How To

Hugh McLaughlin, PhD, PE, Alterna Biocarbon Inc. , January 2010

Biochar is a vague term that applies to a potentially broad class of charcoal materials intended for addition to soils. Many raw materials and conversion processes can lay claim to producing biochar, and the resulting biochars will have different characteristics. The purpose of this discussion is to formulate a simple scheme for characterizing biochars before addition to soils. Efforts will be made to discuss the logic behind the individual characteristics, in addition to the limitations of the individual assays.

The presentation and content here is consistent with the paper titled “All Biochars are Not Created Equal, and How to Tell Them Apart”, by McLaughlin, Anderson, Shields and Reed presented at the North America Biochar Conference in Boulder, August, 2009. (http://cees.colorado.edu/biochar_characterization.html). However, this discussion is new, in the sense that it attempts to simplify the logic and methodology in order to arrive at a characterization strategy that is widely accessible to many practitioners.

The general characterization scheme breaks the biochar into a small number of constituent parts, consisting of: Moisture, Ash, Mobile Matter and Resident Matter. Each constituent part can be further subdivided, as will be discussed. Initially, we will discuss the significance of each portion, how it is measured and what the measurement represents. Then we will discuss additional biochar consideration when added to soils.

For addition detail, download the attached pdf: Characterizing Biochars

by Hugh McLaughlin, PhD, PE, Alterna Biocarbon Inc., January 2010 Version

Download the Instructions: 1G Toucan TLUD for Biochar Jan 2010 - final.pdf (630kb)

Vuthisa, November, 2009

They have kindly put together a great How to Make charcoal in your own backyard …with a Portable Charcoal Kiln.. Take a look at their site for pictures, detail and corrections.

R. Diermair November, 2009

Attached as a Power Point file and a PDF is a nicely illustrated guide to creating a TLUD (top lit up-draft) biochar retort with two barrels. As he notes, understanding the TLUD is critical to getting reliable, clean take a look at our other TLUD References for more guidance.

Sean Barry, November 2009

Look what I just made! I used a 46 oz juice can , a 14 oz kernel corn can, a can opener, a strip of tin, and some tin snips.

I will see if it can boil water now and makes charcoal out of wood chips. Then maybe I can send a you tube link. This is my first mock up of of the educational tool about biochar that I was thinking of developing and telling you about in Washington this past September. When it makes char, it should be smokeless, especially with dry feedstock, easy and cheap to build out of normal household stuff. and simple to use.

With a little tiny bit of charcoal (maybe close to a cup?) it could be put into two of four milk carton bottom test pots, then fertilizer in one with char and one without char. They kids could plant something grows fast and maybe edible (beans sprouts?), then measure the performance of their own soil with a real experiment (1/4 control, 1/4 just fertilizer, 1/4 both charcoal and fertilizer, 1/4 just charcoal. (just like my garden).

It could be an experiment started this winter after the holidays and ending late this spring before school let's out.

This little lab kit has four important elements -

1) Simple to make and use.
2) Makes charcoal.
3) Uses the energy that comes from making char to cleanly provide cooking heat.
4) Uses the charcoal as a biochar amendment into soil and has a real plant growth experiment.

Its a full cycle that will let kids have a simple starting point for understanding and then they can be creative and expand from there. I would suggest targeting it to the youngest kids possible and repeating it more than once in their curriculum.

Regards,

SKB

Al Latham, September, 2009

I have a pdf (download the attached file) showing a simple biochar retort that I put together, that
might be of interest to your viewers.

If you'd like to add it to the Making BioChar.

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

--

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
Kollegievägen 19
224 73 Lund
Sweden
Phone: +46 (0)46 141429
Cell: +46 (0)709 710306
URL: http://www.holon.se/folke
BLOG: http://folkegunther.blogspot.com/

Making Charcoal

• A handy kiln for making charcoal from urban leaf litter, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI), Pune, India www.arti-india.org

Single Barrel Charcoal Kiln

• Briquetted Charcoal from Sugarcane Trash

Folke Gunther

• Simple Charcoal Kiln at Home
  Simple Charcoal Kiln

From Mark Coldiron, TxBeeFarmer, July 2008: Good "how to" charcoal making 4 part video.

• part 1 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5122206324434669401&ei=&hl=en
• part 2 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4228528283369918059&ei=&hl=en
• part 3 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-882323473764674138&ei=&hl=en
• part 4 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1880524045220008547&ei=&hl=en

Folke Gunther May 2008 Simple Method of Charcoal Produciton

Links March 2008

• Making Charcoal Dr. N. Sai Bhaskhar Reddy, India
• Making Charcoal in A Drum Gary Gilmore, DNRC Forester
• Charcoal from Smallwood Tom Hammet, Virginia tech
• Adam Retort (ICPS) Chris Adam, Germany 2007
• Charcoal Making at Home Robert Lea, Fayaetteville, Arkansas
• Fuel for the Fires Charcoal Making in the 19th Centry
• Dave's How to Make Charcoal Notes Kiln
• Industrial charcoal making FAO FORESTRY PAPER 63 1985
• Simple technologies for charcoal making FAO FORESTRY PAPER 41 1987
• Making Lump Charcoal
• How to Make a Small Charcoal Kiln
• Charocal Production Terra Preta Website
• Charcoal Production Biomass Cooking Stoves website
• Charcoal and Wood Preservation ZERI
• How to Make Your Own Lump Charcoal Naked Whiz 2004
• How to Make Charcoal WikiHow
• CHarcoal Wikipedia
• How to Make Charcoal: The Survival Forum Making Charcoal Hypography Science Forum
• How to make bamboo charcoal in a simple way Junji Takano Pyro-Energen Earth Kilns
• Chapter 5 Earth Pits for Charcoal Making FAO
• Chapter 6 Making Charcoal in Earth Mounds FAO Glossary
• Glossary of Charcoaling Terms The Wildlife Trusts, Cornwall, UK