EWB charcoal, Sunday wrap-up (success!)
Matt Ball
A quick *wrap-up* of what went down: We first tried a small burn using
about four or five cobs with two handfuls of dried husks as kindling.
We successfully produced a flame but none of the cobs were fully
pyrolized. There was a lot of ash as well; this was due to an error in
our procedure, we didn't seal the bottom of the barrel after the initial
burn. Lesson learned! In a mildly bold move, we decided to go all out
and proceed with a full burn. The barrel was filled one third of the
way with dried husks and the corn cobs (roughly 100 whole cobs and maybe
10-20 cobs that had been split in half) were placed on top of this
kindling pile. It was ignited from four of the five holes on the
barrel's bottom. Thick plumes of smoke emerged and (miraculously) did
not draw the attention of any authorities. The smoke transitions
described in the D-Lab's manuals were observed pretty much as expected
(though I don't recall seeing a second plume of yellow smoke). It was
all sealed up with dirt after some time. Three hours later, we opened
'er up and found...the subject of the attached photo. Nice! All of the
cobs look to be charcoal-ified. I'm not sure what to say about the ash
content; the photo makes it look like it's higher than my eye tells
me...you'll have to judge it in person. So, it appears to have gone
well; though this report was quite long, a write-up filled with more
specifics will be placed somewhere on the website in a day or two.
*Photos* There's a photobucket account called dukeewbcharcoal with all
of my biomass charcoal-related pictures uploaded to it. It would be
great if others could add their photos to the same account in the
various folders. Pass: saveyourcob
*Binding* Next week we'll work on grinding/binding some of the cobs.
We could also try some calorimetry work on the charcoal in its present
cob-form. An email will go out later in the week with more info but I'm
currently thinking of meeting Sunday from 10am-12pm (this will probably
become the regular meeting time unless people email me with another
preference).
*Cob-seeker* It would be fantastic if someone could jump into this role
with some enthusiasm and creativity. We need more corn cobs...we went
through over 100 in one burn and we can't really hold corn barbecues
every weekend. Email me if you could spend some time helping the group
find more biomass.
*trivial administrative note* Email me if you would like to stop
receiving charcoal-related messages in your Duke account. And/or you
can remove yourself from the Gmail list if you wish:
http://groups.google.com/group/duke_ewb_charcoal
Thanks to everyone who could come out today, and I hope you all have a
splendid week.
Matt
