[Terrapreta] Fwd: torrefied wood or charcoal?
Gerald Van Koeverden
vnkvrdn at yahoo.ca
Sun Mar 2 07:34:47 CST 2008
They already had accelerants in the original. Why would they add
even more? Why wouldn't they want to reproduce a typical slow-burning
fire, like that of pure charcoal?
It is probably the combustion products of those added accelerants
which have given charcoal briquette ash such a bad name for use as a
soil amendment, because typically ash is a good fertilizer. Every
second recipe for making compost specifically recommends the
avoidance of using charcoal briquette ash.
Which leaves us with a new question: how would the ashes from
Kingsford's new charcoal behave as a soil amendment?
gerald
On 2-Mar-08, at 8:01 AM, Kevin Chisholm wrote:
> 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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