[Terrapreta] Fwd: torrefied wood or charcoal?

[Kevin Chisholm]

Dear Gerrit

Thje differences might be due to accelerants added for ease of starting, 
rather than the presence or absence of torrified material.

Kevin

Gerald Van Koeverden wrote:
> 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 
>> <http://www.authorhouse.com/BookStore/ItemDetail%7Ebookid%7E37830.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> 
>> [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 <mailto:vnkvrdn at yahoo.ca>
>>     *To:* Terra Preta <mailto:terrapreta at bioenergylists.org>
>>     *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
>>     <http://www.dountoothers.org/charcoal.html>
>>      
>>
>>  
>>  
>
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