davidbelliveau

My biochar factory is getting slightly more sophisticated. In order to block the prevailing wind, I put an old wagon covering frame up and tie-wired a couple of sheets of metal roofing to the side. It seemed to work okay. I made the mistake of not ensuring that the entire surface of the biomass was ready for lighting. Only one end caught fire, which allowed the un-fired end to turn into a draft that fed oxygen below the fired side. After about 20 minutes, I was able to get a short layer of fire right across the surface, but I imagine I lost about 40 kg of biomass doing so. Lesson learned. There was still a few unburnt branches today. I didn't bank any soil or gravel around the barrel, but I figured the sheet metal wind blocker would help. It didn't. I'll have to get a pile of dirt with the skidsteer for the next batch. I'm almost out of prepared biomass, so I'll have to start collecting more tomorrow. I have a nice 75 liter garbage can that I'm ...

I finally started cooking biochar. It took a little longer than I expected to get started. The first pic is the beginning of the burn. I think I need to get a chunker to get these branches down to a nice size. These longer twigs have too much air space and it took a while to get a flame cap. I eventually did get a flame cap and after adding lots and lots of branches, I finally did get some nice char. I have no idea how long it took. I forgot to set a stopwatch or even write down the starting/ending time. There were some uncharred branches at the bottom of this barrel. I think I'm going to have to get some gravel to bank around the sides of the barrel to hold in more heat. Either that or build a double-wall set-up. This turned out a whole lot better than I expected. Of course, there wasn't much wind, but even then, most of the flame stayed in the barrel. I didn't see any embers floating away in the light breeze. The contents stay where they belong and the fla...

Albert Bates has suggested that there's a need for 100,000,000 biocharists. Those are people who would be involved with the biochar industry...input harvesters, pyrolysis tenders, packaging, sales, etc. 100,000,000 biocharists would be able to utilize carbon based life forms (wood, grasses, animal wastes, human wastes, etc.) to create a form of carbon that would be far less likely to break down into greenhouse gases. The source of all this carbon based lifeform input would be our atmosphere. There's lots of carbon up there...too much...and it is currently being absorbed by plants. Photosynthesis sucks CO2 out of the air and turns it into solids that are the major component of plants. Animals eat the plants and become forms of solid carbon themselves. Normally, the plants and animals grow and die. The death of plants and animals usually involves their decay, a process in which micro-organisms break down the cellular structure of their mass into smaller and smaller compon...

The mornings are good for gathering brush. Most of the brush was gathered on Day 001. Day 002, not so much.  But I am also building compost piles. Most of it is grass clippings, and since Day 001 and 002 were the first sunny days in about 10 days, I had to use most of the time mowing the giant lawn. I'm collecting grass clippings for compost and will be combining that with our large amount of horse manure. I'm using Geoff Lawton's hot compost method. Apparently, if it's done correctly, compost can be had in 20 days or less. I did one pile already, but I think it wasn't big enough. With the clippings I've gathered so far in the past 2 days I think the pile will be quite huge. If it isn't, one of the fields was mowed last week and I can rake the hay from there to make sure I have at least 1 cubic meter of composting material. There are 2 more afternoons of mowing left until I'm all caught up. Hopefully the rain will stay away. I plan...

Here it is, July 1, 2019 and I haven't made a single gram of biochar in nearly 10 years. Even though I ran a pretty good experiment and saw tremendous results on a sunflower growth rate comparison, I went on to check out other things. I thought that others would take up the biochar at an advanced rate as a way of making the planet a better place. Some have, but not nearly enough people. China seems to be getting on the biochar bandwagon, although their efforts are still miniscule compared to the addition of carbon dioxide they, as a whole, add to the atmosphere. That said, in North America, there's practically no effort. Sure there are folks scattered throughout the continent doing what they can to create biochar, but when it's compared to the intense activity that adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, it's very, very, very minuscule by comparison. That has to change. So I'm going to pick up where I left off 10 years ago. I have $600 start-up cash, whi...