Wonderful WigWam - WOW

Scott McKain and John Livingston made this WigWam Kiln out of 16 gauge steel with an ingenious method of clamping it that uses angle iron to stabilize the seams. It was a little challenging to put it together for the first time because the flat sheets had to be bent to fit. However, after the heat of firing the kiln, the sections retained the curves and will be easier to put together next time.

Once again, our wood was fairly wet - much of it was more than 30% moisture, so we did not get the yield we would have liked, however the kiln got plenty hot - more than 700 degrees C at times. And we made a lovely batch of biochar, destined for the rabbitry manure pits and ultimately, John's worm bins.

John and Scott assemble the WigWam

OK, now how do we get him out of there?

All loaded up

We have ignition!

Color shows how the burn advances. Thermocouples let us know what's going on inside. The lid was added to try to cool it down a bit as temperature rose above 700 degrees C

Quenched with water, time to unload

Nice looking biochar

Frog Farm Gets Forest Biochar

Frog Farm helpers came out to the woods where we made biochar back in December and scooped up about a cubic yard of biochar for use on the farm.

loading biochar from a forest burn into some used pellet bags

We filled the truck

Some went into the compost pile

Some was used in the duck pen

Barbara Long found this poem that Jim had kept. She would like to share it with you:

Taken from Dr. Ian Lowe’s’s address to the 1^st Asia-Pacific Biochar Conference, on the Gold Coast, Australia, May, 2009

Here’s a summary of my talk

In case you slept or took a walk

We know your civilization’s through

If we don’t cut back on CO2.

It won’t matter how we toil

If we don’t put carbon in our soil

And so the future’s shining star

Yes, you’ve guessed it, Biochar!

I’ll just remind you, climate changes

Threaten clear and present dangers

We know we have no future here

 Unless we fix the atmosphere.

Clean energy will have a role

But fixing carbon is our goal

No matter who or where you are

Let’s raise a glass to Biochar!

Submitted to IBI by Thayer Tomlinson, 07-15-09

Kon Tiki Biochar Production System in Australia

This is worth checking for very detailed information on all stages of this small scale biochar production system: http://www.thebiocharrevolution.com/blog/biochar-production-in-kon-tiki-australia-1