Barry Batchelor

Hi All

I have been making and using Biochar since 2005, started one of the worlds first Biochar businesses (Black Earth Products - Australia) and have built and used every method for making char under the sun, including large format industrial gasifiers and tested almost every feedstock too

1. In general forget about using retorts of any style, they are fire explosions just waiting to happen, seen that first hand.

2. Unless you are an engineer, really handy or can buy a biochar maker, a Tlud (top lit up draft) gasifier requires reasonable about of knowledge to run and you need a really dry chipped/sized feedstock to make the work well.

3. Open burning or cone charring is by far the easiest and safest way of making Biochar as long as you can run a small to medium fire/bonfire in your backyard, you can char damp or chunky feedstock if that's all you have.

As an example I am Workaway (woofering) working in a remote part of Portugal in an area that was hit by a massive firestorm 4 months ago, the owner wanted all the dead trees on the land cut down, cropped up for firewood with the crowns/tops burnt. We are re-planting many trees, re-setting up his vegetable gardens and making lots of compost, so lots of potential to use biochar. So how do I make Biochar without anything other than lots of fine branches/tree crowns, a rake, a hose and a lighter??

1. Start smallish and keep the open bonfire under 1m3 at all times, light from the top of the pile to reduce start up smoke.
2. Have all the feedstock close by so you can keep feeding it and keep a hot flame all the times which will reduce emissions. Small twigs and branches will char quickly and large logs can take quite some time to char so would be better split of use elsewhere.
3. By constantly adding to the fire you to tend to build up a pile of hot coals at the bottom which keeps increasing in size.
4. Biomass/wood/feedstock goes through three main stages when burnt.
(First) releasing the volatiles, (the oils, resins and some carbon) this occurs at about 450 deg C. Most of the resins release as smoke which is really flammable and if you keep a good flame will burn up producing very little smoke and emissions. Much of the physical strength of the biomass is lost and the carbon or hot coals crumbles to the bottom of the pile as you add feedstock/wood from above.
(Second) burning the carbon content once the resins have been released, this needs lots of oxygen to occur and if you have a pile of hot coals, most of the oxygen is used up from the above fire and the carbon will not be lost to ash, which is the final step if you do not interrupt this stage.
5. Let the fire burn down so you have just a few visible branches left and a small amount of flame, then using a hose/water quench the char pile and interrupt the final combustion process, until it no longer produces any smoke or stream, using a rake pull all the char open so you can hose the bottom of the pile thoroughly, it is easy for the char to reignite and burn to ash so water down really well and keep the pile wet. Note, do not breath in the white stream that is produced from this quenching as it is loaded with high levels of carbon monoxide, try and work and stand upwind. Wear full length cotton clothes, a hat, leather gloves and work glasses.
6. You can leave some of the hot coals and fire to restart a new batch which is what I did so I could break for lunch.
7. You can break down the produced biochar into smaller chunks by slowly adding biochar to a wheelbarrow and the top of a hammer or a brick to smash it down or let nature do that for you over a few years in your soil.
8. Inoculate your biochar with compost and or any biological or high nutrient additives that you want. I always keep biochar moist and you can never add too much water to it.
I used 1x 75lt bag of commercial bagged compost mixed into a large 0.5m3 pile of biochar and watered heavily, have left for a week before I dig it into the vegetable garden soils.
I used about 200 litres of straight biochar layered through 2x 1000lt composts. Biochar layers are generally less than an inch/20mm thick.

Biochar is a very long term structural soil improver that will stabilize into a black soil/loam over a number of years, after 10+ years of adding biochar/compost and organic matter my light colored acid sandy soils were jet black and full of worms, productive life with a neutral pH.














 

Hi All

After 15 years of development I am selling my 7.5 arce (3 Hectare) permaculture property which I call 'The Kurwongbah Overflow.'

I hope this is ok to post here. =) I would LOVE if I could hand over all my hard work to someone who would keep caring for this amazing place just like I have. I did my first PDC in 2005 and advanced PDC years later with David Holmgren

I have some older pics here but it should give you some idea of the place.
http://www.biochar.net/kurwongbah/Kurwongbah_Overflow.html

I will add some more shortly once we formally list online.

The address is 75 Browns Road, Kurwongbah 4503 Australia

The farm has been my passion and development site for Biochar and organic research for close to 15 years, while it is not certified organic I have not sprayed ANYTHING in 15 years and the previous owners of 10 years informed me they did not either.

All the hard work is done. 2000m2 food forest with 120 mixed sub-tropical fruit trees and bananas, large vegi growing areas with amazing black soil which I have been improving for 15 years.

Two story brick house with an amazing view, 3 bed upstairs, two studies down stairs and double garage. In ground 75k litre in ground salt water pool, 2.5kw solar grid fed, solar hot water. 110k litres of rain water storage. large 15x9m shed with workshop including benches, horse tac room and 2 parking bays, horse round yard, 8x15m horse stable/shelter. Large steel rack for timber and steel storage. level 40 foot high cube shipping container with roller door located next to the workshop. Site also has large truck access gate.

Land is fully hardwood horse friendly fenced with roughly 5 areas of flat open improved pasture. Large dam roughly 1.5m litres which is fed from a well refined swale/drain system. Petrol pump and underground ag lines feed holding tanks in the food forest.

I am also hoping to include a 1974 Massey Ferguson in the sale, always kept in my shed and is in great always serviced condition, has a brand new high quality 4 foot slasher and a 3 point linkage lifting crane.

The land has 490m or frontage to Lake Kurwongbah's water catchment dam, Amazing wildlife and bird life, the SEQwater area that bounds the property is land locked so the view and area is shared by only a very few eyes.

I have also planted 100's of native koala fodder trees as well as mixed natives which now brings in masses of native birds and positive insects. Many of the trees have been permie planned and planted to create western shade and also to increase privacy.

The location while it can not be subdivided due to the area being with in a water catchment, development around the area has grown at an amazing rate, It has a concrete path with a 1.2km walk to a school/train station/shopping centre and roughy 5-6km to a major shopping area called North Lakes. The site is 4km from Brisbane's main north bound highway.

I have not set a final price as yet but I expect somewhere under 900k AUD

Why sell I hear you ask...... Partner and myself have just separated...

Got any questions please fire away.

Bazman

I don't like to use the term 'burn' when referring to making biochar. I carbonise it using interrupted combustion and a wet quench which produces a much higher quality biochar than wood coal from a fire. The process also creates very little ash. Most of the carbon from the biomass is converted into a graphitic structure which is chemically different from it's original organic structure and research suggests it will last 1000's of years in the soil. The woody biomass I use would in general rot and break down with in 12 months releasing it's stored carbon and volatiles back into the atmosphere. The production of Biochar just speeds up the process and captures a high percentage of that carbon and converts it to a fixed or recalcitrant carbon.

The process of gasification is to cleanly burn the volatile (smoke) gases produced by the charring process. The development of my open source fatboys has been to refine the air fuel mixtures and increase flue turbulence which reduces process emissions. There is nothing stopping you from cooking and or heating water while running a biochar making gasifier.

I run a company called Black Earth Products which produces Biochar commercially, our continuous technology produces very little in the way of emissions and we use our excess heat energy to supply another industrial business. My feedstock is by-product from a sustainable timber milling company. Biochar production can be done right.

Not enough to create an issue. All biomass you burn in a rocket stove will contain a moisture content of some sort (10-25%) and that moves through the pipes with other volatiles.

If you want to produce biochar using a heating or cooking rocket stove, just build in a grate and quenching bath below the main biomass burning area as the biomass chars some of the material will drop through the grate and into the water bath interrupting the combustion and producing a useful biochar for your garden.

Moisture content is the biggest enemy of biochar production. If your rice hull or bamboo is moist it will make your production hard work and produce heaps of smoke. 20% moisture content or lower is where you should be. You can char bamboo with a gasifier but you will need to layer it through the chamber and fill the spaces around the bamboo with a dry wood chip. You always need to have a good air flow in the main chamber but you can't allow open gaps or spaces as hot coals will drop to the bottom of the chamber and start to smoulder reducing the available oxygen in the above biomass which will produce poor results. I would use a sledge hammer to smash/crack all the bamboo up a little so you get a better/full char.

This is my Fatboy 1 and 2 batch gasifier systems. The unit is now in it's next major rework which will include an emission oxidiser. http://www.biochar.net/fatboy-gasifier/ and http://www.biochar.net/fatboy-v2-gasifier/