Naboo

Yes. I'm guessing most charcoal production around the world is damaging to people and or their environment in some way. On the contrary, I remember being taught at college that well managed coppice woodland (with standard trees) has much higher biodiversity that unmanaged climax woodland. A rare case of an artificial landscape possibly being 'better' than a natural one. (Not that I am advocating all British woodland being turned to coppice of course.)

Yes but it's a 'Currys PC World' now and the deals arn't quite as good. He's thinking of giving it up and having me transform him into a mighty hawk. He recons he'll get better pay scaring pigeons and starlings from the roof of Dalston shopping precinct. They have a real bird poop problem apparently.

Thanks for the promt replies people. It seems to me that the main problems are making something with a large enough capacity to make it worthwhile to do a burn whilst: 1) still portable. 2) not spreading your materials so thinly that the machine is likely to distort in the heat. Obviously the quality of native charcoal tends to be a lot higher than imported stuff, so I hope it would command a premium (to a degree). But I'm also hoping that if I can increase the efficiency, then it might be possible to compete with imported charcoal on price too.

Hello woodfolk, I am designing a portable charcoal/biochar retort for use by professional woodcolliers. I am pretty sure about the way my design will work, but I am after ideas of what people would want from a retort, such as capacity or the maximum weight of the thing. Most of my experience has been in woodland creation and tree surgery rather than charcoal making. I have used a ring kiln a couple of times but a retort is obviously a little different. My main motivation is environmental. ie. local charcoal, produced as cleanly as possible, from sustainable woodlands and not destroying habitats on the other side of the planet. What do members think of the state of the market for charcoal and biochar? What do you think of the current devices out there? I am open to any thoughts really. Although I've thought the design through pretty thoroughly over the last couple of years, I'm sure there will be some things that I haven't thought of yet.