Charcoal kiln or retort wanted

[harveyWhite]

I'm looking for a second-hand charcoal kiln or retort but I'm also thinking about having one made.

I would appreciate any advice on charcoal production on a semi commercial scale.

All the best,

Harvey

[agg221]

Have you spoken to The Carbon Compost Company? or to Beau (Woodworks on here)?  Both could probably give you some useful comment.

Alec

[openspaceman]

2 hours ago, agg221 said:

Have you spoken to The Carbon Compost Company? or to Beau (Woodworks on here)?  Both could probably give you some useful comment.

Alec

Also it depends on what you call semi commercial scale.

 

Beau @Woodworks has devised a neat retort system that makes small batches of char from seasoned branch loggings very quickly and efficiently handling the barrels.

[agg221]

I realised I could probably give a more useful answer to this.

 

First to say that I have no commercial interest in any system and do not own one, but have had some involvement in working with Carbon Compost Company professionally (not paid by them but by a third party). I have not seen Beau's system in the flesh, only on videos and photographs, but the data looks very promising. I do make charcoal, but only for my own use and I use a pit burn approach, which works well for the mix of biochar and charcoal that I am wanting to make.

 

Some thoughts.

 

Ring kilns are cheap but labour intensive. They also require quite a high level of operator skill, and loss of attention can result in loss of the whole batch.

Retorts are easier to control, tend to give more reliable yields and are also much quicker per batch, but they are more expensive.

Making charcoal is more labour intensive than making firewood. There is more time and effort invested in the product. If you have large volumes of raw material to process, or really you want to be working in the woods, charcoal may not be the most effective option - The Village Idiot's thread has some useful thought on this.

If you have limited raw material then it makes sense to add more value to it - charcoal can be a good way to do this. However, you need to consider whether you can get the return on investment needed to justify a retort, based on how many runs you cna do with your available material. There is a fairly narrow window where there is enough to make it viable but not so much that you are better off selling firewood. The same window exists for a ring kiln, but in a different place.

Whilst I have the utmost respect for the skill of using a ring kiln, personally the unburnt methane emissions which contribute 15x the global warming effect of CO2 make it a route I would not choose to take. That's a personal choice.

There is definitely a market for premium British charcoal. However, to make the most of that you need to add marketing, sales and promotion. You will need to retail rather than wholesale. That requires a whole additional set of skills.

There could be some interesting changes on the horizon. I would not want to rely on this but the Woodsure scheme may make charcoal a more attractive proposition, as may the emerging market for biochar and carbon credits.

At the moment I am not aware of any retort which can process chip rather than reasonable sized logs/branches. This would open up the biochar market considerably.

CCC's early products distorted quite considerably. Many changes have been made since then and you would need to satisfy yourself that this had addressed the issue. There are sometimes used retorts for sale.

I'm not sure whether Beau has yet defined a route to market for his design.

 

Alec

[Stere]

I think bigger volume ring kilns are more efficient, surface area to volume ratio......

 

Seem to do alot of charcoal in poland with large kilns with doors in. Not any in the UK of this type?

 

 

Don't think retorts make sense as seem very  expensive and how many burns before wear out and parts need replacing?

 

 

Alibaba has loads of kilns of various designs alot have overhead hoists

 

 

[openspaceman]

4 hours ago, agg221 said:

At the moment I am not aware of any retort which can process chip rather than reasonable sized logs/branches. This would open up the biochar market considerably.

Most chipstokers can produce biochar, I worked with reciprocating grate KOBs which would dump ashy char through the de ashing system if you cut primary air and allowed the refractory surface of the secondary combustion to pyrolyse the incoming dry chip. It didn't look like a difficult step to recirculate a small amount of offgas using slightly higher pressure air to add some preheat under the grate where primary air would normally be used.

 

Chain grate stokers did this even better  as the hot chain starts the pyrolysis before it reaches the secondary area. The bottom of the de-ashing system was kept under water to quench the char and provide an air lock. 

 

This was between 2006 and 2008 and these were commercial woodchip burning units heating greenhouses and were not pursued by the owners because the biochar market did not really exist and of course about 30% of the fuel value was forgone as char.

 

When chip prices were very low around 2012 I devised a system that dried and pyrolysed arb chip using 2 augers and a lock hopper but had to abandon the development when I retired and subsequently the equipment was scrapped. Woodchip prices had risen substantially following RHI.

 

Of course at that time there was no market for biochar and the EA were actively preventing its use for fear of run off damaging fish stocks in rivers.

[Woodworks]

On 22/09/2021 at 09:59, harveyWhite said:

I'm looking for a second-hand charcoal kiln or retort but I'm also thinking about having one made.

I would appreciate any advice on charcoal production on a semi commercial scale.

All the best,

Harvey

Hi Harvey.

 

Pleased to say my little retort is about to go into production in conjunction with the Carbon Compost Company. Not quite sorted yet but should have retorts for sale in time for next season if not sooner. Message me if of interest   [email protected]

 

Thanks Alec and Andrew for the mentions 

Edited October 8, 2021 by Woodworks