you know what you are talking about. Good job.
actually he doesnt. adding biochar to soil has no benefit to plant growth, compost does far more. bio char is useless. top burning does far more.
@@franksmith7419 Could you show us some research links, please? I read a lot of scientific reports what proof biochair useful
@@franksmith7419 Read the book 1491, by Charles C. Mann and test your assertions. You will be surprised.
This reminds me of the Retort I used to use to make Coke for my Forge. I've since switched to Whitesmithing.
What does any of that mean?
Certainly an unmitigated tangent, but driving off the volatile components from coal is quite similar to making bio char. I just made two batches of bio char yesterday, spread them on a bed of horse manure, and top dressed w/ hot chicken manure. I have been making char for some months and by the Fall should have about a cubic yard of super-charged organic matter to spread on the raised beds.
Beautiful albino squirrel at 35 at the base of the tree to the right in back of the speaker
This sounds like drugs
Bro sounds to me like you're cooking off of batches of Coke and now you're a whiteSmith lol hahahahahaha. I used to call myself a crystal collector when I was a cook years ago lol hahahahahaha
Really amazing presentation. Thank you
Thanks for amazing education… mind blown 🤯
So amazing and thank you for sharing.
Is it possible to estimate the amount of energy input from the wood and also the time required to get the best biochar?
I love the ethics this guy has nailed down. If we do environmental harm, it's not sustainable and therefore not worth doing.
I think it's overkill to worry about a little smoke although caring for the environment is good. But, if you ever fly on an airplane, it puts out about a million times the amount of emissions just during takeoff compared a small fire.
Global warming is a claim backed only by scientific consensus, not using the scientific method. It's just another tool used to justify profit and control through higher taxes and more regulations.
Jack don’t forget the US military. The US military or global police force is the worst polluter in the world. If they had to upgrade and be green or use nuclear planes and boats haha they’d probably have to start spending a couple trillion a year on military spending. But I’m sure some would like that.
Very Nice Idea, ...... very usefull Thanks Bro... Viva Go Green...
I watched all 5 parts of this Epic Biochar Series. I am blown away by the clever use of energy you mad scientists rigged up. I want nice turf and to improve my soil, this was a rabbit hole I had no idea was out there. It was posed as a joke, but if we started making human char, the world would be full of soil that is going to be useful, and healthy. Some great ideas are actually from the place of comedy like that, but are weird to first think about.
🇨🇦👊🏻👨🏻🏭⚡💖🍁🙏👌🏻
I appreciate the design used here. Seems to be about the right spot in terms of efficiency / cost / simplicity. I'm sure there are tweaks and enhancements for this design, but not sure if they're posted somewhere else.
I have been thinking that biochar could be added to concrete to make it really light and insulative.
I have noticed that it really preserves fence posts too. Charring the underground part of the post.
I think you are onto something here. You can run engines on the gas too. Just need some processing first. I think you can condense the gasses into an oil too and that could be useful too.
They used it at beginnng of motorisation.
Wood-fuel was called "Gasolin"
Adding biochar to concrete is covered in _Burn_ by Albert Bates and Kathleen Draper.
Fascinating there is a solution for every problem
100% handsomest Farmer ive foundt thus far paroozing youtube besides Barre Lando King of Pharming THANK YOU
I love those who say easy peasy.., will find that getting the right balances of wood stock and the right burn to get biochar and not just ashes is anything but easy to begin with. And it changes every-time your inner stock and outside stock changes. I will point out something I have not heard him really mention though he did touch on it with “neighbors”...is your local fire laws. Not everywhere especially if drought or high fire season...can you burn this. It’s the beginning stages that are dangerous or if anywhere the can could possibly get knocked over and catch the area on fire or windy. He touched in the many safety issues. Many times folks (especially guys) think “oh I got it, I’m not stupid” and the next thing you know they have burned the back shed down. Always have a strong flow working hose (hoses) with good strong wide distribution (like a firemen’s type) nozzle at the burn site period. Have several shovels and plenty of loose sand, or dirt. I like sand because it also helps anchor the barrels as long as you plan for the holes at the bottom not to get blocked (have to be higher up the can). But in case of an accident...you can easily shovel sand on the fire to put it out. Dirt works too but it can get hard and difficult to deal with if a lot of clay. I think the top should be anchored with fire bricks - regular will get too hot and may explode. But using a couple of kettles for making hot tea etc and for a big pot of chili, potato soup, etc even fry up some eggs or make cast iron biscuits or fruit cobbler is very good too. If you use fire bricks and get them very hot on the other side you can set them on cast iron lodge kettle to cook the biscuits and cobbler evenly. Or as mentioned below...start some coals to put on the top of the cast iron lid same as cooking on campfire.
drill small holes in the stack and you will burn off the smoke as it rises through the chimney. which will increase the draft
Good information. Good practical presentation. 👍🙏🙏🙏
Great video (finally). Thumbs up if you saw the white squirrel
28:24 & 35:40 ;)
Thanks for sharing such useful info!!!!!!
...im hooked...thank you.
Firstly I would incorporate a more robust system to reduce the cost of replacing the drums over time. Also I would incorporate a water or oil based system that could transfer the heat to a home or a stove top using pipes. Use mixing valves with temperature controls to automate the system so that you could heat a house or stove top to your desired temperature. There are a million ideas in my head that to utilize that clean and dirty energy coming out of the stack.
OH , Just Get a Life !
nice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The best video of my life
Very good explanation of the biochar process. I couldn't do this at my home because my homeowners association would throw a fit.
You can do it on a small scale right in your grill. get a cookie tin or popcorn tin, depending on the size of your grill. Fill the container with dry fibrous material, secure the lid with three self tapping screws around the rim and WARNING! you must poke some holes in the top to let the flammable gasses escape. When the gasses stop coming out (you will see the fire coming out of the holes as long as the char is roasting) you know the char is done. I usually put the container upside (holes) down on a fire safe surface. Let it cool and make sure that you crush the resulting char to
A suggestion, you might appreciate. After the first burn period is over and it starts smoking, you can rebalance the oxidizing by adding a section of exaust stack to the existing stack until the draft is rebalanced. (the correct length stack)
A lot of possibilities: neighborhood heat plant, electricity generation with a microturbine, then use the heat (cogeneration), composting toilets, reclaiming grasslands, fracking water filtration, water reclaiming in drought areas.
I will watch this again, a few times, I think!
@@mahb0wzinyomouf the biochar can be used to increase fertility leading to growing more trees faster. Wood is renewable. We just need to collectively decide to manage our natural resources appropriately. Consider the possibility that a lack of resources is not our limiting factor but rather our thinking and attitude is.
Great video, great explanation. Very interesting.
Really good stuff
If you are using pallets with nails, use a magnet to retrieve them after the burn-off.
Beware though, many pallets are treated with toxic shit.
That won't work with biochar. The finished product is still physically intact, not turned to ash, so the nail is still embedded in a large chunk of charcoal, not lose in the bottom of the barrel.
Excellent job my friend ...intelligent design
Very nice information about charcoal, the energyCan be used in many ways, your idea is very simple & safe. Your explanation & demonstration is very good . I liked it , thanks to you
Honestly I cant wait to do this and I already see myself designing the top to be able to to put food in because why not smoke your food at the same time baby!
Dimensional data on the large chambers would be helpful ...
would like to see biochar energy being used for something more, could you use the heat generated from the process?
I guess the trick is to make biochar in winter and harness the energy output for heating the building, but that's going to be quite a big bunker for collection, and the question how one would keep it going for days at a time.
Love your 4 goals, hope you become the most powerful company in the world with that business model
How about dropping a copper coil down the top of the chimney to heat water and store it for washing, floor heating.
It's on my still.
You say that the steel drums will be used up / rusted away after around 10 runs. Do you know if by building a similar design with firebrick would work out better for longevity?
Also do you have or know of any good videos that cover smoke re-burn for wood burning stoves? Thanks.
+izzzzzz6 there are other videos on here of people making retorts out of firebrick. Infact just smearing clay or earth on the internal surface expose to combustion will help a lot, In one way by insulating the chamber, but also preventing exposure to combustion. If you really want to go all in, you could fabricate your own barrels out of vermiculite and those would last until sometime after the sun burns out and destroys the earth.
good stuff!
Love learning new things.
Thanks for sharing and I'll let you know if I come up with a new idea.
Ps. Tell the crew to smile a bit lol
Two questions:
1. How do you ensure a good seal on the lid of the inner barrel? Is it just a good metal to metal press fit? My barrel didn't have a good press fit and so I tried using a fiberglass seal made for wood burning stoves, but it melted.
2. What limitations do people see for scaling this design up to larger barrels? I imagine it could take longer to heat the inner barrel if the outer fire is further from the center--and therefore you might have to keep adding wood to the outer fire until the smoke from the inner barrel can sustain the process. (This was one of the biggest problems I encountered with mine when using wet wood--the outer fire would go out before things were done, so I had to monitor it for over an hour and sometimes restart the outer fire from scratch).
Don't bother with this, just do the cone pit method, never wears out, costs you nothing and is effective.
@@georgecarlin2656 It has lower efficiency but totally off set by the fact that all it takes is to dig a hole instead of getting a kiln.
@@minhducnguyen9276 I'm not sure it's less efficient than having to cut your branches to small pieces to fit inside a small tube and burning off to ashes the wood inside the outer tube - not sure that any of this is more efficient, if anything it's like twice more work, at least, if you have the wood pre-cut.
Imho the kiln method is so widely used because it mirrors western culture to make things seem more sophisticated than it really is.
@@georgecarlin2656 In terms of conversion rate a kiln will always have higher efficiency than the pit. But if you are speaking in term of work that you have to put into, the pit will beat the kiln. I have saw a video where a guy using both methods to demonstrate that even using something as simple as a steel drum will increase the yield for the same amount of wood compared to the cone pit. But he did say that he'd still use the pit anyway because it cost him nothing besides the work of digging the pit and the pit methods can be scaled according to the amount of wood needed to be processed.
@@minhducnguyen9276 Yeah, my point was the ratio between the huge extra kiln work (chopping everything small and nice) that isn't even closely balanced by the extra biochar I'd get in theory, besides I don't even have any kiln or unused barrels, and for new comers the more the new thing requires extra gadgets the FAR less likely they'll try it.
The kiln and such are needed where making smoke is absolutely forbidden or if you're harvesting more than biochar. But if anyone (the government) was giving away kilns for free I'd take one and do some biochar from time to time, cause sometimes I get sawdust and it needs no chopping.
I have an abundance of dead fall (Aspen) around my property. Any recommendations, pros/cons regarding this relatively soft material for Biochar.
Also can saw dust be used in any capacity within this process? Thanks in advance. P.S. the enlightenment in regards to the Biochar process is greatly appreciated. Thanks again. 👍
Some charcoal is better than none. Just dig a trench and burn and keep adding wood till it’s coals and put it out with water. It’ll burn using its own energy and burn hotter so the absorption of the charcoal is better then charcoal made in metal containers.
Great method. I'm curious to see how you attached the stack to the can top. I'm watching part 2. What a cliffhanger!
Love it!