Simple charcoal kiln
Folke Gunther, April 24, 2008
A wonderfully simple method for making charcoal at home or on the allotment.
"http://picasaweb.google.se/folkeg/TheSimplestOfTheSimple
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There is a wide demand for charcoal kilns to be used by anybody having an allotment or garden sized plot. The idea of making char of surplus biomass instead of firing it is widely spread in Latin America (and Japan?). Burning the pyrolysis gasses instead of emitting them makes the method comparatively safe, although not efficient regarding their potential utilisation of gasses.
I agree that his is a very small scale method, bu imagine 2 billion people having it, making 1 kg char a week for their lots. That would imply about 0.1 Gt annually, or 5% of what would be necessary to sequester for making a change.
Naturally, this is not the method to save the world from entering a tipping point, but it could well be of some help.
Besides, making 50 kg of char annually, would certainly make a change for the production form a normal sized allotment, certainly so if you go on for several years.
I don't agree that using barrels for making char automatically would imply methane emissions. That must certainly be a consideration depending of the charring method, not the material used.
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Folke Günther
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224 73 Lund
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URL: http://www.holon.se/folke
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