Many, many thanks to all who took part in the Biochar School, Nov 7-11 at Swallow Valley Farm in Sonoma County, California. With 12 instructors and more than 40 students, we had a full house! The learning and sharing was a two-way affair, as we all learned from each other and made valuable connections across disciplines and regions.
I will be posting presentations and links to some of the videos we showed at the school on my other site, BackyardBiochar.net
I have posted pictures and short video clips of the Biochar School on a web album here:
https://plus.google.com/photos/113563255252052826854/albums/6082021498845397969
And here is a web album from Art Donnelly:
https://plus.google.com/114261170173561967216/posts/25pB8aviuyV
Finally getting around to posting some new cone kiln designs people have been sending me. Below are a few pictures, but for details, please visit backyardbiochar.net
Kamal Rashid, CEO at Zanjabil Gardens in Pembroke Township, Illinois, has made a giant cone kiln. Last month he completed his first full test burn in the kiln, which has a 59" top diameter, a 24" bottom diameter, and is 24" high. The kiln made 133 gallons of biochar (17.7 cu ft) in about 4 hours, using cordwood. Kamal reports that it took 30 gallons of water to quench the kiln.
Kamal is also an officer of the Pembroke Farming Family Association, and he helps with technical assistance to other farmers. Kamal is very happy with the cone kiln, which was fabricated by a local community college welding class. You can bet he will be helping other small farmers in his area get started with making and using biochar. Here are some of his pictures:
Josiah Hunt has been doing commericial biochar longer than just about anyone. He is perhaps the finest example we have of small scale, low tech biochar entrepreneurship. Being in Hawaii helps - he has abundant feedstock, abundant need (poor tropical soils subject to leaching rainfall) and an educated public of permacultural farmers who get it. But despite the advantages of location, it was Josiah's genius that drove him to invent an economically sound biochar production method that allowed him to actually start a business. Not only that, his method is pretty clean, unlike traditional charcoal pits that smolder wood for many days and emit methane and carbon monoxide. In the open pit method, these gases are burned off so there is very little smoke.
Josiah uses a pit. No metal cone required. His method of gradually adding new wood over glowing coals is exactly the same method as the cone kiln. One difference is, he quenches with dirt instead of with water. Here is the link to his description of the method, with pictures:
http://hawaiibiochar.com/biochar-burn-demonstration/
He has since moved on to better, even cleaner biochar production methods, but for those just getting started, you might want to consider the pit.
Josiah - thank you for sharing!
The volume of the cone kiln is about 35 gallons (or about 4.5 cu ft). The yield of biochar pretty much equals the volume. I usually have to toss out a few brands (incompletely charred pieces) but not many. One secret to maximizing the yield is to finish off the burn with small stuff like twigs or a couple of buckets of wood chips that burn quick and hold in the heat to finish charring the bigger pieces. Of course the volume of char is reduced by half at least (have not measure it yet) when I run it through the compost shredder to turn it from chunks to powder. Anyway, here is what 35 gallons of chunks looks like:
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