[Freerangefarmer]

New guy here.

I am interested in making biochar for use on my small farm.

Most of the simple means of production that I have found online either produce a very small quantity per batch or require large pits, with an associated danger of a person or animal falling through the soil layer and being severely burned. Also, the fires typically seem like they have to burn for an extended period.

I am looking for some input on ways to make moderate amounts of biochar, without large expenditures of time or expense for equipment.

Below are my current thoughts about making moderate amounts of biochar. I have a long row of pines that I need to take down as they are starting to shade the kitchen garden near the house, and would like to make biochar from them in the spring or summer.

I read that some make biochar by taking a 55 gallon steel drum, making air inlet holes in the side up about a 1/3 of the barrel height from the bottom, then installing a grate just above the air wholes. As the wood above the grate burns, the smaller pieces drop through the grate into the bottom of the barrel where there is little or no oxygen to complete combustion.

My current thoughts are to enlarge this design vertically. First have a steel barrel that has a clamp on lid sitting on the bottom (without the lid). Then stack a second barrel on top of the first. The second barrel would have no top or bottm. It would have short sections of angle iron welded on the inside at the bottom that project about 6" out the bottom to help it nest on top of the bottom barrel. It would have a ring of air holes close to the bottom and a grate of 1/2" steel rods just above the air holes.

The entire top barrel would be filled with wood and ignited from the bottom through the air holes. The smaller charred pieces would drop through filling the bottom barrel. Addition wood could be added at the top until the bottom barrel was filled. Then the top barrel would be removed and the lid installed on the bottom barrel.

This would probably need a steel post set securely in the ground to stabilize the whole thing. I would envision loading the wood onto a dump trailer that I have, backing that up to the barrels to allow easy feeding of additonal wood.

Efficiency?

Other ideas?

Freerangefarmer

[freeztar]

Welcome to Hypography!

It seems like your idea would work. A simpler approach is to simply start a large fire in the drum and then pile on a bunch of fresh wood before placing a lid with a small gap for outgassing. This is left to sit until no more smoke is seen exiting. Then, the charcoal can be ground and the whole process can start again.

[Freerangefarmer]

Freeztar,

Many thanks for the feedback. I'll give the single barrel approach a try.

FRF

[lemit]

Welcome to Hypography!

I like your idea. I also like the idea of the single barrel. I have a small farm in Missouri, which I don't live on, and a lot of interest in biochar.

What kind of soil do you have? Which side of the lime line are you on? I might have a very personal interest in your project. (The lime line in the U.S. is roughly the 100th meridian, "Where the West Begins.")

Again, welcome.

--lemit

[Essay]

Welcome FRF,
Good going! Fresh pine! Wow, you should be able to get some serious bio-oils out of that, if a real pyrolysis unit was available.

Charcoal technology was fairly advanced back in the 19th century. There must be lot's of old literature on making barrel kilns. There's gotta be a better way than reinventing this thru guest bestimation & trial and error. I'm gonna check with our local energy lab to see if they know about a good barrel design.
===

I'm wondering if you might be located near one of these small start-up companies that have mobile pyrolysis units.
These days, there might even be a government grant to ship the unit to your farm and do some test runs.

If you could talk some neighbors into trying the unit, you could start a business making char. I've heard the figure of $170.00/Ton of Biochar, as a buyback, for the mobile unit's product. So that's about $35.00/Ton of dry feedstock. ...not counting bio-oils.

I had to search ...and might as well share some edited results.
Results from, googled: mobile pyrolysis unit

Mobile pyrolysis plant converts poultry litter to energy - Biomass Magazine
A mobile pyrolysis unit that would provide an economical disposal system for poultry litter and produce alternative sources of energy is under development at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., led by Foster Agblevor, associate professor of biological systems engineering.

Biomass Connections - On Farm Mobile Pyrolysis Unit
A professor in Western Ontario Canada has developled a mobile pyrolysis unit that can be taken to farms during harvest season.

A mobile pyrolysis unit for carbon sequestration and fertilizer production - Mistra [NS4 version]
Project period: 2008 - 2010 Funding: 5.8 MSEK
Project leader: Lars Hylander Uppsala universitet +46 (0)18 471 22 65
2009-01-19 Bacteria reduces nitrogen emissions
"The ever growing rate of nitrogen discharge to our coastal seas has lead to undesirable algae blooms.... "
2009-01-01 Bacteria that improve crop production
"Microorganisms both protect and promote growth in crops. Field tests in the research programme MASE ... "

Agri-Therm: a biomass products business in London, Ontario
a biomass products business in London, Ontario

Mary Ann Colihan - » Get Cracking with Pyrolysis
In an engineering lab at the University of Western Ontario, Professor Franco Berruti has cooked down chopped tobacco leaves into dark brown soup.
He and his team have invented a mobile pyrolysis unit for converting the wood to bio-oil without burning it or trucking it away - making the process more environmentally sound.
“If you harvest the waste and treat it on site without having to ship it around without having to spend energy and fuels you transform it into a form of concentrated energy which is essentially what we are doing by making the bio-oils. You not only have a resource out of waste but you have gotten rid of a pollution problem.”
So Berruti teamed up with a company called Agri-therm Limited, to design and patent a mobile pyrolysis plant.

http://yosemite.epa....ILE/Coleman.pdf

http://www.fs.fed.us...NSW%20final.pdf

A small Canadian start-up company called Advanced BioRefinery Inc. (ABRI) has developed a mobile pyrolysis unit to convert forest slash such as branches, ...
Back Issues enerG Magazine

Biomass Connections - Mobile Pyrolysis Units
I am very interested in getting hold of a mobile Pyrolysis Unit. i have done some basic patent searches and much googling but havent found any that are commercially available. I am thinking that this forum is probably the best place to ask?
Biomass Connections
!!!
Forums!!

Western News - Waste-to-fuel machine near market-ready

Outback Biochar A Place to Learn About Gardening with Biochar.
We'd like to take our hats off to the other Australian companies working to make the technologies of biochar and pyrolysis a reality here in Australia and we encourage our fans and customers to give them a web search on Google, Yahoo or Bing. Crucible Carbon, Best Energies and Ansac Limited are three of the technology firms leading the charge to develop commercial biochar kilns (gasifiers) that also produce renewable energy.
Recent Posts: Australian Firm Leading Mobile Biochar Technology.
Biochar Technology Rapidly Evolving
Biochar Believers
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Also....

The Biochar 1000 Unit, built in Golden, CO

Biochar Systems :: Home

Biochar Systems :: make biochar
~nice pics!

[Freerangefarmer]

lemit,

Located in the SE with red clay soils (acidic).

Our farm blog: http://growingbeyond...c.blogspot.com/

FRF

[Freerangefarmer]

Essay,

Thanks for the links!

I have sent out some e-mails to nearby universities asking about mobile units over the weekend. I'll post what I hear. A mobile unit would be great for the major tree thinning that we need to do as that will probably generate at least 4 cords of logs, not counting the small branches.

We almost always have a "burn pile" somewhere on the farm for brush, branches, etc. So I'd like to have a system to utilize this material. Also, we always have some plant material removed from garden beds that we can't compost because of disease, and biochar seems a good use for that material too.

You know, this would be a good use for all the leaves that towns generally collect every fall. How hard would it be to process leaves?

Thanks for the feedback!

FRF

[lemit]

Freerangefarmer said:

lemit,

Located in the SE with red clay soils (acidic).

Our farm blog: Beyond Organic Homesteading

FRF

That's impressive.

My farm's 140 acres of red clay hills. It's mostly in CRP now, but I'd kind of like to see if I could make more money putting it back into production. It's frustrating to the guy who runs it that they only let him hay it once every three years. He gets a good stand of red clover going, but it gets root rot before he can do anything with it. He seemed to be interested when I told him about biochar, so anything I can tell him that's directly related to clay soils will help.

Thanks.

--lemit