ammo can biochar production in wood stove

[John Bonitz]

Dear Friends,

For about a year now, I have been admiring Jim Karnofski's elegantly
simple method of biochar production: Filling old ammo cans with wood
chips or pellets, then pyrolyzing them in a wood stove. This
low-tech, batch method is very attractive to me, in that it is a
re-purposing of old and existing equipment, and because just about
anyone with a wood stove could probably do it. But it's also
attractive because it eliminates all questions of wasted thermal
energy or the possibility of nasty emissions from primitive backyard
retorts or kilns. Assuming the woodstove is designed for efficiency,
and the feedstock is sustainable, the climate benefits should be
un-arguable.

Well, I don't have a woodstove, but my brother-in-law does. And my
2010 Christmas gift to him (Albert Bates' book) was still lingering in
his mind. So this Christmas I gave him a few old ammo cans and a
five-gallon bucket of wood pellets, along with a printout of Jim
Karnofski's instructions. He was thrilled!

He has recently reported several weeks of success with this method,
and because he is a composter and a gardener, he is very enthusiastic
about the project, and the potential for enriching his soils.

I'm enclosing a photograph of the ~15 gallons of biochar he has so far
produced. (I hope the google-group system allows photo attachments...
If it goes through, I'll send a few more photos he's shared with me.)

Now, does anyone have any suggestions for cheap, low-energy-input
methods of grinding chunk charcoal before use as biochar? My
google-ing is not showing any especially good solutions for this scale
of production.

John Bonitz
Pittsboro, NC
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[John Bonitz]

It looks like the first photo got through and can be seen on the
Google-group site.  So I'm posting a few more of my brother-in-law's
photos, from his earliest tests of the ammo-can-in-wood-stove method.

They should all be self-explanatory.

Enjoy!

[John Bonitz]

More photos of finished biochar from the ammo-can-in-wood-stove method...

[Erich Knight]

Hi John,
Just dump on a tarp, soak it if it's really hard, then run over it as I did in 09;
My 09 field trials with the Rodale Institute & JMU ;
Alterna Biocarbon and Cowboy Charcoal Virginia field trials '09
http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/node/1408


For those looking for big home production google JRo, the Jolly Roger Oven.
A TLUD driven Retort
 
Erich