[Terrapreta] Larry Williams' Wood Vinegar and Charcoal Project

[Larry Williams]

Today, the latest project to produce charcoal was dissembled. This was the
first charcoal burn (last weekend) using a small metal retort (3 cu ft)
rather than a earthen mound to contain the wood-to-charcoal event. A very
small amount to wood vinegar (methanol---aka: CH3OH). The goal was to
capture the wood vinegar from the smoke being vented from the retort and to
release very little smoke. For the first attempt, it was a very modest
success.

 

The charred wood can be reburnt (not a problem in this learning phase) and
the released smoke was much more than I had hoped for. 

 

The charcoal that was produced was removed from the pieces of hazel nut and
alder wood. It is obvious that there is an art to this process. As with the
three attempts to produce charcoal from one stack of fire wood (about a cord
and a half), the retort burn was stopped prematurity. This firing was about
80% completed and there was no ash as there was with the earthen mound
burnings.

 

With the close examination of the retort's charred wood and charcoal a
couple of points were noted: the alder pieces were almost completely  made
into charcoal while less than half of the hazel nut wood was. The other
point was that the bottom ends of the hazel wood (in contact with the bottom
of the retort was charred) Duh! What do you expect? Noticing that the heat
was transferred by the metal bottom led to the thought of how to more evenly
distribute the heat within the retort. Well, my answer, to be used next time
was to intersperse rebar between the vertically stacked wood in the hopes
that the heat will carry up the rebar to more quickly convert the wood to
charcoal.

 

See photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rchaard/sets/72157600696136152/ .

 

 

Charcoal in the soil is going main stream (as a way of reducing atmospheric
carbon through long term storage (50-60,000 years or more). There is
hope-------Larry

 

 

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