[Terrapreta] Fwd: torrefied wood or charcoal?

[Gerald Van Koeverden]

You're probably right.

But it's strange that they have changed their briquettes to behave  
like torrefied wood, unless they see it as the future of barbequing.   
Afterall, if a producer can get 50% more energy out of one's  
feedstock by changing over to torrefaction, then it would be a smart  
move to get customers used to it using it.

Gerrit


On 1-Mar-08, at 11:14 PM, Tom Miles wrote:

> Suspect additives. They have several plants using primarily the  
> herreshoff furnace. I doubt that they have changed the way they run  
> them.
>
> Tom
>
> From: Gerald Van Koeverden [mailto:vnkvrdn at yahoo.ca]
> Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2008 6:23 PM
> To: Tom Miles
> Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Fwd: torrefied wood or charcoal?
>
> Tom,
>
> It would be interesting to do a little detective work on this one.
>
> Here's some amateur experimental results comparing the old  
> Kingsford briquettes with the newest version:
>
> http://www.nakedwhiz.com/productreviews/kvsk/oldkingsfordnew-2.htm
>
> You'll see that their graphed results show that the new stuff burns  
> much hotter and burns out significantly quicker than the old -  
> defining characteristics of the difference between charcoal and  
> torrefied wood...
>
> Gerrit
>
>
>
> On 1-Mar-08, at 5:01 PM, Tom Miles wrote:
>
>
> I think you’re reading too much into a couple of well intentioned ,  
> not very precise, descriptions. I have seen nothing in the history  
> of the Ford-Kingsford operation to suggest that they are or were  
> making anything like terrified wood.
>
> Ford’s briquette was  actually the char byproduct of a wood  
> distillation plant to make methanol using waste from the mill he  
> built to make wooden car parts. He closed the wood distillation  
> when synthetic methanol from coal became available from Germany in  
> about 1935.
> See Bob Massengale,  Black Gold, A History of charcoal in Missouri
> http://www.authorhouse.com/BookStore/ItemDetail~bookid~37830.aspx
>
> Barbecue briquettes have always contained a collection of things  
> including ashes from biomass boilers, sometimes coal char etc.
>
> Tom Miles
>
>
> From: terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org [mailto:terrapreta- 
> bounces at bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Gerald Van Koeverden
> Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2008 7:24 AM
> To: Terra Preta
> Subject: [Terrapreta] Fwd: torrefied wood or charcoal?
>
>
>
>
>
>
> You're perfectily right to be cautious.  All the literature  
> discourages the use of briquette charcoal ashes in gardening.  They  
> are toxic to plants.
>
> What interested me in the article is the claim that the wood in  
> Kingsford briquettes isn't even charcoal - but rather a pre- 
> charcoal stage called torrefied wood.  By stopping carbonization at  
> this stage - before it goes exothermic - they save more of the  
> wood's energy than through a full carbonization into pure charcoal,  
> maximizing their returns.   Torrefied wood has 90% of the original  
> energy in the raw wood as compared to 50 or 60% in charcoal.
>
>
> On 1-Mar-08, at 9:50 AM, Dan Culbertson wrote:
>
>
>
> I don't know if the article below is "true" but it is a bit  
> incorrect or incomplete with respect to charcoal briquettes.  They  
> contain coal as well as wood char and binders.  Maybe not the  
> Kingsford brand but some certainly do.  See  http://www.enotes.com/ 
> how-products-encyclopedia/charcoal-briquette .  Makes them not a  
> very good thing to use in the soil for terra preta I would think.   
> I've avoided using anything but natural charcoal in soil mixes and  
> I leave the cheaper briquettes (and their coal ashes) to uses other  
> than soil amendment.  I'd be interested to know if that is overly  
> cautious... but coal doesn't seem like a very good thing to put  
> into soil.
>
> Dan
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Gerald Van Koeverden
> To: Terra Preta
> Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2008 08:10
> Subject: [Terrapreta] torrefied wood or charcoal?
>
> true or false?
>
> Charcoal
> by: E. G. Kingsford
>
>
> Charcoal is simply carefully cooked wood.
> Mankind figured out this one many centuries ago. The heat-producing  
> part of fuel is carbon. Increase the relative amount of carbon in  
> your cooker, and you can roast that haunch of mountain goat, or yak  
> fillet, and get out of the kitchen in half the time. Wood is about  
> 50% carbon (coal is 90). You can up your wood-based carbon by  
> reducing the wood’s hydrogen and oxygen content. It’s still done  
> pretty much the way it was started centuries ago. Logs are baked  
> slowly at very high temperatures in a low-oxygen oven. This drives  
> off most of the liquids and leaves the carbon.
>
> Unlike charcoal, the irritating, ubiquitous charcoal briquette is  
> made from roasted wood scrap, quick-lighting chemicals, and binders  
> compressed into a little cake. It has less snob appeal than true  
> charcoal but is a thoroughly American heritage. The briquette was  
> invented in the 1920s for Henry Ford, as an auto assembly line  
> spinoff. Henry Ford pondered the problem of how to squeeze a buck  
> from the scraps of steering wheel and dashboard wood that were  
> ordinarily thrown away. As always, his crack staff answered with  
> the solution, “Cook it, smash it into a lump, and give it a fancy  
> name.” For years thereafter you could only buy charcoal briquettes  
> only at your local Ford dealerships. Then, eventually the operation  
> became so large it was turned over to a Ford relative, E.G.  
> Kingsford, and the rest is hamburger.
>
> http://www.dountoothers...org/charcoal.html
>
>
>
>

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