With Pyrolysis & Biochar

What would happen if the 100s of thousands of American backyard gardeners cooked their produce on grills that made biochar which they then returned to their gardens?

What would happen if the 100s of thousands of American backyard cookers worked with grills that made biochar which was then returned their gardens?

By simply changing our cooking technique, could we break down the silos that today too often keep Growing and Cooking separate and disconnected?

For starters, the food cooked this way is so good that it would be incentive enough.  Just ask Marshal Webb.  I do know this:  This backyard cooker’s Weber grills and Big Green Egg will never see conventional charcoal again.  From now on, they will be biochar makers, no longer charcoal burners.  Carbon negative gardening in healthier soils creating produce with improved nutrient density and carbon negative cooking that helps reduce the CO2 levels in the atmosphere are benefits that simply become the icing on the cake.

From the perspective of biochar, the choice is clear:

1. Invent and grow a market that does not exist today;

or

2. Work with and grow two vibrant and existing markets.

Consider that over 1 million tons of conventional charcoal are made every year for backyard cooking.  Thank you Henry Ford!  By comparison, the amount of biochar made and sold is an insignificant rounding error.  Consider that the number of backyard gardeners is great enough to create a robust supporting market place.  In comparison, the number of biochar makers/users is next to zero.  More particularly, what percent of backyard gardeners are members of NOFA?  So, taking a page from a certain bank robber, the promoters of biochar might do a great deal better by going to where the market and customers already are.

The question now is simply how do we bring this opportunity for integration and market expansion to the attention of the legions of backyard gardeners and cookers, as well as their supporting markets?  By a trivial change in our cooking technique these two can now become one.  This is low hanging fruit and a great opportunity –  if ever there was one: good for you and me as well as the environment.

I look forward to your comments.

Author: Jock Gill

The Bar-B-Q Re-invented for the 21st Century

Turning a recycled tuna fish can into a natural draft, carbon negative, backyard stove.

Ever since Henry Ford turned his waste wood into charcoal, and gave away bar-b-que sets with his cars, we have been enjoying “cookouts”. Over 1 million tons of charcoal are made every year in a process that throws away all of the heat released by the pyrolysis of the wood.  This is a huge amount of energy from biomass that is simply discarded.  As there is no longer any place for “waste” energy, perhaps it would be better to change our approach to the All American Cookout.  What if we used the heat produced by pyrolysis to cook with?  What if the resulting charcoal, biochar, had many environmental benefits?

Below, I illustrate a simple way you can do this yourself.  Today.  No need to wait for a big grant or a magic silver bullet.  Besides, it is fun, gives great tasting results, and is, incidentally, quite educational.



Once the 4lbs of tuna fish had been removed by the buyer, the can was “retrieved” from the recycle bin at Marty’s First Stop in Danville. VT.  Thank you  Marty!

Cost: $0.00

The outer ring of smaller holes was added latter, after the first test burn indicated I did not  have quite enough primary air coming into the iCan. I did not want to add 50% more air, so I used a 3/32 inch bit to make smaller holes.  These could have been made with a nail 2 inches long, but these would have been slightly larger then 3/32.  So I might have used fewer holes, or I might let their size offset the smaller holes made by the other nail — assuming I am using no  power tools.

The second step is to make the holes for the secondary air supply.  Here I have measured down about 1/3 of the height of the can, as is my practice when making iCan stoves.  I took the circumference and divided by 19, as I wanted lots of secondary air.  After putting dots around the can every 1/19th of the way around – I use a fiberglass quilters tape that has Centimeters marked on one side – I made pilot holes, then enlarged them in two steps to get to this final size.  The last tool used was a 6 inch spike. This yielded holes slightly smaller than a #2 pencil.

Note:  These are only departure points.  You can vary the number and size of holes as your experience suggests.  Try more, fewer, smaller, larger and various combinations of all of these.  You will son learn that you adjust the number and size of the holes to tune the system for best results.  For the Char-B-Que,  I want longer cooking times and a good biochar yield, but clean biochar with as little residual tar as possible. Too long a burn leaves dirty biochar.  Too short a burn is nice and hot, but burns up more of the biochar than I want to lose.   Like Goldilocks, I do not want it too hot and fast, nor too slow and dirty, but “just” right.

“Just right” in a simple iCan TLUD stove will yield about 18% of the weight of the input fuel as biochar.  This will be about 1/2 the volume of the original fuel.  Further, the biochar will absorb water and sink, and, when ground between your fingers, will simply rinse off without any need for soap.

Step three is to load your stove with fuel.  I use one quart of softwood pellets.  In any case, leave some space between the top fo the fuel and the secondary air holes.  This allows the wood gas to create a barrier that keeps oxygen away from the fuel so that you have pyrolysis of the fuel, NOT full combustion, which would reduce the fuel to its elemental ash.

The aluminum drip pan will catch the grease from meat items you cook.  You will notice that the grease does not burn as it will not get above 300 degrees.  But it will flow out of the meat as it cooks, so you will want to use a drip pan.

Note: The iCan stove and the drip pan are placed on the bottom, or charcoal, grate of the Weber grill.  The Weber’s bottom vents are open all the way.

The cooking grate has now been placed over the iCan and the drip pan.  I have found that I get much better results if I use a 4″ tall can as a draft enhancer.  I set this topless and bottomless can over the center of the iCan.  In its previous life, this four inch tall can has held tomato sections, or the like.  Maybe baked beans.

Cost: $0.00

Detail of the draft enhancer.

Once the pyrolysis has a good start — about 4-6 minutes –with  the wood gas burning where the secondary air is coming in and the flames are coming well up into the draft enhancing can, then I put the lid of the Weber on.  This picture shows a second draft enhancing can. It formerly held tomato juice or pineapple juice or some other juice.  If the exit draft is not strong enough, the gases from the burning wood gas will smother the fire.  You can experiment with taking this can off and watching the state of the wood gas flames change.  Put it back on and watch how the pyrolysis changes.  If it goes out and starts to emit a white smoke, simply remove the lid, re-light the wood gas, and wait a bit before replacing the lid AND the the outer draft enhancer.

If everything is going well with the pyrolysis, the exhaust gases will be HOT.  They are plenty hot enough to cook marshmallows slowly with great results.

This is about what your Char-B-Que should look like for its 45 – 50 minute run time.

No apparent smoke!

If you get smoke, you will get lots of it.  This is telling you that not all is well with the system.

At the very end of the session, you will get a darker smoke that indicates that the wood gases are exhausted and the pyrolysis of the fuel is complete.  This is your signal to carefully take apart the Char-B-Que — wear gloves as the handle of the lid gets VERY hot.  When you have removed the food, draft enhancer, and the cooking grate, use long handled pliers to gently lift up the iCan stove, now with a load of very hot charcoal, and slowly dump the charcoal into a bucket of water — just enough to cover the charcoal.

The Fire is just started. The corn and the potatoes are in position.  Now to wait for the pyrolysis to get firmly started and for the fire starting gel to burn completely off.

Note:  To start the pyrolysis of the fuel, you can also take a handful of fuel and soak it in 91% rubbing alcohol for 2 minutes.  Drain very well.  Then sprinkle it over the top of the fuel in the iCan TLUD.  TL stand for Top Lit.  We want the pyrolysis to start only on the top of the fuel and then evenly work its way down through the fuel until it reaches the bottom of the iCan and self-extingusishes.

As I know this will “burn” for about 45 minutes, at about the 20 minute mark I will sear the steak over the iCan for about 90seconds per side and then place the it over the drip pan. I will turn the steak once, such that each side gets about 8 – 10 minutes of exposure to the highest indirect heat.

From time to time, but not very often,  I will also rotate the corn and the potatoes.  When I add the steak, last night it was a nice, thick, 16 ounze Delmenico, I will also add the yellow summer squash off to one side in a strainer basket.

The proof was in the pudding.  Simply outstanding results. Slow cooking over indirect heat has a lot to recommend it.

This non-cook now wants to cook this meal for his foodie wife.  But his vegetarianb daughteres will only want the veggies.

I see some dots that might just connect:

Slow Money

Local & Slow Food

Carbon Negative Slow Cooking with the biochar circling back to the local food producers.

For some very interesting commercial developments in the world of pyrolysis, look into the work being done by ZeroPoint Clean Tech.

Posted by: Jock Gill

What is this picture all about?  Read the whole Char-B-Que story and find out.

Author:  Jock Gill

…we are still left with a disaster of a war in Afghanistan that cannot be won and that the country as a whole will not support.

Winning in Afghanistan & Pakistan will require that Saudia Arabia stop using our oil dollars to fund the Taliban, their Wahhbi missionaries.  It will also require that Pakistan have blackout-free electricity and adequate supplies of clean water.  The winner will have to deliver shoes, clothes, food and education to the youth of Pakistan and Afghanistan, as the Taliban now do. Further, population growth has to be accounted for in planning and the governments of the US, Pakistan and Afghanistan must be willing and able to pay more than the Taliban.  Currently, the Taliban use their Saudi funding to be the highest wage payers.  Paying dearly to fight and enemy that we are at the same time superbly funding with our mindless energy policies is the height of folly and puts us squarely on the road to disaster.  To make matters worse, our tax policies are not aligned with our military and political objectives.  In fact, our tax policies demonstrate that we are hooked on the magical thinking that we can have it all:  ”guns and butter” with victory on the cheap.  Our opponents know full well that this confirms our lack of commitment and staying power.  Much the same could be said about our drug policies and their internal contradictions.  Why is none of this being broadly discussed here in the US?  Charlie Wilson and the CIA created the Taliban but then we abandoned our friends with the bitter fruit being a Taliban that has morphed into an out of control  monster.  Lastly, we must confront and reduce the level of deeply entrenched and systemic corruption that bedevils all parties in this conflict. Until we honestly face the ground truths listed above, and eliminate the flow of our energy dollars to Saudia Arabia, we will be locked in an unsustainable and un-winnable conflict, largely of our own making.

Author: Jock Gill

Yesterday, I took a novel approach to converting short cycle organic carbon, a product of photosynthesis, into long cycle elemental carbon, biochar, with a one quart retort.  It gave a very clean result with the retort clean as a whistle at the end.  No tarry residues on the inside of the lid or any place else.  The retort was loaded with about 1 quart of wood pellets and yielded about 16 oz of char — by volume.

To read how this becomes “Everyman’s gas well in a can, a distributed solution”, please follow the link below:

Everyman’s gas well in a can, a distributed solution .pdf

The illustrations and text in the PDF will allow you to make your own gas well in a can easily, quickly, and safely. It’s a fun project that you will enjoy. I hope you will do this experiment and then post comments about your experiences for other readers to learn from.

If you use this in a science class, please let me know.

Note: For a good resource on biochar, I recommend the Biochar Farms site.  Be sure to scroll down their top page to see their excellent “Schematic of Biochar Solutions“.

Note 2: ZeroPoint Clean Tech is well on the way to commercializing the use of “Manufactured Gas” made from biomass — NOT coal.

Note 3: Here is a link to the Wikipedia entry on  the key role “Manufactured Gas” played in economic development in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Author: Jock Gill

I must now turn to address the theme that I have selected for conveying my thoughts to you which is: The Sanctity of Life: Faith as the Underpinning of the Family.

The significance of “life” itself, which is regarded as the universal sine qua non of anything meaningful or even desirable in Platonic terms of our worldly existence, is manifestly regarded as the pivot around which all that is beneficial to the human race revolves. Religion or faith based evaluations of this phenomenon are most educative to us today. Faith as such is the harbinger of many good tidings for Mankind; yet it is trite knowledge that it is purportedly considered by some as the basis used by even well meaning people to advocate criticism, even ridicule of other faiths.

In the world in which we find ourselves in 2010, there as such much acrimony and mistrust by followers of races and of adherents of diverse faiths against those who are just “different”.2 I am privileged to be the author and presenter of the new contemporary right which was presented to the world in the Mexico Conference of 1980 which examined and upheld the availability of this new human third generation human right actually called, the “right to be different”.3

The whole presentation is in the PDF in the link below:

The Sanctity of Life and basis of Family.pdf

Posted by: JPG

Marissa, a newly minted 2canologist at Shelburne Farms, has just lit about 4 pounds of softwood pellets in the TLUD [Top Lit Up Draft] stove she has just built. In about 75 minutes, this will turn into about 1 pound of biochar suitable for experimenting with.

For more on 2canology at Shelburne Farms, please see this item in inFARMation.

For illustrated documentation and directions for becoming a certified 2canologist yourself — it is easy, fun and very entertaining — you will find Dr. Hugh McLaughlin’s instructions here. 2canology is Dr. McLaughlin’s ingenious and creative gift to the world of biochar.

Biochar is now entering the mainstream media — as evidenced by this front page story in USA Today.

Photos courtesy of Marshall Webb of Shelburne Farms.

In a historical context, we have yet to conceptually realize the philosophical foundations of the 2008-2009 public affirmation of the country’s [Pakistan] judiciary. I do not recall a single modern historical precedent wherein the elected government of the day was almost swept from its incumbency by popular revolt that resulted in re-establishing the country’s superior judiciary headed by the present Supreme Court and its chief justice.

In a country where praetorian, feudal and colonial norms determine social thinking and public behaviour, democracy remains susceptible to anti-democratic challenges. Playing the role of a knight in the service of democracy in Pakistan is neither easy nor follows any set practice since polemical rhetoric or the borrowed and fake robes of a martyr are always seen through by the masses who are being made the target of such an adornment. The people have become as suspicious of the calls of “democracy being in danger” as they are wary of slogans such as ‘Islam in danger’ or ‘stability at any cost’ or ‘Pakistan first’. The weaknesses in the case of those gunning for the independence of judiciary are clearly visible, but its defenders need to see that the task in front of the Supreme Court’s handling of national causes is both delicate and difficult.

Please read the full essay here.