[Terrapreta] Challenge ( was: Strong warning against "simple" charcoal kilns)

[Greg and April]

What people appear to be forgetting, is more people can afford simple kilns that cost $200 than a single $200,000 kiln - and properly used, they can produce just as much char.

I have been here since last December, and I still don't know what it is that makes a kiln/retort a good one - except that in theory it emits as little CH4 as possable - ok, how does one take that into account when designing one? 

If you want to produce a fuel to use in a secondary process, that's what a gasifier is all about, and there is a gasification forum just down the road to discuss just that.    



When I cruise the net looking for designs, to produce a fair quantity of char ( with reasonable thermal and emissions efficiency ), yet simple enough for a high school grad to put together, I find few designs that might even come close.    Worse yet, when I do find them, their designers want an arm and a leg for a set of plans.

I'm not knocking them for trying to make a few dollars, but I would have thought at least on a list with people that "are so concerned " with the atmosphere, that there would have been some cooperative effort to come up with a design that had many of the attributes from both worlds - reasonable thermal and emissions efficiency AND simple enough for your average high school Grad to put together.    

What do I find instead?    

Two types of people, those that want something simple so that more people can have them, and those concerned about the least little bit of CH4, working on their own proprietary designs to make a financial killing, in the crisis that they say is coming.

Let me set you strait, if you guys ( who are convinced in global warming AND working on designs for " efficient " kilns/retorts to make all sorts of money from the crisis you say is coming ), don't start trying to work with the rest of the group, and help some of us come up with some kind of working compromise ( reasonable thermo and emissions efficiency along with ease of building and running ) you will be no better that the Big Oil companies you accuse of putting us in this position in the first place. 

Don't do it for profit, do it because it's the right thing to do ( at least that's what I keep hearing pro global warming folks saying ).

< slap > consider that a wake up call, about what is happening on this list.

Instead of people talking about how to build a kiln/retort that minimizes as many issues as possable, everyone is arguing about what is the most important in the first place.


So here is the challenge:


I dare all of you, to work together to come up with a design by Feb. 1, 2009, that has the following features ( the reason for the features will be mentioned after the features them selves ):

-    Can be built by a single average high school grad, in a month or less.    Not everyone has the science to build a real fancy wiz-bang kiln/reactor
-    Can be run without constant attention.    This improves manpower / man hours, needed to run it, so they can be doing something else between loading and unloading. 
-    Has reasonable thermal, fuel and emissions efficiency.    This is fairly self explanatory - if you guys want to stick a auto catalytic converter on it to meet emission issues, that's ok.   
-    Can be built for ( U.S. $ ) $2000 or less, if from new materials ( used / scrounged materials allowed - even encouraged ).    Not everyone can afford a expensive reactor. 
-    Has a capacity of 1 ton of wood a day.    No particular reason other than to rule out the simplest and smallest of current kiln/retort designs.

Options:
-    Scaleable in size for a daily capacity of .25 ton to 2.5 tons.
-    Modular so that it can be built in stages, yet still be able to make char between stages.
-    Adaptable to take advantage of waste heat. 

I have tried to come up with a general guide line so that people can adapt it to their needs, when they build it.


Can this list rise to the challenge, or is it going to continue to "nit pick" details about what a kiln has to do?


Greg H.
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