[Stoves] [biochar] Biochar makers that are low emission, fire safe, and "look like" a stove, oven or heater

Mon Jan 28 03:10:29 CST 2019

What a great question.

Given the "in the eyes of the EPA" requirement, I like your thought that a
barrel/drum system might make the most sense.

The difficulty is that 55 gallon/200 l drums are very unfriendly to
branches. You can drive yourself nuts trying to force sticks into them -
and even then you are still looking at a TLUD that, frankly, doesn't look
much like a stove.

So, a couple of thoughts.

   - If it is more a question of fire safety than actually looking like a
   stove, why not try a super retort? I can imagine three starting points: a
   decommissioned underground oil tank, a used dumpster with a metal top or a
   shipping container. In each instance, the object is a good containment.
   Properly holed at the bottom and top, you should be able to have a nice
   fire inside any of them. With minimum care, you ought to be able to screen
   the stacks on top to ensure that no sparks can escape. Making char would
   then involve filling 200 l drums with wood or whatever, closing them up and
   stacking them inside. You fill the remaining space with dead branches and
   light the thing up. At some point, you declare the war won and you check
   your retorts. If you go this way, you can use all the little stuff for your
   retorts and anything too big to break up by hand for the big fire.
   - If it really is more a question of looking like a practical, wood
   burning appliance, there are many things that you can do with a TLUD that
   ought to give you reason enough to have a bunch of them around and fitted
   into machines that make them look tame (that is, make it evident that no
   flaming stuff is going to escape). (1) We use TLUDs for drying corn (maize)
   kernels, for example. If you have lots of kernel around and want to raise
   its value by lowering its moisture content, you will need a big bed with a
   perforated bottom. We then make a cowl of sheet metal that captures the
   heat of a TLUD and directs it under the drying bed. You need to keep the
   temp below 100 C or you end up with a lot of pot corn, so you need to rig a
   simple temperature controlled vent. We have two TLUDs on a little merry go
   round thing so that when when one is ready to unload, the other is ready to
   swing into place.(2) TLUDs can be used to heat water also either by
   wrapping copper tubing around them or simply setting them up under your
   water tank. (3) There are all sorts of other things you can do along these
   lines from keeping your piglets warm to drying fruit/veggies.
   - Related to the TLUD's possible uses, there are the various horizontal
   barrel designs that are built into mud or concrete. These have the
   advantage of being naturally unthreatening in appearance and are really
   easy to disguise/use as cook stoves. If you bake your own bread or like to
   slow roast stuff, you can build cooking "boxes" of various sizes into the
   "frame" at varying distances from the heat. You can also set a few nice
   clay tiles into the top surface (you may want to stack them so that the
   bottom on actually touches the barrel) to make cook tops, or embed a grill.
   - Both this option and the TLUD options will require that you be pretty
   selective about the stuff you select to char, but if you are using windfall
   rather than trying to clean up after a big thinning exercise, this may not
   be a big deal. Most of the stuff that comes down tends to be pretty little
   and very dry. You can generally break it up and swinging it hard against
   the nearest trunk.

Anyway, good luck whatever you do. I think that the problem of reducing the
burn load in forests is an overlooked subject. Charring the stuff is a
great idea, even if it takes a bit of fiddling.

A few Americans ought to take note.

M

Michael Shafer
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On Thu, Jan 17, 2019 at 7:14 PM Paul Taylor potaylor at bigpond.com [biochar] <
biochar at yahoogroups.com> wrote:

>
>
> Hi all: I am in Australia confronted with the problem of dealing with the
> issue of excess fuel load in forests in a hot and warming environment.
> Forest services have rejected in some areas any use ever of pre-burns
> because of high risk that they get away. People who would like to treat the
> fuel as a resource for making biochar on their own property are confronted
> with regulations that prevent any fire device except a stove (cooking or
> heating).
>
> Ethos and Aprovecho have been about developing and perfecting stoves (that
> sometimes make biochar).  I would like to develop and refine devices that
> make biochar and sometimes perform functions of a stove or heater, and
> importantly look like, a stove or heater to the EPA when they come around.
> An important scale level would be 55g drum size reaction vessel (or outer
> envelope), optimized to make biochar with low smoke and VERY low fire
> danger, but passing the test that they are stove, firebox, heater or oven.
> The dominant fuel that the device should be receptive to is limb wood, such
> as arm sized.
>
> The open flame-cap devices would clearly be perceived as a fire threat,
> and rightly so in high fire danger environments. Paul Anderson’s 4C device
> could be modified and refined to be safer, and to pass muster as a fire
> place, stove or heater, but serve primarily to make good quantities of
> biochar.   Is anybody working in this direction or seen good designs?
>
> Paul A,  what refinements would you like to have present in the 4C when it
> is questioned by the EPA.
>
> Paul
> --
> Paul Taylor, PhD
> Ed/Author: The Biochar Revolution
> Transforming Agriculture and the Environment
> http://www.thebiocharrevolution.com
> http://www.ithaka-institut.org/en
> http://www.biochar-journal.org/en
> Phone, US: 1-415-233-7366
> Skype: potaylor
>
>
>
> On 12/22/18, 4:43 AM, "Anderson, Paul" <psanders at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
> fficult for clean air agencies to regulate them for health reasons. More
> and more data says ultrafine particulate emissions are linked to an
> incredible array of human diseases and health consequences. With the need
> to sequester as much carbon into the soils as global warming suggests, it
> will be incredibly difficult to prevent mankind from endangering itself
> with a health consequences of particulate emissions.
>
> With your experience on these quick and dirty flame cap kilns, what is
> your "sense of appreciation" for them.
>
> Norm
>
> On Tue, Dec 4, 2018 at 5:07 PM Paul Taylor <*potaylor at bigpond.com
> <http://potaylor@bigpond.com>*> wrote:
>
> With a vortexing flame cap mode and incremental fuel feed at the
> completion of TLUD mode there is no need for other primary air entering
> from the bottom.  Unless some further oxidation is desired for enhanced
> functional groups on the char, open PA at the bottom presents the
> insecurity of losing some char.  If a portion of the flame cap exits the
> down-drafting vortexing mode, or the TLUD develops common internal
> convection loops (such as up the center and down the colder walls), easily
> enhanced by chaotic
>
> __._,_.___
> ------------------------------
> Posted by: Paul Taylor <potaylor at bigpond.com>
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