Friend of re:char and International Biochar Initiative Press Liason, Kelpie Wilson, recently posted an interesting slideshow describing her $365 charcoal retort kiln on her website. Kelpie’s design is simple and inexpensive, and based on her slideshow appears to work quite well. We invite you to visit her original post for the slideshow and how-to.
Technorati Tags: biochar, retort
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Friend of re:char and biochar researcher Folke Günther provides handy and easy-to-follow instructions on how to construct a simple, two-barrel biomass pyrolyzer at home. Folke’s Simple Charcoal Retort consists of two nested steel barrels, and can be made using recycled or locally-available materials. While the system is not designed to produce fuel oil, it does provide sufficient heat to cook, and generates large quantities of biochar for soil amendment and carbon sequestration. To build your own, visit Folke’s website.
Technorati Tags: biochar, cooking, grill, How-to, pyrolyzer, retort, stove
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re:char fellow Dr. N. Sai Bhaskar Reddy provides a photo-essay on rural charcoal production in India.
Sticks are placed inclined, creating a mound. Here for demonstration sake, the partially charred sticks from a recent charcoal preparation are used. Usually the partially charred sticks will be very less say, 1% to 2% of the whole charcoal preparation mound. They can be reduced if proper monitoring is done during the charcoal preparation. For partially charred sticks, the time taken for charcoal preparation will be less. For any wood, the procedure is same.
A larger mound is created, we can create any size mound, I have seen mounds of 5 meters height too.
Mixing the earth and preparing the paddy straw for laying over the sticks mound. Here the earth and straw is made wet as this mound is smaller in size.
First stage cover up the mound with straw
Then cover the mound with earth
Light the mound at the top, using easily lit straw / small sticks
Holes around the base may be necessary to allow for tar and moisture to escape.
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