Reburn of biochar

Has anyone tried to reburn a load that did not turn out as well as it should have?

Don't do that. Just consider it "char enhanced mulch". Don't count it as real biochar, and continue amending your soil as if that bad batch was never added.

Steve Jucick wrote:Has anyone tried to reburn a load that did not turn out as well as it should have?

Separating the incompletely burned "brands" to char in the next run is pretty easy if these are too stout to run to compost. The brands are the bits not easily cut with a shovel blade, just poke away at the pile of quenched embers with a shovel, the brands feel resistant, completely different than the char bits. Personally, I like seeing a bit of brands in my finished biochar because it indicates I didn't start into making too much ash, but also because it assures we'll have some low temperature amorphous carbon structured char, non-conductive to electricity. However, only as long as I know that there also hot bits that incandesced (I mean glowed) at a orange/yellow wavelength which indicates we'll have some high temperature turbostratic carbon structure, which has semiconductive surfaces, which I think is important to soil biology. Natural and neolithic fire events surely produce both low and high temperature biochar, I want my biochar type complex like how it forms in nature. Open flame backyard biochar is best for soil biological diversity (health) because it is not uniform throughout.