Philip Small

I mix biochar with bokashi bran to help compost food waste in insulated tumbler (Jora).  It works really well. I let the compost tell me (odor, moisture, which bugs are revelling in it at the time) if I need to bulk it with more browns or more greens or adjust coarseness of feedstocks. FWIW, I don't find that using biochar and/or bokashi in this way needs any special effort in anticipation of N lockup risk, or bokashi running out of anything.

I am an enthusiast of this mix. About 10 years ago, at Biochar School in Sonoma County, my friend Gloria and I scored a good quantity of bokashi biochar. Since then I make batches for myself. I still have a little of the original Simran BB, and it is still the bomb years later.

The biochar for the original was made by Josiah, and Simran combined the biochar with effective microorganisms (EM) and oat bran and then skillfully tended the composting windrow. The compost was hot temperature-wise, still cooking when classes started, and was cool by the time school was over. I am so impressed with this BB combination in my garden beds, it has convinced me that anytime we have an opportunity to combine EM with biochar plus EM's food (bran in this case), it's a beautiful thing, I always learn something new. I very much encourage your home research into this. Hands on is the way.

My personal favorite theory as to why EM+biochar has turned out to be such a good combination for our home is that, once the oxygen is depleted by composting microbial respiration, that my Josiah-style biochar is the kind that can "poise" the compost redox in EM's bioelectrical comfort zone. Accurate paradigm or not, it's not important. There a symphony of different things, physical, biological, timelines, happening in these environments besides redox poise in play. Plenty of room for everyone's ideas when it comes to biochar and how/why it works.

Antonin chaozone wrote:The [torrefied] wood might ... do anything negative ?

Not that I am aware of.

Antonin chaozone wrote: reduce the fuel in case of wild fire. But if we could teach them...

Are you aware of the upside-down camp-fire build (many examples on youtube)? They are nearly smokeless, thus the attraction for campers.

Most burn piles are bottom-lit smoke bombs. But all that smoke is flammable and a missed opportunity. Permaculture design opportunity. Design your fire to employ the flame not just as a fuel reduction tool, but also as an afterburner to consume the smoke. If air quality is a concern in the area, folks who want to be good neighbors are the best candidates to approach. They have the incentive to raise their pyromantic skill level to have nearly smokeless fires.

Bonus: Because the BTU's of what would be smoke turns to heat, the top-lit pile is going to heat-distill the wood gas from the char more efficiently and quicker, so, bonus, the potential char yield is much higher than for a bottom lit pile.

Top-lit piles takes a little more effort to construct and manage, but the extra effort is worth it.
https://biochar-us.org/sites/default/files/learning/files/Smoke-Into-Biochar-flyerfinal.pdf

You don't have to water quench to get the charcoal, although that is ideal; you can rake the embers out to the fringes, away from the most heat.
You can quench with dirt like when closing an ember-bed cooking pit.

After the potential biochar yield, the other collateral benefit of a top-lit pile is that, with the heat center further up in the pile, not as much of the underlying soil gets sterilized. You can see the difference in plant and fungi recovery for many years afterward. If the woodlands are being used for grazing and foraging for mushrooms, better productivity help might motivate adoption.

It may take 3-generations for upside-down burn pile fires to supplant bottom-lit smoke bomb piles for fuel reduction, but the practice is so superior, the potential for adoption is high. Just have to find the creative community needed to start it off.

I like to use burn pile biochar in my garden, but when my neighbors make it (as encouraged by yours truly) it seems to have a higher ash content than mine. As Douglas mentions, char is lost to ash, which happens as the wind gets into the pile. Burn pile biochar can have an elevated ash content, especially if made on a windy day.

Ash brings causticity. Causticity is good for some things, so much so you may want to dry quench (soil, metal lid over a pit fire) the pile and use the biochar quickly (within 2 weeks) as the causticity (good for making biochar soap I would think, sweetening soil pH) is gradually degraded by a natural weathering process (as oxides convert to carbonates).

If causticity is not your friend in terms of soil use, no problem, you can rinse the ash off before you use it. A water quench does some of that. You can leave high ash biochar exposed to the weather, and forget about it for a year.

You can compost unweathered elevated ash biochar; the alkalinity supports biochar's characteristic ability to accelerate food waste compost and speeds up any aerobic compost process prone to go anaerobic (pew). Again, a little bit of ash is not necessarily a bad thing.

I am sure there is an upper limit of ash content for feed palatability, but burn pile biochar's highest and best use might be as a feed amendment for chickens, pigs, and cows. If you have any of these critters, I wouldn't be surprised to see them get onto your biochar pile while it is still steaming from the water quench, pecking and nosing through it, looking for some sweet biochar to eat. Pigs, chickens, and cows that have access to charcoal in their diet are generally healthier and gain weight faster.

Couple of thoughts.

Kelpie Wilson's "electric carbon sponge" mental imagery for biochar so works for me. I wish the electrical chemistry and physics aspects of biochar received wider recognition. Kempf has a course on soil redox and teaches in great detail how every living process has an electrical effect on its surrounding environment. Soil and plant health depends on the redox environment being where it should be. We need to relax our minds so we can grasp the workings of it, the soil alive with living electricity is a deeply beautiful image. Kempf doesn't mention biochar, but we can make the connection. The electric carbon sponge, like Kehne's soil carbon sponge, nicely captures the imagination. New soil ideas need new soil language. Biochar challenges long-held ideas about soil.

"In fact, biochar, whether naturally created or man-made, maybe the base of many humic materials found in soils (Hayes, 2013)."
This fact is having a huge impact on soil science, especially humification theory, and the soil organic matter paradigm. The longest-lasting components of soil organic carbon may not be long-chain molecules like polysaccharides (expected from humification) or glomalin (thank you fungi), or carbon attached to clay by biological communities, but rather the little clay-particle-sized sheets of graphene* that seem to accumulate in any soil which hosted a prehistoric human-induced accelerated fire regime. It's a huge shift in understanding, not everybody is going to make the mental transition at the same time.  (*aka fused-aromatics in the literature)

I believe that one-day (It's been 23 years so far, give it another 50 years) science will determine that there were long time periods where fire-knowing grazing-ecosystem-knowing nomadic cultures had a beneficial effect on the land and left a lasting legacy of rich black soil and that their actions predate most of written history. We were fortunate to have witnessed the nomadic cultures occupying the grasslands wth their towering wildfires and blackened landscapes stretching to the horizon in the North American prairies for a few short decades. We see today the indigenous fire practices nurtured in isolated enclaves throughout the world, and it gives us some idea as to how it works, how a human can wield fire in a way that revitalizes the living systems of the earth.  "God made the earth, we made it fertile."

In my view, whatever remnants of fire-knowing nomadic cultures that there were in Eurasia, and responsible for creating the deep black chernozems, Peter the Great erased them from history. He finished the job started by the Mongols, who made a practice of cleansing the land of the fire-setting cultures who occupied them. Russian soil scientists will be the last to accept that charcoal is what makes their black soils black.

I read a paper from the 1950s where the lab researcher determined that wood charcoal can be a great source of artificial humic acids. The humic extracts made from charcoal closely mimicked the high stability of natural humic acids. My understanding gained from that paper lines up with where Kelpie's article states that biochar enrichment in soils on la landscape scale (think chernozems and mollisols in particular) may be the base of many humic materials occurring in soil.

My divergent view (extremely minority opinion) is that biochar is best understood as an analog for the black carbon bits that remain after natural wildfires. Plants and soil biology evolved with and are adapted to naturally occurring charcoal.  My view is that the biochar is ideally made from plant materials native to the region and ecosystem within which the biochar will be used. Because biochar interacts with biology, and has since the beginning of plant life on the planet, presenting them with biochar in a form closest to what they are adapted to makes deep sense to me, and this practice allows me to show respect for biochar's connection with my local natural systems, this despite my ignorance of how exactly (scientifically) biochar works to increase soil health, plant disease suppression, and plant productivity in the ways that I see it working. Again, I don't get a lot of love for this apparently crazy idea that biochar is an analog for naturally occurring charcoal in soil, my lonely idea that biochar wouldn't work the way it does absent millions of years of evolution.

In practice I will use the complete available range of plant materials to make biochar for my garden: commercial biochar made from my region's softwood, hardwoods from foreign lands made from broken pallets, nutshells, almond pits. I would use bamboo, if it was handy. Because I see it working. Beyond avoiding excessive ash, woodsmoke stink, and causticity, I have loose standards in actual real life, otherwise, my soil's hunger for biochar cannot otherwise be satisfied. But I do value the locally sourced biochar the highest. There's a local outfit that sells biochar made from local grain stubble. Biochar made from grain stubble works, and it works well. Maybe that relates to the soil biology carried on the local winds is well adapted to grasses-based soil charcoal. I like to think so anyway.

Gray Henon wrote:I got a soil test.  It says I need 1.5 tons per acre of lime.  I need to figure out how much biochar it would take to meet this requirement.

Ask the lab to characterize your biochar for calcium carbonate equivalent (w/w percent). If 10% CCE, then need 15 tons biochar per acre to achieve the same pH raising effect as using 1.5 tons ag lime.

One of the fascinating aspects of biochar CCE levels is that the calcium, potassium, and magnesium oxides and hydroxides in freshly made ash have high CCE, like freshly kilned lime does. Over time the oxides and hydroxides convert to carbonates (like limestone, pH 8.3, no joy for making soap). For biochar, this natural conversion means losing CCE as it seasons. Freshly kilned ash (like burnt lime, pH 12, caustic enough to use to make soap) can have a CCE of 110%, but ash left exposed to nature (seasoned) will lose CCE.

If [kilned] lime is left exposed to the atmosphere, it will, over time, revert back to calcium carbonate by absorbing carbon dioxide from the air:

(IV) Ca(OH)2(s) + CO2(g) <-----> CaCO3(s) + H2O(l)

In other words, the soluble material, slaked lime, if left exposed to the air, converts to the insoluble material limestone. What we have here is the first cement! Modern cements are more sophisticated and "cure" more quickly than slaked lime, but lime continues to be a major component of modern cement. When quicklime is painted on wood, it forms a rock-hard white coating called whitewash.

Source: Caveman Chemistry

Another fascinating aspect of biochar is that the carbon component of biochar may provide a small but measurable alkalinizing effect. This effect was observed in a carbon-filtered municipal water supply study, where an alkalinizing effect long that could not be accounted for by the mineral (non-carbon) content within the carbon filtration material. I don't have the study with me, but I recollect that alkalinizing potential was small but persistent over a long period of time and the effect did not diminish with time. Add this to the very long what-we-know-we-don't-know list for biochar. I suspect we-don't-know-what-we-don't know list is long for biochar.

Nice TLUD design. Looks like it will hold up well.

I use a flame-cap biochar system. Not the "best" system, but certainly the most popular.


My friend Josiah Hunt's (JH in photo) initial approach to making biochar. Apparently, now most people's initial approach.

This is my main way to make biochar. It takes pyromantic intent to pull this off. The flame-cap systems are widely used around the Pacific Rim and are popular throughout the timbered western US and Canada.

Flame-cap systems are not as clean-burning as enclosed biochar systems. It is critical to the earth's health that the flame-cap charista discriminates in the fuel sizing and holds off on a flame-cap kiln burn until ideal fuel/weather (RH, moisture, temperature, wind) conditions. This attention to detail is needed to assure minimal smoke and eliminate fugitive losses of methane and nitrous oxide, invisible but powerful greenhouse gases. These can escape destruction in the flame cap due to wind stronger than the draft into the cap or insufficient draft from a cooler flame cap from cold, wet, or oversized fuel.

Done right, a flame-cap system quickly makes a bed of pure glowing embers which you then snuff with dirt, or dowse with water (or snow) to hold the char.  Very approachable, popular, scaleable, gets the job done for people who grow for a living. Satisfies that need to watch fire at work.

Josiah Hunt: How to make biochar with only a match (2013)

Origin of the term Biochar. Before there was "Biochar" there was "Agrichar". The Terra Preta community dedicated to achieving Terre Preta Nuova by reverse engineering the Amazonian Dark Earth (ADE) phenomenon coined the term "Agrichar" meaning charcoal you would want to use in an agricultural context. I miss those times, the term agrichar was easier to communicate than biochar is.

In 2006 some Australians members of the TP community saw the opportunity to make some money and commandeered the term Agrichar, trade marked it, restricted its use. The meaning of Agrichar became charcoal made by slow pyrolysis that has been enhanced in proprietary ways to perform well ag-wise. The rest of us had to come up with a new name, and biochar is the term we chose. It still upsets me! Fast forward 13 years to 2020, and the term "Agrichar" has disappeared from use.

Biochar, like the term scientist, can cover a wide range of qualities and qualifications. If my life hinges on understanding soil science, and I seek out the knowledge, and achieve soil success, am I not an accomplished soil scientist regardless of whether I paid for a degree or not? Maybe even more so? Yet some (me 15 years ago) would say, if you don't have formal qualifications you can't honestly present yourself as a soil scientist in formal contexts (teaching, public testimony, client reports) at least not without speaking to that detail. Does the term scientist become meaningless if we can't agree on one shared definition?  

It's kind of the same with biochar. I take the position that if I am using charcoal to accomplish improved soil health (or animal health, or compost health), I feel perfectly fine using the term biochar regardless of feedstock, ash content, volatiles content, resulting molecular state (torrefied/amorphous/graphene), process (hydrothermal-carbonization/pyrolysis/gasification/combustion), or post process treatment (seasoning, amending, activating, charging, washing, acidifying, rinsing, crushing). However what I use as biochar often will not meet the definition of biochar established by the International Biochar Initiative, nor will it meet the definition we use among ourselves locally a tribal understanding that without inoculation, biochar is just charcoal. And there are consumer protection issues when even highly caustic black ash, even char stinky with smokey smelling tar, even charcoal made irresponsibly, can be labeled biochar, thus the need to steer folks towards IBI certified biochar products, and towards the inoculated or composted variants favored within our permaculture community as the only biochar worth having. From my perspective, I see no hard and fast rules defining what biochar as a material is and isn't, but I respect anybody who has settled on a definition that works for them, that they are comfortable with.

Jay Angler wrote:... just add some to their feed as a powder and be done with it? Any other suggestions?

Certainly using the charcoal straight is the normal practice. I hear of chickens, of pigs, and in one case an ox, making a beeline to ingest freshly made biochar. And if the animals are having the kinds of feed challenges that one would go to activated carbon to solve, then it is best to use freshly made biochar. Freshly made would be better at keeping the ammonia levels down in the coop, one of the primary assaults on poultry health. But there is more to it than that, and it would be totally fun to compare which biochar prep your chickens prefer. You might find they do best when having access to several types at once.

Rather than grinding the charcoal down to feed grain size bits and mixing it into feed like AAFCO folks would do, gravel and stone size chunks of charcoal work just as well, maybe better. Certainly easier not to have to grind down a bunch of dusty charcoal. Let the chickens do that job. Charcoal is brittle, and can get pecked apart pretty quickly. The long standing practice with smallholder hogs is to give them a charred log end to gnaw on. In the ox incident, after a slash pile burn, the ox walked up after the fire was all out and the biochar had stopped steaming and that ox started munching directly on the chunks of recently water dowsed cinders.

I also would be interested to hear from folks feeding biochar. I know of several poultry producers adopting charcoal after this article: https://www.caes.uga.edu/news-events/news/story.html?storyid=4067

Article conclusion: "Bamboo charcoal increased the growth performance and feed efficiency, while decreased noxious gas emission and faecal harmful microflora in fattening pigs. Moreover, such bamboo charcoal may protect pigs from infection and reduce stress due to decreased cortisol concentration and increased IgG concentration of serum or blood cell in fattening pigs. Bamboo charcoal is expected to improve swine production as a result of improved gastrointestinal environment of fattening pigs."

Charcoal as a feed additive is controversial because on the one hand, it has centuries of acceptance and demonstrated benefit, and on the other hand, a recent history of being used to pass off low quality moldy feed as high quality feed.

In toxicology, charcoal is regarded as a “universal antidote” to accidental poisonings. In moldy feed, the charcoal dials back the obvious signs in the animal that the feed exceeds established mycotoxin criteria. Because of this fraudulent activity, because of a concern for protecting the feed-purchasing permies, in 2012, the USA Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) gave a ruling effectively banning the addition and manufacture of plant-based charcoal for feeding purposes.

"The [2012 AAFCO] ruling means that feed manufacturers can no longer legally add charcoal powder to feeds or supplements. The reasoning behind the removal of charcoal powder includes but is not limited to: fear of dioxin contamination in charcoal and the indiscriminate use of charcoal in pet food as a mycotoxin binder or for binding other contaminants."

source: https://www.progressivedairy.com/topics/feed-nutrition/charcoal-powder-as-a-feed-ingredient-whats-the-status.

This means that as of 2012 you can no longer get charcoal through an animal feed manufacturer.
As of 2012 you can no longer find charcoal as an ingredient in state approved feed mixes.
Users of charcoal in feed have had to work around this by finding their own sources of charcoal, and mixing their own feed. With the AAPCO prohibition, we won't be hearing much about it from the state, from industry, or from academic channels.