Casmance Kiln

Benjamin Domingo, Argentian, April 29, 2008

Simple charcoal kiln
Folke Gunther, April 24, 2008

A wonderfully simple method for making charcoal at home or on the allotment.

"http://picasaweb.google.se/folkeg/TheSimplestOfTheSimple

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There is a wide demand for charcoal kilns to be used by anybody having an allotment or garden sized plot. The idea of making char of surplus biomass instead of firing it is widely spread in Latin America (and Japan?). Burning the pyrolysis gasses instead of emitting them makes the method comparatively safe, although not efficient regarding their potential utilisation of gasses.

I agree that his is a very small scale method, bu imagine 2 billion people having it, making 1 kg char a week for their lots. That would imply about 0.1 Gt annually, or 5% of what would be necessary to sequester for making a change.

Naturally, this is not the method to save the world from entering a tipping point, but it could well be of some help.

Besides, making 50 kg of char annually, would certainly make a change for the production form a normal sized allotment, certainly so if you go on for several years.

I don't agree that using barrels for making char automatically would imply methane emissions. That must certainly be a consideration depending of the charring method, not the material used.

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Folke Günther
Kollegievägen 19
224 73 Lund
Sweden
Phone: +46 (0)46 141429
Cell: +46 (0)709 710306
URL: http://www.holon.se/folke
BLOG: http://folkegunther.blogspot.com/

Pyrolysis Reactor Tower Assembly
Sean Barry, April 21, 2008

I assembled the Pyrolysis Reactor Tower today. I had it fabricated over the winter.

Regards,

SKB

Sewage Sludge Charcoal
Michael Antal,University of Hawaii, April 2008
Sewage Sludge Charcoal
I am pleased and somewhat surprised to report that raw sewage sludge is a good feedstock for charcoal production. Details are available on the HNEI website below.

www.hnei.hawaii.edu
Flash Carbonization

Regards, Michael.

Michael J. Antal, Jr.
Coral Industries Distinguished Professor of Renewable Energy Resources
Hawaii Natural Energy Institute
POST 109, 1680 East-West Rd.
Honolulu, HI 96822

phone: 808/956-7267
fax: 808/956-2336
www.hnei.hawaii.edu

Jatta Charcoal Retort, The Gambia
Bakary Jatta, Bwiam Villiage, The Gambia, March 27,2008
Jatta Retort

My retort is in my back yard. It is a drum with a fairly tight lid and a piece of pipe letting volatile gasses take over the initial firing in the firebox underneath. The drum is enclosed in a rock and soil and lime plaster wall. For a quick start I surrounded the drum with small branches or crop waste before covering the top with a scrap iron sheet with a gap for smoke to escape in the beginning. The drum costs money, the rest is labor.

The biomass is crop waste and or tree trimmings. Some material is up to 50 mm thick and still chars all through. Like was stated on the list, the char appears to be about 40 %. After initial smoke, the volatiles take over and burn with a roaring sound. Sorry, no analysis of the off gasses, but I trust I am not a poluter beyond the normal CO2. With adequate investment the excess gas or heat can be utilized, not likely an easy option for most third world farmers.

Where does all the biomass come from? Plant it! People still get rid of lots of it to clear roadsides and farms here. OTOH, I am planting more biomass every year and my soil is improving in the process. My mini climate is improving too as many of the trees retain their leaves during the dry season . Jatropha curcass is a soil improver and wind break. Not useful for char, but it makes great fuel oil for lamps and soap making. The oil cake makes good methane gas for cooking. The digester effluent is mixed with the bio char before it put in the planting holes on the field. Soil improver, energy and soil micro-organism inoculant.

Is it economic? What is the meaning of that? Maybe, when I get a good harvest, which depends on many other factors, like rain, etc. After all, food prices are going up because of increasing scarcity. Maybe some people think they can eat their economic gain in the form of money. During the last world war money could not buy food that was not there! You think the government is going to regulate food production to assure economic gain and sustainability? Or the market place will be regulating the climate in a timely fashion so that harvests will be reliable. My conclusion is that the real value is the food and other resources provided by the life of the plant springing from the soil.

Why am I doing this? I think it is a usefull thing to do. There was a quotation that I recognized as true: 'The Spritual precedes the material'

The economic consideration will not bring a solution. It has in fact been the cause of the problem!

So, considering economic criteria, maybe no present value seen yet , but the net value will be having a future worth having at all. It is a choice and it better be a collective choice. If it does not do all as expected, do we lose anything?

Kind regards,

Bakary Jatta

Bwiam village, WR

The Gambia

Bamboo-based Charcoal Production
National Mission on Bamboo Applications, InfoSheet IS 03 09/05, India

Charcoal made from bamboo finds ready uses and markets. It has been made for thousands of years in pits and even shallow depressions. Specially designed brick kilns, developed and tested by the National Mission on Bamboo Applications (NMBAi), provide an opportunity to make high-quality charcoal from bamboo in an efficient, safe and reliable manner.

National Mission on Bamboo Applications (NMBA)
Vishwakarma Bhawan, Shaheed Jeet Singh Marg
New Delhi 110 016, India
Telephone 91-11-26566778 Fax 91-11-26962267
Email bamboo@bambootech.org
Website www.bambootech.org

Charcoal in agriculture: Experimental research at Fourth Corner Nurseries
Richard Haard, Fourth Corner Nurseries, Bellingham, Washington, January 3, 2008

Greetings

I just finished over the last few days organizing images and data from my charcoal experimental plots. I am presenting a new set of posters showing root systems of the native shrub, Lonicera involucrata or black twinberry that I used as an experimental subject in these treatment plots this summer.

This will be the last of a series of piecemeal postings about my findings on the terrapreta reading list. In time, I will prepare a summary of what I have accomplished this year, the shortcomings, what I feel I have learned from this work about using charcoal and my plans for continuing this experiment for 2 or more growing seasons.

Quick background - my employer, Fourth Corner Nurseries is a bare root native plant nursery. We grow more than 350 kinds of plants for environmental restoration and landscaping purposes. Our farm is 60 acres in 2 fields. Shown here is our east field. Formerly, I have been trying charcoal as a soil additive for several years and this season I attempted a controlled experiment. It did not go without a hitch.

What I established this year was a series of 28 - 17 foot long treatment blocks that are a pair of treatment sets consisting of untreated soil, charcoal only, fertilizer only compost only and combinations of charcoal, compost, fertilizer. In each treatment block 3 kinds of plants were installed: a native shrub, Lonicera; a native perennial - Aster subspicatus; and a vegetable - swiss Chard.
All were selected for their heavy nitrogen consumers and all production was removed from the plots, roots and tops, then the plots replanted and cropped again without further fertilizer, compost or charcoal.

The most detailed measurements accomplished this year is 2 sets of soil chemical analysis completed at a University laboratory. Plant response measurements this year, for several reasons was only visual observation. This set of posters I am presenting today shows subtle but interesting and positive additive effects of compost and charcoal.
Further analysis will be presented at a later date.

How it went. Early April while the plants were still dormant I took 2 year old bareroot Lonicera seedlings trimmed tops and roots and planted in peat/perlite mix in 4X4 inch containers. At these same time I planted
sprigs of Aster in the same manor. After the plants had firmly rooted into the containers and our field soil had warmed, I prepared a growing bed in our normal propagation field ( Field 13, row 8). The growing bed is about 4
feet wide and 500 feet long. I divided this into 17 foot beds with separate treatments in a systematic way. Here is charcoal 1, a fine powder that was donated by JF Waste energy systems. Here is charcoal 2 a lump and powder mix that
Larry Williams and I made with a top draft earth covered mound. I am using the lump charcoal because I can observe microbe utilization over time as Larry has been studying for several years.

Here are the charcoal test beds are they appeared before rototilling. In this image furthest is compost only, then compost/charcoal1,then compost/charcoal2,then compost/charcoal 1/fertilizer and so on in a systematic pattern repeating again in a second duplicate set on the north end of the field. In discussing these tests I sometimes discuss each set separately, are are called south set and north set.

Here are the plots immediately after rototilling. Note that the charcoal does not appear to be uniformly dispersed. After harvest with the
lifter-shaker charcoal is better mixed in the soil. Each bed received about 30 gallons of charcoal. Fertilizer and Composti were applied at rates normal for our farming practices.

We planted the plots in mid May and by late June they looked like this and this and this .

By the end of August the Swiss
Chard had matured and we had our first harvest. Yields were impressive but no trends specific to treatments were noticed.

Here you can see our plot method for measuring yields of swiss chard and also how the separate treatments, Lonicera, Asteri and swiss chard have grown together making assessment of total production rather difficult.
In late October I conducted a survey of the Lonicera component of the research plots. It was the end of the growing season but before the frost defoliated the plants.

Here is how the plots looked. My first look at the data that showed a subtle but encouraging trend of improvement from the use of charcoal 1.

In this set of images notice that the treatments with compost when combined with charcoal tended to be larger.
The same trend is also noticed in the compost/fertilizer/charcoal combinations. By mid November we were ready
to lift all the plant material from the plots, examine the roots and fall replant with a single species crop for next year. Here we have our lifter shaker harvesting the plants, Lonicera with charcoal staining roots and Rena picking up the plants. Later we replanted with our 4
row seeder and reseeding with another native shrub species, Oemleria cerasiformis, chosen because it too is an agressive nitrogen consumer.

Finally the posters I have prepared to compare top growth and root growth in each of the treatment sets. I have organized the images according to groups of treatments as follows: The links are to the larger size images for better viewing. Edit note root images were created 11/15 not 10/25

First Groups 1 and 2 the control sets that received no treatment or had charcoal only
Roots
Field View

Next Groups 3 and 4 fertilizer sets Edit Roots is labeled as Groups 1 and 2
Roots
Field
View

Next Group 5 South end plots compost set
Roots
Field
View

Next Group 6 North end plots compost set
Roots
Field
View

I think these findings will be encouraging information for John Flotvik and many thanks for his donation of charcoal from his pyrolyser and thanks again to Larry Williams , his thoughtful work and helping when it is most needed.

I am looking forward to another season of data from this set of test plots. Comments, ideas, criticism, discussion whatever are appreciated as I am now preparing my season end report.

Richard Haard, Fourth Corner Nurseries, Bellingham,Washington.

Copyright January 3, 2008
Permission for distribution of these materials and images is granted for entire text and images only so long as the author and initial place of publication;"http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/" is
cited. Individual images may be used by permission only from author.

Agronomic values of greenwaste biochar as a soil amendment
K. Y. Chan, L. Van Zwieten, I. Meszaros, A. Downie,and S. Joseph
Australian Journal of Soil Research 45(8) 629–634, December 2007

Abstract

A pot trial was carried out to investigate the effect of biochar produced from greenwaste by pyrolysis on the yield of radish (Raphanus sativus var. Long Scarlet) and the soil quality of an Alfisol. Three rates of biochar (10, 50 and 100 t/ha) with and without additional nitrogen application (100 kg N/ha) were investigated. The soil used in the pot trial was a hardsetting Alfisol (Chromosol) (0–0.1 m) with a long history of cropping. In the absence of N fertiliser, application of biochar to the soil did not increase radish yield even at the highest rate of 100 t/ha. However, a significant biochar × nitrogen fertiliser interaction was observed, in that higher yield increases were observed with increasing rates of biochar application in the presence of N fertiliser, highlighting the role of biochar in improving N fertiliser use efficiency of the plant. For example, additional increase in DM of radish in the presence of N fertiliser varied from 95% in the nil biochar control to 266% in the 100 t/ha biochar-amended soils. A slight but significant reduction in dry matter production of radish was observed when biochar was applied at 10 t/ha but the cause is unclear and requires further investigation.

Significant changes in soil quality including increases in pH, organic carbon, and exchangeable cations as well as reduction in tensile strength were observed at higher rates of biochar application (>50 t/ha). Particularly interesting are the improvements in soil physical properties of this hardsetting soil in terms of reduction in tensile strength and increases in field capacity.

Keywords: charcoal, char, agrichar, soil strength, soil carbon sequestration, hardsetting soil, slow pyrolysis.
Australian Journal of Soil Research 45(8) 629–634
Submitted: 27 July 2007 Accepted: 2 November 2007 Published: 7 December 2007
Full text DOI: 10.1071/SR07109

See also:Assessing agronomic values of chars to an Australian hardsetting soil presentation to the International Agrichar Initiative conference, Australia, 2007.

Charcoal From Smallwood
in "Niche Marketing Strategies for Products from Small-Diameter Timber
A.L. (Tom) Hammett, Professor, Phil Radtke, and Robert L. Smith, Professor and Extension Specialist, Department of Wood Science & Forest Products, Virginia Techi, Blacksburg, VA, Smallwood 2006
Ready for Bag

Biomass to charcoal in a flash
By Dave Koga — The Honolulu Advertiser, July 28, 2007
Michael Antal and Flash Carbonizer
University of Hawai'i professor Michael Antal Jr. explains flash carbonization, a process that uses heat and pressure to turn green waste into charcoal that can be used as a cleaner-burning alternative to coal.

See also:

• Kingsford licenses Hawaii charcoal patent
• HNEI Website http://www.hnei.hawaii.edu