[Stoves] Fwd: [biochar] Re: combustion of char -- spontaneous and dangerous

Jock Gill jg45 at icloud.com
Sun Feb 24 15:45:41 CST 2013


Paul,

 

If you quench the charcoal produced by a TLUD in water, urine?, storage is
very safe.  This is one reason I almost always quench in water.  No fires.
No burns. No surprises.  But be aware of the moment of live steam that this
produces and be sure to use offset pliers to hold the fuel chamber when
dumping the hot charcoal into the quenching liquid!

 

By the way, I also recommend that stovers try using a gap between the fuel
container and the draft unit as a way to introduce secondary air.  Easy to
adjust the gap for optimal mixing of secondary air  with the syngas.  As
Hugh said, "holes have too many edges". 

 

I also recommend trying deflectors above the secondary air slot.  They
appear to give cleaner combustion via increased turbulence in the combustion
zone.  I find concentrator rings do not work as well. For deflectors,  I use
three washers with a total area of about 50% of the aperture of the fuel
chamber below.  

 

image.jpeg

 

image.jpeg

 

This approach scales.

 

As for boiling water, I use the Swiss Army approach as shown in their
Volcano Stove: put the container of water to be boiled into the stack so
heat is delivered to the bottom and sides.  A pot on top of the fire only
heats the bottom and allows for substantial heat loss from the sides, ESP.
If there is any breeze.  You do have to allow sufficient space around the
pot for the combustion gases to escape else the fire will die.

 

Lastly, a syngas flame tuned for clean combustion will be cooler than one
tuned for max heat output.  A clean syngas fire will deposit very little
black carbon on the pot as there is very little unburned carbon monoxide in
the flue gases.  Soot on the bottom of the pot is created by the wasted
carbon monoxide and is a good indicator of the efficiency of the combustion.

 

Regards,

 

Jock

Jock Gill

Marketing & Communications

Whitfield Biochar, LLC

Burlington, WA

www.whitfieldbiochar.com

 

Cell: (617) 449-8111

 

Sent from my iPad


On Feb 23, 2013, at 10:42 AM, Paul Anderson <psanders at ilstu.edu> wrote:

  

Dear Stovers AND to all who make biochar or TLUDs with char-saving.

The two messages below are very important.  And they lead to asking this
question:

When the quantities of char production are small, such as from a
domestic-size TLUD stove, or from a biochar barrel (as with RE:Char), does
this danger of spontaneous combustion pose a threat to households, etc?

Because Frank's experience was with a small sample of char, I suspect that
the danger to households could be very real!!!   

Therefore, what are the correct and incorrect ways of dealing with TLUD
chars that are being saved and stored?

It is interesting that no stories of spontaneous combustion in stored
cookstove TLUD chars have reached us.  How big is this danger?

Paul

Paul S. Anderson, PhD  aka "Dr TLUD"
Email:  psanders at ilstu.edu   Skype: paultlud  Phone: +1-309-452-7072
Website:  www.drtlud.com

 

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