An Idiot's guide to Ancient Woodland management

[Bolt]

11 minutes ago, the village idiot said:

BIOCHAR.

 

......Not bad going for the boring old black stuff that burns your burgers on the BBQ.

 

That concludes this thread's delve into the world of charcoal. It's high time we headed back into the trees!

Inspired post, possibly the best one yet.

 

 

[the village idiot]

SHIPPING LANES.

 

Summer 2018 saw the return to the Wood of our good friend John Shipp. His task this time was to thin a large stand of predominantly Sycamore which had started to monopolise the 'classic' ancient woodland species in a portion of the South of the main Wood.

 

Sycamore is not considered a true native species of the UK. It made the mistake of arriving onto our shores a little too late to appease the boffins who came up with the classification. A lot of woodland managers cannot abide Sycamore and will pull out any saplings that dare to poke their head above the humus. Personally I don't have any particular grudge against it. Sycamore has been around long enough for many species to have become adapted to make use of it, including us humans. Sycamore is a good firewood, a nice carving wood and is highly sought after as a veneer. Rippled Sycamore is used to make violin and cello backs and commands an extremely premium price.

 

Sycamore does tend to get a little dominant if not kept in check. It seeds prodigiously and casts a dark shade which inhibits the growth of other species. Managed well though it can form a welcome part of your woodland mix, and we might well be very glad of it once our Ash populations are decimated.

 

John got going with the thinning, taking out about 30% of the stems which we had marked up in advance. The ground conditions were a little soft so John used his grab digger to construct brash mats with the branches of the felled trees. These formed 'highway routes' for the extraction, the branches cushioning the considerable weight of the tractor and fully loaded timber trailer.

 

 

These brash mats break down pretty quickly and there is no sign of them after a few years.

 

Once the felling was complete and all the timber extracted we were left with a lovely open stand with lots more light getting through to encourage the understorey.

 

 

 

John stacked all the timber roadside ready for the timber lorries to come and take it to the firewood merchants.

 

 

 

On this occasion no monies changed hands. We did a good old fashioned barter. John received the revenue from the sale of the felled Sycamore and in return did a good few days forwarding timber for our own firewood operation. This was from the ride widening work Steve and I had been busy with the previous winter. There was far too much timber and far too long an extraction route for us to manage alone with the limited kit we have.

 

It felt nice to do a barter and I will always consider it as a potential option into the future when other jobs come up.

 

 

 

 

 

[the village idiot]

33 minutes ago, Bolt said:

Inspired post, possibly the best one yet.

 

 

Blimey! Thanks Bolt.

 

My main focus was to try not to initiate a climate change argument. We've got other threads for those!

[Bolt]

2 minutes ago, the village idiot said:

Blimey! Thanks Bolt.

 

My main focus was to try not to initiate a climate change argument. We've got other threads for those!

I saw the fine line that you trod, and it was good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway, stuff all that malarkey...... back at full throttle to the trees!

[The avantgardener]

I guy I know has been doing experiments with Biochar for years now, this is the guy who links up several rings kilns, the heat from the first one lit pushes the residual moisture from the next before it itself is lit, and so on.

He charcoals the wood as chip rather than split logs  then adds various organic matter to ‘charge’ it.

He has been doing trials on various sites with Bartletts, with some impressive results.

The kiln set up is being used primarily in developing countries where the labour source is cheap and can produce large amounts of biochar to condition the soil and remove the need for continuous chemical fertiliser, slash and burn techniques.

[the village idiot]

3 minutes ago, The avantgardener said:

I guy I know has been doing experiments with Biochar for years now, this is the guy who links up several rings kilns, the heat from the first one lit pushes the residual moisture from the next before it itself is lit, and so on.

He charcoals the wood as chip rather than split logs  then adds various organic matter to ‘charge’ it.

He has been doing trials on various sites with Bartletts, with some impressive results.

The kiln set up is being used primarily in developing countries where the labour source is cheap and can produce large amounts of biochar to condition the soil and remove the need for continuous chemical fertiliser, slash and burn techniques.

That's interesting.

 

I hadn't heard of converting chip to biochar in ring kilns before. Would certainly bring the cost of production down.

 

I'd be worried that the emissions from the ring kilns (methane in particular) might counteract the environmental gains from the biochar?

 

I wonder if he can 'flare off' the gasses from his ring kiln chimneys, cutting his emissions and maybe harness that heat too?

 

You can link retort kilns together too and use the excess wood gas to fire the next kiln in line.

[openspaceman]

1 hour ago, the village idiot said:

I hadn't heard of converting chip to biochar in ring kilns before. Would certainly bring the cost of production down.

My problem with these various means of making char that get discussed is they are wasteful of the heat energy in the wood.

 

If you have dry woodchip (G50 W30) it is feasible to run it through a standard wood chip stoking furnace, utilise the heat and have the char as a byproduct. A chap in Canada, Alex English of Burts nurseries, did it with a chain grate and I followed his lead and made a very ashy char with a Kob 500kW(t) boiler.

 

Some 70% of the heat energy in the wood is in the pyrolysis offgas, we even ran a simple gas turbine using offgas from a pressurised kiln fired with veggie oil and made decent barbecue lumpwood charcoal, mind the capital cost of the gear was eye watering.

 

The challenge I was wanting to address was taking fresh arb arising woodchip, dry it, make a biochar and utilise the low grade heat.

 

 

[the village idiot]

5 minutes ago, openspaceman said:

Some 70% of the heat energy in the wood is in the pyrolysis offgas, we even ran a simple gas turbine using offgas from a pressurised kiln fired with veggie oil and made decent barbecue lumpwood charcoal, mind the capital cost of the gear was eye watering.

We had agg221 (arbtalk member) over with a rig he made up specially to measure the constituents of the off gas. I'll see if I can dig out the results.

 

 

 

 

 

[Mr. Ed]

4 hours ago, Bolt said:

I saw the fine line that you trod, and it was good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway, stuff all that malarkey...... back at full throttle to the trees!

I also noted the skilful avoidance of the split infinitive! Congrats. 

[The avantgardener]

6 hours ago, openspaceman said:

My problem with these various means of making char that get discussed is they are wasteful of the heat energy in the wood.

 

If you have dry woodchip (G50 W30) it is feasible to run it through a standard wood chip stoking furnace, utilise the heat and have the char as a byproduct. A chap in Canada, Alex English of Burts nurseries, did it with a chain grate and I followed his lead and made a very ashy char with a Kob 500kW(t) boiler.

 

Some 70% of the heat energy in the wood is in the pyrolysis offgas, we even ran a simple gas turbine using offgas from a pressurised kiln fired with veggie oil and made decent barbecue lumpwood charcoal, mind the capital cost of the gear was eye watering.

 

The challenge I was wanting to address was taking fresh arb arising woodchip, dry it, make a biochar and utilise the low grade heat.

 

 

This all sounds very efficient but not much use to a village in a developing country with no power supply to access.