Great video Paul, thanks. Really helps you see how much effort and logistics are involved in a full production run.

@johnbonitz7658

9 жыл бұрын

Wow, what a marvelously informative video!

Nice setup! Perhaps there is some way to make use of the heat from the fire. They used to burn up whole forests just for Potash. Thank you for sharing informative videos!

Well done Paul and fellow team members! It is nice to watch and to listen to your observations. On your sloping terrain it may be a good idea to have a second tank located above the height of the cone kiln as a header tank that will allow the quenching to work with gravity rather than pumping. With a 50mm hose and fast couplings on both ends, the flood quenching and draining can be completed with few minutes. The gate valve on the bottom of the tank can be operated precisely to objective. Good work in progress -and not least more productive fun. Thanks again Frank in Tassie Terra-Preta Developments Schwabenforest Pty. Ltd.

@potaylor22

9 жыл бұрын

Works great with pumping to the kiln. I have a platform for a sec on header tank - just nee the tank - but I would have to pump more to get liquid up to it. .

Great video Sir. Thanks for sharing yr insights.

That's a big batch

Excellent Video I definitely intend making one soon . i wonder how one made from stainless steel sheet would last ,as my last couple of square sided biochar kilns made from mild steel only lasted a few years . From the video it looks like the sides of the cone design seem to run a lot cooler than the straight sided kilns so may last a lot longer . Keep up the good work - mat--

Based on Top Organic growers i know. They say adding biochar 5 - 10% of your (total soil amount/mix) for maximum benefits anymore can have a counter effect.

I love how you reuse the water. It is the most efficient way I have seen yet. I stay in the city. Can this model be scaled down? If so how small could I go?

Perhaps titrate quench water with solubilized elemental sulfur (transformed in solution into sulfuric acid), rather than expensive phosphoric acid. Adding sufurized water will ameliorate sodic soils or soils devoid of the macronutrient sulfur.

how did you come up with that design?

I don’t get how it works to be smokeless, would you share plans to build one or let me know if they are sold in the United Satates

how big of a fire do you need to get it started?

Excellent! Found your content on Reddit, got some research posted there to read as well. Are you able to scale this down in size and achieve the same effect or is the size you have created vital to the process of burning off the smoke with a vortex?

Are you selling these? I am an hour from the gold coast and looking to build or buy a large biochar kiln like this.

Great video. What type of steel is the cone made out of and how is the wear and tear with quenching directly in the cone?

@potaylor22

9 жыл бұрын

***** The 1.65m diameter Kon-Tiki cone was made from 2mm mild steel. 2.5 sheets of it. This is a bit thin for a big cone, so I stiffened the rim with 30x30x3mm angle iron rolled into a circle and tack welded to the rim.

@potaylor22

9 жыл бұрын

***** I haven't noticed hardly any wear and tear over 10 or so full day runs over a month, leaving the quench water in there for a day or several. One time I snuffed with clay and the contents remained hot (250-600C) for 4 days before I quenched. I can't estimate a life from the minimal wear so far.

Can ricehulls be used in a kontiki kiln?

Hi, I am building a brick and refractory mortar Kon Tiki. I wan´t to put a quenching from bellow system on it but I worry the mortar may crack in contact with the cool water. Can anyone give me some advice please?

@potaylor22

8 жыл бұрын

You could seal a tube into the bottom of the kiln, and repair cracks when they develop. You could use a ceramic tube, and adapt over to metal outside the kiln in a cool zone. However, you could avoid all that by simply inserting a pipe into the open top when it's time to quench and pushing it down to the bottom. If you provide slots in the bottom of the tube to avoid sucking biochar you could also pump or siphon the liquid back out.

@coltmypit

7 жыл бұрын

or just put a lid on it, suffocate it.

if boichar is really helpful then wouldent a couple tons of coal ground onto agriculture sized pieces work well?

Is possible for no water on process??

@MikeTrieu

5 жыл бұрын

To stop the burning, you either have to remove the heat (with water) or remove the oxygen (with an airtight lid). If your lid isn't completely airtight, the remaining oxygen will burn your char into useless ash. Also, being an airtight, hot container you have to take care that it cools gradually or else your container vessel will violently implode.

What can the alkaline quench water be used for?

@hardcase1659

4 жыл бұрын

You can make soap out of it.

Where on the gold coast was this shot?

@potaylor22

9 жыл бұрын

Tamihana Patete On my property at Mt Warning, NSW. My web team, based in the nearby Gold Coast, took some poetic license in describing that as the Gold Coast

@tamihanapatete5357

9 жыл бұрын

No worries mate. Thought it Musta been more inland than anywhere I've seen on the coast

@potaylor22

9 жыл бұрын

Tamihana Patete Its only 25km by wing or 30 min drive to the beach, but we're under Mt Warning inside the Tweed Valley erosion caldera, remnant of an old volcano.

A lot of ash is produced in an open kiln, though you never see it. It is carried away by the hot fumes, rising from the kiln, to end up as particles polluting the air. Poisonous gasses are also produced and it is much better to use a system wich controls the air supply. Even the most primitive ways (e.g. where a burning fire is covered with soil) produces much more charcoal in a more environmentally friendly way, and this video was a really sad one.

@RandoBox

2 жыл бұрын

lol

@paulhand5015

Жыл бұрын

am interested in reading up on this can you recomend any research reading thanks

this is not biochar, it's charcoal. You need an inner retort to cook the wood like an oven, volatilizing all the gases and burning it in the outer chamber, otherwise it's polluting. You also need a chimney to assist in the pressure flow, pulling the gases through the bottom of the inner chamber to be burnt in the outer, an open lid doesn't work. kzread.info/dash/bejne/paqCyZewZ7q_YM4.html here's a good link so as to do a bit more research before your next burn.

@MikeTrieu

5 жыл бұрын

The conical design creates a toroidal vortex that keeps the wood gas circulating back into the bottom of the cone and producing a secondary, continuous, complete burn (assuming no errant breeze interrupts that flow). It's not polluting as much as you'd think.

@Delekham

4 жыл бұрын

@@MrMonero Define a "Full load" of Biochar. A full load is what you put into it. What you get out, is quite possibly of 50-60% LESS of what you put into it. The CONE shape is perfect for this. The Oxygen doesn't get to the lower area, only to the new wood added. When you are almost done. Add in smaller pieces of wood, even wood chips. The earliest way of doing this was to dig a cone shaped hole in the ground. No need for expensive things, just a shovel and time.

I like gardening but I get really angry when I'm gardening.

@VaughnMalecki

7 жыл бұрын

Michael Ball talk to the creator.

@harryrarmer

7 жыл бұрын

Vaughn Malecki My voice is weak, put a word in for me would you!

@VaughnMalecki

7 жыл бұрын

Michael Ball I will!

Hating not to use the heat for something else.

@potaylor22

9 жыл бұрын

Trident Offenberg As you will see from my next two blogs, the kon-tiki take about 2000L or 900kg (760 kg oven dried) of wood blocks to make 120kg of oven dried biochar. Using a lower heating value for eucalyptus of 17.7 Mj/kg, available heat content of wood = 13450 MJ. Using a heat content of the residual biochar of 31.5 MJ/kg, the heat content left in the biochar = 3780 MJ. The energy released is then 9670MJ. Lets assume just 6000MJ of this pyrogas energy is actually useable over about 8 hours = average 750 MJ/h = 0.20 MJ/s = 200 kw. The total energy released over the 8 hours is 1600kwh enough to drive a fuel efficient car using 1 kWh/mile a distance of 1600 miles !! So yes, we should all hate to not use the heat. So why not use it? The only limit is ingenuity and expense. The first thing I did was use the heat to make biochar in retorts from complex mixtures that I could not run in the Kon-Tiki. See coming blog. Heat could be used for drying biomass, for heating a hot tub, a greenhouse in climates that need that. in future the heat could be used for making electricity using waste heat engines or eventual thermoelectric conversion.

@mikha007

5 жыл бұрын

you could also roast a kangaroo on a spit above it mate

4

Wastage, that's what I can see. In the name of green, Biochar. A lot of heat is wasted.

@dustystahn3855

6 жыл бұрын

Not only heat but a valuable resource that could be put to better use is wasted. All the nutrients in the biomass is lost when made into biochar and they pollute the air. Then the lost nutrients must be taken from somewhere else and put into the biochar so it won't rob fertility from the soil. This is a further waste of time, energy and money. It is called progress and sustainability. But all it sustains is the progress in destroying the ecosystem. There isn't any thing that biochar can do that biomass and the soil life can't do for us as nature has been doing for millions of years. But fools who think they know better have to meddle.

@MikeTrieu

5 жыл бұрын

@@dustystahn3855 Biomass does not result in massive internal surface area like activated carbon. The rainforest has plenty of biomass at the first few inches of the surface of the floor, but everything deeper is almost abiotic due to compaction and constant washing by the water. Biochar provides much more water retention and microbial cultivation than virgin soil, which is exactly what you want in the root zone.

@tonychan647

9 күн бұрын

@Howie2153 The richest growth areas in the Amazon are man made Terra preta islands. Heat is used to create a home for beneficial micro organisms in the char. Heat is also used to burn bones, either to char it, or to reduce it to ash for fertilizer. Also human solid wastes can be sterilized by carbonizing it into a sterile solid to add to the cellulose char. Liquid human waste can be used to inoculate the hot char into biochar instead of polluting the rivers.

A very inefficient process, so much wood wasted.

@russellsmith3825

6 жыл бұрын

at most 50% of the energy from the biomass is wasted, In my limited experiments on my farm the open burn method using a cove kiln, or even a tractor wheel is the most time effective method for making quantities of on charcoal. I have tried TLUD, TLUD with retort etc, and not had nearly the success as with the cone kiln. I can easily make 3X the amount in an hour with an open burn method that I would in 4 hours with a retort.

There is something that might have been missed towards the end of Professor Lehman's presentation on this video and I am not referring to the champaign glass he was holding. He stated that he was "capturing carbon dioxide" after a night of conflagration. The burning question is: how could burning wood be described as capturing carbon dioxide?! I have partially resolved this cognitive dissonance for myself by labeling it as a "kavfefe" moment for the professor and the result of over-indulgence in alcoholic beverages. "Kavfefe" was a Twitter message broadcasted by Donald Trump in early hours of one morning, a few months back.

@sjobang

6 жыл бұрын

homayoun Shirazi - The cognotive dissonance is a bit overwhelming, yes. But what ever could be better than some glasses of champagne, by an open fire, and to be paied to be there? The fact that he is producing common charcoal, and not biochar, is marely a minor detail. It sure does'nt take a lot to hold a professor title these days, and I take it he is well connected.

This process is creating incomplete combustion of the fuel. "Gasification experiment" generates unwanted carbon monoxide. If you didn't have such wide opening on the top, you would have had more visible smoke. I can't see what good this does for the environment by creating so much incomplete combustion. Do everyone a favor and abandon all further experiments!

@adriansmits666

6 жыл бұрын

The man made biochar found in the Brazilian rain forest was put there hundreds if not thousands of years ago and it has greatly enriched that soil while at the same time storing carbon in the soil for all those years. It is true that the system is not 100% efficient but even if it is only 50% it will still be taking C02 out of the atmosphere on a permanent basis while at the same time enriching our soils.

@dustystahn3855

6 жыл бұрын

Terra-petra consists of low-temperature charcoal residues in high concentrations, high quantities of potsherds, organic matter such as plant residues, animal faces, fish and animal bones and other material and nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium, zinc and manganese. It is not just the charcoal but these organic materials and minerals which give it the high fertility. It also debunks the myth that organic matter can only remain in the soil a short time. These organic materials have been in the ground for hundreds of years are still identifiable. How about knowing what you are talking about before speaking? A parrot can repeat what it hears but that doesn't mean it understands what it is saying.

@sjobang

6 жыл бұрын

homayoun Shirazi - Professor Lehmans method is obviously not the best, though charcoal can also be made in quite environmentally friendly ways (with not much more than carbon dioxide, water vapour and heat, as bi-products). "Charged" with urea or other nutrients, to produce so called "biochar", it is said to be very beneficial for agricultural purposes. Though that the end product also is captured carbon dioxide is obviously a myth.

@Delekham

4 жыл бұрын

@@sjobang Well said!