My biochar production tally thread.

2955

Scraped the edges this morning and found another bucketful

3055

Got a big pile burned yesterday.  In addition to the usual white pine branches, this one had the top out of a 12” or so Tree of Heaven that I girdled last year.  It was finally dry enough, so I dropped it.  The crown shattered into thousands of pieces when it hit the ground!  Felt good to turn an invasive into char!  Got 100 gallons spread and more to go…

A quench pic…

3155

Got the rest spread!

Got a nice shot of the silvopasture we’ve been removing the biochar feed stock from.  Still needs more thinning, but we are seeing results…

I’m running out of material to char, so I talked to my next door neighbor about aggressively pruning 5 large Bradford pears in his yard.  He did it a few years back but decided he was too old to do it again.  An arborist quoted him $2000 to do it, so he passed on that, but I told him I’d slowly work on them for livestock fodder and charing feedstock.  We’ve been cutting small amounts the past few days just to see how well the animals consume it.  They are doing pretty well so I am going to slowly ramp up the volume.  Given how much is there, it’ll probably last us all summer.

My biochar addiction has taken a turn towards insanity.  I’ve started splitting logs down to kindling size so they will char, which I had previously said I wouldn’t do.  Takes me around 15-20 minutes to fill a wheelbarrow.  Trying to do a wheelbarrow load a day…

Decided to build a kindling cracker to see if it would help speed things up a bit.  I found the wedge piece in the woods over 20 years ago.  The bevel was too blunt to work.  I corrected the bevel a while back, but the wedge was still too short to work well.  Another project yielded perfectly sized scraps to lift the whole works up.  A few minutes of welding and I was in business!  I can probably fill the wheel barrow in 10-12 minutes now.

3375

Got our “kindling” heavy pile chared and spread.  The kindling chared quickly and completely for the most part, I am pleased with the results!

I wanted to figure up a weight, but I’m seeing a bit of variance in online numbers.  So I’m drying down a sample to get my own weight.  It’ll also give me a water capacity number.

A few pics…

Oh yeah, the flame pic…

So my one gallon of char started at 3.5lbs and dried down to .7 lbs!  Of course this was mostly made from white pine trunk logs which is nearly as light as you can get to begin with.  Pretty impressive that it can hold 4x its weight in water, or around 1/3 its volume.  I might repeat the process with some char made from bamboo.  

3435

Burned a huge pile of white pine “kindling” made over the past several weeks.   Topped it off with lots of bradford pear branches recently cut for fodder.  The kindling wasn’t very dry, but didn’t produce much smoke, as it still burned plenty hot.  However, the very center of the pile didn’t char.  I think I’ll experiment with the pile shape and do a shorter, flatter, mound vs a peaky mountain next time.  Got 60 gallons spread this morning before it got too hot, and hope to get some more spread tonight if it doesn’t rain.  Not sure yet, but this may prove to be our largest pile yet.

I admire your perseverance.  I would love to have the amounts you are making.  I just have too many things going to be able to do it.

Trace Oswald wrote:I admire your perseverance.  I would love to have the amounts you are making.  I just have too many things going to be able to do it.

Thanks!  We’ve definitely invested a lot of time into it.  I’ve backed off vegetable gardening/mulching quite a bit the past couple years  to really push the food savannah/silvopasture/biochar project.  I think if I can make it through the massive amounts of built up deadfall, we’ll probably slow down and put some energy back towards the garden.  I just love the cumulative growth of the trees vs the garden, even if the garden does still put more food on the table.  Hopefully, it won’t always be that way!

3715

Got the rest spread tonight, grand total was 340 gallons!  Indeed our largest burn ever!  

The kindling splitter worked so well and the splitting process is our production bottle neck so I looked in my scrap pile to see if I could make another one.  Our wood chips come from beside the railroad tracks and from time to time a load will include a tie plate.  Thought it might be cast iron, but decided to try welding a base on it and beveling the top.  Seemed to weld okay, but the beveling took quite a while with a 4” grinder, the metal is very hard!  Anyhow, it works great, and has held up so far.  Also picked up a hammer and wheel barrow to go with it.

My chief inoculator along with the growing pile….

3965

Got both piles burned this morning and the pile in the foreground spread this afternoon (pile flooded until cold and saturated, lots of rain last night, fog this morning so everything stayed wet and more rain on the way, so I felt safe doing so).  250 gallons out of the first pile and it seems a little smaller than the second.  Might get some of the second spread this evening.  Still lots of unburned material in the center of the piles.  The only thing I did different this time was knock the center of the pile down about halfway through the burn to expose some more of the unburned material to the heat.  The flames picked up when I did this, so it certainly had an effect.  Anyhow, no worries, any uncharred material just goes into the next burn.  I might use some larger material and build a bit of “cribbing” under the pile to help air get to the center, or not.  

Hoping for 500 gallons out of both piles.  Even if we come up a bit short, this will still be the largest single burn date ever, and just 2 weeks since the last burn.  The “kindling” method might seem tedious, but the yields are really good vs burning small twig brush.

Speaking of brush, I’m plotting out 40 or so new fodder trees to add to my pasture.  Mostly for feed early in the season and during dry spells, but they will also produce a decent quantity of charring material.

4245!

530 gallons, biggest batch ever!  All spread within 24 hours!

Sometimes I worry I am removing too much woody material from my property.  But, I am leaving all the standing dead trees for the woodpeckers as well as using the more rotten logs to build “rabbitat” in my bamboo grove, with the idea that when the wood rots it will help feed the bamboo.

My theory is you can never remove to much rotting material. Rotting wood being some of your highest bacterial counts. Natives burned everything in your area, at least every 2 years, at most twice a year, in areas to upkeep grasslands. That method being more in tune with nature, then our common land practices. Your method also positively correlating to regulating parasite levels.

4305

Visited a friends farm, discussed biochar a bit, then made a 60ish gallon batch out of a very dry, wind blown, yellow pine.  Told him to give it a try with his peas and beans and let me know how it turns out!

4515

Burned two big piles yesterday after a nice rain.  Got 210 gallons spread tonight and still plenty to go!

4695

Got the largest pile spread.  390 gallons total for the pile, a new record!  One more pile to go…

4995

300 gallons from the second pile, bring the total burn up to 690 gallons!  Now we pile again…

5650

Took the opportunity to burn two piles after a good soaking from Ian.  On these piles we started with a small pile of brush, maybe a pickup load, then covered it with the “kindling”. This method seemed to work pretty well, achieving more complete pyrolysis than a pile of solid kindling.

5815

Burned two nice piles yesterday.  Unfortunately, my water pump suffered an internal failure and wouldn’t prime.  Thankfully, my neighbor was home and I was able to borrow his.  Between trying to prime my pump, retrieving his pump, and figuring out hose fittings, we probably lost 100 gallons or so from one pile.  I had my kids run the garden hose on the second pile which preserved more char.  I haven’t spread it, but it looks pretty good.

I took my pump apart and fished out a broken piece.  Put it back together just to see if it would work and it did.  My guess the missing piece was not enough to keep it from working, but was messing up the vortex inside the pump.  My neighbor offered his as a back up anytime, so with the fittings figured out, I can rely on it a bit in the future.

6050

Got the second pile spread and broke the 6000 gallon mark!

This pile included a small pickup sized load of yellow pine wood scraps from a local wood shop.  The fellow there is careful to sort them and there is no treated, plywood, or staples in the wood.  It charred pretty well.  The price was right at $10, but between the driving and unloading by hand (they didn’t really fork or shovel well) and the fact they only fill a bin every few months, I probably won’t make this a regular supply of charring material.   I’m more interested in sawmill slabs, but haven’t sourced any yet.

6290

Got one big pile of bamboo charred and one more to go…

6530

Finished charring and spreading the rest of the bamboo fodder remains, fruit/nut prunings and winter windfalls.  

3-15-23

6730

Finally got a couple piles together and burned.  Spread 200 gallons, and probably another 100+ to go.  Been dropping, bucking and splitting several of the stunted white pines.  Once they dry out they’ll be split down to kindling size for more char.

6875

Got the rest of the piles spread!  Also took a little better pic of the pine thinnings piled for drying.  

5/31/2023

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The split white pine pictured above dried out enough to be further reduced into kindling and charred.  The pine dries out quickly once reduced to kindling size and the open burn charring process doesn’t seem to require bone dry wood. I swapped out the “volute” on my pump as the original one was slightly damaged by debris. With the damaged volute, it still pumped fine, but was slow to prime, making quenching a bit hairy when char is disappearing by the second. We burned last week after a good rain. Spread a few loads tonight.  Still lots to go.  Not the season for biochar, still very humid and uncomfortable!

8/13/2023

Good perseverence.  I find that I need to dry out my wood in order to get more char and less smoke.  I have never heard of a single person making as much biochar as you.

John S
PDX OR

John - it looks like Gray and I are in about the same zone production-wise. I've made about 30 cubic meters to date since 2018 and that's just on the property. If I added all the demonstrations and workshops I've run offsite, then it's closer to 50.

It helps when you know arborists and have neighbours with lots of trees. My main limitation (aside from a lack of spare time these days) is a way to dry out materials prior to a burn. We've just had our wettest year ever here (at least since records have been kept) and the first half of this year is even further off the charts. I built a shed for stacking feedstock but it only holds so much.

Kudos to you both. I have a smaller, suburban plot, so it wouldn't make sense for me to make that much, unless I was starting a business.  You are both literally making the world a better place.
John S
PDX OR

Phil Stevens wrote:John - it looks like Gray and I are in about the same zone production-wise. I've made about 30 cubic meters to date since 2018 and that's just on the property. If I added all the demonstrations and workshops I've run offsite, then it's closer to 50.

7150

I’m coming for you, Phil ;).

Seriously though, I am going to eventually use up my excess woody biomass, at which point I think I will be limited to around 1000 gallons of biochar per year, using material from my property.  Just a WAG, I might have 5000 gallons worth of white pine left.  When all that is gone, importing material is an option, but I think I might focus on other things for a while.

7395

Spread and done!

200 gal(maybe 1500?)


These numbers are beginning to get impressive... I'll have to start tracking my production
What would we say a 50lb feed sack is in gallons?
I would guess 15-20?

Last batch filled 12, 8 or so before that

I could guess I've done about 150 bags to date but for accuracy, let's just count what I can clearly remember, unless yall wanna give me a leg up:)


According to  BYC forum, a 10gal trashcan will fit 50lbs of feed... so 10gal per bag we will say

The standard size feed sack here is 20 kg (44 pounds) and I can get 40 litres into one of those if I'm not worried about closing the top. So that's about 10.5 gallons. A 50-pound sack would be about 12.