Yes, charcoal≠coal. I don't think the OPs point was to try and get more energy than already exists out of the resource he has, but rather to try and get some energy out of the resource instead of just letting it go to waste (rot). The problem is; he has this resource which has no commercial value, and he has determined that the work involved in turning it into heat (value) for himself is not worth it with the resource in it's current state (wood). The question is; is the work involved in turning the resource into a more useable state (charcoal) worth the effort/expense of doing so? I like the biochar idea myself. Oh and welcome Timberdog, maybe you could tell us about your dog(s) Giz/Emma and everyones pets on the board
I wouldn't personally waste the effort on it. Pine doesn't make good charcoal, it tends to turn to ash quickly. It would be worth keeping if you could dry it under cover for maple syrup evaporator fuel.
I moved forward with this today. It was raining out and I had nothing really to do but chunk a few cord of wood into a fire so that is what I did. It was surprising how hot and quick of a fire that was made. It was about 50/50 Spruce and Pine, or about a cord per species. I let it cook for about 2 hours than covered it over with dirt with my bulldozer so that it will continue to cook some more. Right now I am pretty happy with the results. The investment in time and money has been very little so really it is just a matter of how much volume I will get. I started small as I was not sure how things would go. So far I got about: 30 Minutes making the fire pit 2 Hours cutting the wood 2 Hours tending the fire 15 Minutes covering the fire with dirt (2 Hours-45 minutes) I am thinking that from everything I read, I should be getting about 3/4 of a cord charcoal with a 50% conversion rate, and then some losses removing it from under the soil. I am not too concerned about that because if the charcoal produces plenty of heat, I can find ways to make the whole process easier to do. The one thing i do like is that it will allow me to burn softwood for home heating and not hardwood, since I can get rid of every hardwood tree on my property right now. I will see what the end result was when I dig into the charcoal in a few days after it has cooled.
This^ exactly what all of us are slightly always worried about with wood as it is biodegradeable with enough moisture. Thing is, this doesnt give us much difference in the wood in terms of its organic composition but rather its ions. You can compress charcoal but is it worth it? Only if you have the time and equipment for easy flowing manufacture but still could be worth trying for personal purposes. Just a thought
I have done a lot of research on charcoal and found a lot of interesting stuff. Charcoal has around 13,000 btu's per pound, only slightly less than anthracite coal which has 15,000 btu's per pound. This is mixed hardwood charcoal of course, so I will not get that, but that is okay. 'Use what you got' is my motto. At the same time pine was commonly used to make charcoal, it not being as prevalent as hardwood, but I make the assumption that it was used because it could be converted from wood growing tree to charcoal quickly; no waiting for the wood to season. In my case I plan to use hemlock only because I have so much of it. But there are a lot of things I do like about charcoal so far: 1) It is an all mechanical operation. Cut the trees, load them onto my trailer, dump into a fire pit, burn and then dig it out with my tractor's loader. Other then the chainsaw work of felling and limbing the tree, equipment does the work. 2) I have a pot bellied stove to heat my home 3) I can use softwood that has no commercial value instead of hardwood which does 4) It is fast. My fire pit has a volume of 4 cords. Two burnings at 2 hours would net me enough volume to heat my home for the year. As indicated above, it is on par with producing traditional firewood, maybe even faster since my pot bellied stove requires small wood. 5) Storage size is considerable smaller for same btu's produced. Again in a few days I will break into the pile and see how hard it is to extract, the volume, and how it burns in my stove. The first two I can improve upon if the burning part is satisfactory.
I hope it works well enough to be practical to use in your home. Back when we had our old Fisher Papa Bear, there would be lots of charcoal left in the ashes after a fire. I would sift the ashes through a big square galvanized tray with half-inch holes (originally made to dry gladiolus tubers). Then I'd shovel the charcoal back onto a new fire. It made a lot of heat!
Dang dude! 4 cord fire pit, that's cool. Good for you for trying to make something useable out of what you have on hand. My first thought about burning charcoal is it messy. The pics of your place that you have posted look very nice. How will you store it inside and out? Won't it get soot over everything it touches? Not trying to bash just thinking out loud. Good luck
Nahhh not really, the blade on the bulldozer is 10 feet wide and 5 feet deep; by the time you get the pit even started its 4 cords in size! I would have gone deeper but I hit ledge. No Joke! I am not sure about the mess. I burn a lot of coal now and it is not like that, in fact firewood is probably a lot messier than the coal I burn, BUT that is anthracite coal, and charcoal I imagine would be more like bituminous coal. I never burned that, so I am not sure. I got some space left over in my woodshed so I will stuff it there for now and decide after burning it if it is worth continuing or not. I still have a lot of people insisting that Biochar is the way to go,but I am undecided on that yet.
