charcoal burning

[Woodworks]

I'm even smaller scale than csservices!

 

I make my charcoal in the livingroom. One metal sweetie tin (Quality Street etc)

filled with wood and half a dozen screwdriver holes in the top.

 

Cook in the woodburner and remove. Put damp cloth over the holes. Takes about 30 mins to cook up

 

Definately not for commercial use!!!!!

 

Thanks for this

 

Opened my sweetie tin this morning to unveil my first ever home made charcoal.

[Monikieman]

Well done Woodworks. Thats the stuff. Now get a wee bit fillet steak on the bbq.

 

It gets a little bit addictive and some times I have 3 or 4 tins filled ready to cook.

 

I get off cuts from a local joiners and had a run of good luck with oak off cuts which made great charcoal.

[Ian Leach]

Thanks for this

 

Opened my sweetie tin this morning to unveil my first ever home made charcoal.

 

you can also put twigs in and use it for charcoal drawing , me girls love it.

 

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

[Rob Stringer]

How would you define higher efficiency?

 

They apparently have a better conversion rate for charcoal produced to wood put in than ring kilns, burn times are quicker and less smoke emissions etc...Shame about the cost, you'd need to sell a lot of charcoal to make it worthwhile.

[openspaceman]

They apparently have a better conversion rate for charcoal produced to wood put in than ring kilns, burn times are quicker and less smoke emissions etc...Shame about the cost, you'd need to sell a lot of charcoal to make it worthwhile.

 

Hi Rob

 

So it's The yield from a given amount of wood that you consider to be the efficiency.

 

Also you see that the conversion rate is higher for a retort compared with a ring kiln.

 

The basic point is that charcoal yield varies with the cooking temperature, basic retorts depend on the charge of wood being heated by the retort walls, and as I said earlier, the wood pyrolysing inside the retort will largely self limit its temperature at around 440C unless you cook it over long. As all the heat for drying and cooking the charge never contacts the wood it makes little difference in yield whether the wood is green or dry, it's the cooking time that gets longer with wet wood.

 

With a kiln the fire is inside the charge of wood and the heat comes from burning some of the char. This leads to two reasons why the char yield is lower, 1 because you have consumed char to raise the temperature to boil off moisture and heat the charge to pyrolysis temperature and 2 because there is direct contact between products of (incomplete) combustion and the charge the temperature tends to be higher which drives of more volatiles as offgas. If the wood is green then far more heat is needed to dry the charge before it pyrolyses and hence a lot of char is consumed.

 

I expect this is what Cracker meant for efficiency also but I have a different take on it; consider that the remaining calorific value of the char is probably below 50% of the calorific value of the dry matter of wood that you started with.

[Chris Gagen]

A bit like cheating really but we make charcoal here using offcuts from kindling production. Had great results and now have the method for this material down pat, just need to master the marketing side now...

Last year was our first season of trying and the weather wasn't on our side for side BBQ charcoal.

The biggest surprise with this stuff was that even the smallest scraps made good charcoal, even down to 1" square

 

Looking forward to getting back to production, always good to have some cider on the go and some rabbit and sausages on the BBQ

[hedgesparrow]

i was scrub clearing this week had a fire not ideal had some thorn to get fire going then it was elder horible stuff to burn. had to make sure fire could not blow in wind as plenty of dry grass yes this time of year. banked it with earth then covered to stop wind blow next day removed earth and had some good charcoal left and still warm ideal to get fire going again worked all the days up on hill last day just banked earth p again and left it will go out and will decompose over summer but made charcoal if not deliberately. so need to get going making it this summer have plenty of old hazel to use.

[458 Lott]

My yards in Teignmouth may to sept will be making a kiln a week

No bunny huggers or keep your views to yourself I dun enough fighting

It's straight forward stuff

Pm me if your serious

[Rob Stringer]

I expect this is what Cracker meant for efficiency also but I have a different take on it; consider that the remaining calorific value of the char is probably below 50% of the calorific value of the dry matter of wood that you started with.

This is one reason I only use material not easily saleable as firewood for charcoal production as well as it being dirtier and less profitable work. Always good to have a kiln going in the background during the summer while getting on with other stuff though.

[Peasgood]

Thanks for this

 

Opened my sweetie tin this morning to unveil my first ever home made charcoal.

Haven't got around to having a go yet, but I will.

Made it in the past using a 5 gallon metal drum (old grease drum) with success.

 

Why don't you put the lid back on your sweetie tin, take it to the beach or somewhere, take the lid off, fit a mesh and just light it in the tin.

Anyone that has been to Bangkok will have seen the street vendors cooking exactly that way.