Bananas.org - DIY Biochar

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wow... the guy at around 1:16 is hardcore! he straight up just ate a piece of charcoal.

Henry Ford (Ford Motor Company) was the King of biochar...

Kingsford Charcoal......Lump works pretty good in the Green Egg.

:woohoonaner:

.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsford_(charcoal)

^the only thing i cook with is lump

Quote:

Originally Posted by merce3 (Post 256742)

^the only thing i cook with is lump

ME Too...

Lump is good and HOT and will put a nice fast wanted char on a piece of beef.
Making me hungry just typing it:)

However for the Backyard Gardner....
Go to the Store and buy a bag of Lump Charcoal any brand will do.
Lay the lump charcoal on the driveway and bust it up in small pieces.

Mix a alittle Espoma Organic Garden Fertilizer or another product of your choice in the charcoal bits . Lightly wet it the mix and let sit for a bit... mix well.
And now you can put it in your favorite mix.
Each piece of charcoal will now be an oasis of nutrients for your plants.

I burn my yard debris and get a lot of charcoal if I rake the burning embers around instead of letting them cook down to ash. I mix that in with dirt and sawdust for excellent tree and shrub mix.

Charcoal briquettes have coal dust in them as well, which is why you get that sulfurous odor while its burning. IDK if that will affect the results or not if you were to use it. Seems to me as though it would tend to drop the pH significantly though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cincinnana (Post 256785)

thanks! i wondered if that was the same thing. one thing i noticed about the bags of lump, is the size of the bag doesn't matter as much as the weight. the denser/heavier, the longer and hotter it burns. some of the bags i have found are huge, but light weight and burn more quickly. others are small and heavy and a small amount goes a long way. i'm thinking the heavier stuff is probably more dense with nutrients too.

Coal weighs more than charcoal, so that may be the reason. I'd never noticed that myself; thanks for pointing it out!

Bump..tis the season to mix your own soilless mix with charcoal, for those new plants this year.

If you have the opportunity to make this do it.
This is a must have amendment to your special soil for all your great container plants

At a local nursery where I live in sw fl, they sell 20 or 30 pound bags of finely ground bio char. Works perfect in my potting mixes as well as supplementing in ground planting areas.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kanana (Post 311536)

At a local nursery where I live in sw fl, they sell 20 or 30 pound bags of finely ground bio char. Works perfect in my potting mixes as well as supplementing in ground planting areas.

Wow .... what is the cost??

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kanana (Post 311552)

I want to say $3.99

That is a sweet deal.:)

Quote:

Originally Posted by cincinnana (Post 311555)

That is a sweet deal.:)

Here it is from their website:

https://store.bigearthsupply.com/677...id=221601&cat=

I never knew how they mentioned quantity for biochar but they list it on the site as 1 cubic foot bag. Sort of the same thing for worm castings as I bought a bag to try that out for $16.99 The bag feels like it is 20# but I should weigh it. I should weight the Bio Char bag too as it is very heavy for a 1cu ft bag.

EDIT I went back to the site and the Worm Castings say 28# but the bag I have doesn't feel that heavy, and I think I paid $16.99 not $15.99 like the site says.

Its grill season again.:08:
During the holidays lump griling charcoal is on sale at the big box stores

Pick up a bag and pound it to small pieces to make your inexpensive
soil conditioners.

A little goes a long way and it lasts forever plus your soilless mix or soil will benefit greatly.

When I was a kid, I made my own charcoal to use in making gunpowder because the charcoal briquettes sold for barbequing are useless for that purpose. The more porous the charcoal, the faster the gunpowder burns. The less dense the wood, the more porous the charcoal. I found balsa wood to be best, although it is too expensive for commercial production of gunpowder.

My procedure for making charcoal was to take a coffee can with a tight fitting metal lid and punch about 10 nail holes in the bottom of the can. After putting wood into the can, I put it on a stove burner so that the gas escaped from the bottom of the can into the flame of the stove burner. That increased the fuel efficiency while reducing the stink, but, it was still necessary to open a window to ventilate the room.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aruzinsky (Post 316767)

Cool story.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aruzinsky (Post 316767)

Wow you did this inside your house? I'm hesitant to do this where I live for fear my neighbors will report me to the HOA when they see billows of smoke making BioChar. Hell, I use my Weber grill outside with trepidation even due to my neighbors.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kanana (Post 320165)

Yes, inside the house and I don't remember any smoke. As I previously said, the gaseous products from the wood are burned in the flame of the stove burner. That flame turns from blue to yellow when it happened, but, I don't remember any smoke, just some stink.

We use tons of biochar, it's lightweight, absorbent, and easily breaks with your hands.

https://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdige...arbon-markets/

First, let’s explain the basic difference between THREE materials: activated carbon, charcoal and biochar. Activated carbon, also known as activated charcoal and several other ‘active/activated source-material’ names, all come down to the implication of the modifier ìactivatedî. When used in conjunction with adsorbents, ‘activated’ refers to a small set of processing techniques that increase the internal microporosity of the original carbon-rich source material. All ‘activation’ processes remove individual carbon atoms and create individual nooks and crannies in the carbon-rich material, which are the adsorption sites. The key to activated carbon is that it is optimized for specific adsorption application (water, vapor, certain adsorbates, etc.) and the adsorption capacity is packed into as dense a material as possible to minimize the volume of adsorbent necessary. In the end, activated carbon is an adsorbent ñ intended to remove something, typically organic compounds, from either vapor or liquid streams.

Biochar vs charcoal

In contrast, Charcoal is a fuel that is used for cooking and other heat generating applications and created by heating biomass, typically wood, under conditions of limited oxygen. In general, charcoal burns hotter and with less smoke than the starting biomass, and also can convert mineral ores to the corresponding metals, inspiring a series of ages: bronze, iron, etc.

Biochar is made in the same manner as charcoal, but it is intended for utilization as an adsorbent and/or a soil amendment. Basically, the key is the end use of the material. It is charcoal if it is intended to be used as a fuel; hence it is manufactured with optimal fuel properties. In contrast, if the intended use is adsorption or as a soil amendment, then it is manufactured to a different set of properties and labeled biochar. As a result, biochar shares properties with activated carbon and charcoal, but has a few unique features that distinguish it from both.

While biochar shares adsorption properties with activated carbon, it also exhibits a significant amount of ion exchange capacity, a property that is minimal or absent in traditional activated carbons. The ion exchange property, which is usually measured and reported as ‘cation exchange capacity’, is due to residual carboxylic acid functionalities on the biochar graphitic backbone. Since activation removes any residual side chain aliphatic groups, activated carbons have reduced ionic interactions.

The other big differences between biochar and activated carbons are bulk density and mechanical hardness. Activated carbon is intended for applications where packing as much adsorption capacity into a fixed volume is paramount, like gas masks and fixed-bed adsorbers. In addition, activated carbon can be regenerated and reused in many applications, so mechanical hardness (also known as the lack of friability) allows the carbon to be moved without falling apart or breaking down in particle size.

If one combines the lower adsorption per unit weight of biochar with the lower bulk density, the resulting adsorption capacity on a volume basis is 1/6th to 1/12th that of high quality activated carbons. For this reason, biochar is typically used in applications where the material is spread out on the ground, so low density is not a disadvantage. In fact, in soil applications, where an important property is the ability to capture excess precipitation and retain it, the low density of biochar translates into additional voids that can fill when it rains.

Unique properties

Biochar is a material that is preferred when several of its unique properties can be exploited in the same application. The unique properties of biochar include low density (providing additional voidage and aeration in the soil), significant adsorption and cation exchange capacity, and the ability to promote living microbiology in the soil, enhancing the ìSoil Food Webî. Combining these properties leads to a predictable selection criteria for when to consider activated carbons versus biochar.