I love that you posted this for free on KZfaq! Thank you so much! Knowledge should not be held back.

I use pine cones that are all over the place in my yard. The simplest method on the net. I fill a gallon can with pine cones, drill a hole in the top of the can, then place it in my fire place that I use from fall to spring. In 2 to 3 hours, biochar. The pine cones crush to very fine pieces also. Perfect for biochar. I make a compost tea from soil, compost, worm castings, leaves, lactobacillus, fish amino acid and emulation, pink salt. Basically whatever nutrients I have on hand. I let it brew a couple of days then pour it into the biochar. Let it sit for a month then pour it into my compost bins. I don’t have a large garden so I don’t need a lot. But if I burn 100 fires during the season I can have approximately 50 gallons of biochar.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one geeking out on biochar

Don’t let this distract you from the fact that if you want to see an albino squirrel go to 35:35 and look at the maple tree on the top right

Copied your drum system and my first batch worked perfectly… I am completely amazed it worked.

I made a kiln based on this video a few years back. I used half of a 300 gallon propane tank cut to 6"s higher than a 55gal drum, which sits inside the propane tank.. The lid has a 4.5" stack. It makes charcoal to perfection. Back then, the gentleman that created the video mentions, that he tried to use a chipper to fine grind the char, after crushing it with the tractor. Too much dust was the issue. I do the same, and use the chipper, but first soak the crushed char. No dust and the finished product is really fine. To protect the chipper, run 2-3 loads of dry material through it after grinding the char.

A small biochar device might be placed inside and large greenhouse to burn during the day to warm them in Winter and to stimulate plant growth with the carbon dioxide. In this way you can use all of the energy heat and carbon dioxide that you are loosing now. -- J.E. Ante.

With the nails from pallets. You could drag a roofers magnet over the biochar after the burn. That would pull out all the metal. just as roofers use it to clean the stray nails from customer's Gardens and yards after a job.

The small amount of ash can be saved up until you want to make lye. That in turn may be used in soap making. The fat could be rendered down in pots on top as you are making biochar. There, you’ve used two byproducts of this process! You can throw on a Dutch oven and make stew. Thanks for the ideas! Oooooo! Just had another idea... Wrap piping around the chimney to heat water...

I've seen other videos on this but today I discovered a great community of proactive thinkers. My hat is off to you all.

Such a clear, concise, economic speaker, and those two young men. Unbelievable for them to acquire this knowledge at such a young age. Such good men.

It's amazing how smart resourceful people can be both knowledgeable and brainwashed at the same time.

Awesome! Awe inspiring information and I see why I have been telling people not to burn any wood on their farms, "make d very best biochar!" Thanks 😊 🙏

Vent your stack in a long tube off to a closed chamber and use a good wood like maple for a smoker. Insulate your stack with a secondary chamber of water and vent your water off to create a water distillery. Combine the two previous ideas and further vent your smoker back through the water barrel and you have just reduced the wasted energy further, along with cleaning all of the exhaust through the water. You'll get some ash in your water chamber that will need to be cleaned every so often but ash is useful too. If you want to put in a bit of extra work with seals and such, you can make this super efficient.

For the home owner that has some organic material (branches, dry grass, leaves etc), there is a simper method that works a treat, doesn't burn up some of the wood ( in the outer annulus) in order to pyrolyze the rest(in the inner drum) and only uses a 200 liter (45Gallon) steel drum. Take the top off the drum but make no other openings in the drum. Start your fire in the bottom of the drum and start to add the branches you have. Save some of the fine material for the finish. Continually adding wood, drives the flammable gases off the wood and the combustion of these gases keeps the oxygen away from the charcoal that is building up on the bottom of the drum. Finish with the fine stuff to keep the heat up and ensure the layers below are well charred. When there is no more flame, tip the drum on it's side, then up on it's open end. Kick dirt around the rim of the drum so that no oxygen can enter. The next morning pull off the drum. You will find even leaves are carbonized and not burnt up. Put one in the palm of your hand and rub it with a finger. It will powder into charcoal dust.

Great video! I struggle to find gardeners who dont annoy me and who have good information on youtube. Its not as easy as you might think! You presented everything very clearly without any hand-waving and idiocy. Thanks! You just earned a new subscriber.

Just so we're clear, some tropical countries almost always make smoke to get the mosquitoes to fly away, especially in poor places, they needed to do that to avoid malaria or dengue

Excellent video for a rookie biochar maker like myself. Thank you for taking the time. I'm excited to get started!

I don't live on or near a farm but I love this stuff. This guy is good.

There are several designs for making charcoal or biochar. The smaller pieces of wood make better biochar. Biochar helps in several ways. It lightens clay soils, absorbs and holds water in sandy soils. The biochar creates a microbiome for living creatures that benefit the soil. The biochar is best precharged by mixing chicken manure or other manure with biochar. There is some misunderstanding about biochar. First, if you've already got great soil then you're not going to see much improvement in crop output. In fact you may see a bit less if the biochar has not been precharged. It takes a season of two for the biochar to naturally grow its microbiome. While it does this it uses some fertily from the soil. So, precharging the biocharge with manure is well worth the effort.

Human beings learning and developing ideas, ..... beauty!

Thank you for a great presentation, very informative and inspiring. We are in Samoa have been working with digesters, green waste mulch and are now turning to add a biochar system as we have a lot of waste trees etc being delivered to our site. We are also going to re-use the heat for creating a steam process for removing pathogens and other nasty bacteria from dried sewage. Thank you again and all the best in your future ventures.

boy, how time flies when you're learning something interesting!

I love the ethics this guy has nailed down. If we do environmental harm, it's not sustainable and therefore not worth doing.

This is absolutely incredible. Thank you so much for posting this online! Aiming to set one up for our community. Thank you!

This is great! I think I could totally do this myself! And about ash: The best carrots I ever had were some we grew that time we worked our wood stove ash into the row before we planted. Who knew?!

I'm doing research for a client that wants biochar. This is the best video l've seen so far. Will pass it along. Thanks for sharing.

Great design. I have been searching a lot on how to utilize the gas out of pyrolysis chamber to optimize the fuel use. This retort design is definitely the answer.. thank you...

in my humble opinion , this project is the best , this one I would really like too try , thank you is not enough

"To me it looks like carbon that need sequestred" excellent quote and shared feeling, thank you much for the kind minded presentation :-)

I's like a gasifier where the wood on the inside normally produces the gas to fuel engines, except that the engine in this case is the same biochar furnace itself! Brilliant!

Wow !!! I am very impressed and amazed with this process. I live in North Carolina and when I first moved here 30 years ago I was 18 years old. I came from Detroit and when I looked around I knew there was money to be made around me but did not have the knowledge to do anything. Thank you for answering another question I had. Worms and the microorganisms to use to grow. Now with Biochar there is a beautiful way to expand there living and growing area. Amazing what the possibilities around us are. Thank you my friend.

Hello Dear Brother, I have seen this video, and It was really fantastic. and you know what you are talking about. you also explained it very effectively. you are also confident for you know what you are talking about. Good job.

I appreciate the whole system approach you're following. Have you ever used a coppice lot to produce your feedstock? For instance, one friend would coppice every fourth row in his hazel orchard. He saved on pruning time and got small firewood instead of just small branches. This more than offset the somewhat lower total nut production. I heard of a similar system a Brit in France was doing with apples.

Appropriate Technology with Scientific Methodology. Beautiful.

Albino squirrel at 35:31 at the base of the tree to the right of the speaker! Great lecture, im going to start making biochar ASAP!

As a chemist, I like your process and explanation

I've been watching Biochar videos all week and this is hands down the best one!!! Thank You. QUESTION: I have access to used drums but are we concerned of what chemical was in them? Is there a sterilization process? Burn wood a few times first to clean them? Thank You. Can you also explain how to attach the duct to the lid?

Thank you, fabulous, clear, concise demo!

❤ your presentation from Papua New Guinea 🇵🇬

amazing, very educational! thanks for the vids! definitely going to watch the whole set on biochar.

Woodstove and fireplace ash/charred wood is now your plants best friend!!!

I watched all 5 parts of this Epic Biochar Series. I am blown away by the clever use of energy you mad scientists rigged up. I want nice turf and to improve my soil, this was a rabbit hole I had no idea was out there. It was posed as a joke, but if we started making human char, the world would be full of soil that is going to be useful, and healthy. Some great ideas are actually from the place of comedy like that, but are weird to first think about. 🇨🇦👊🏻👨🏻‍🏭⚡💖🍁🙏👌🏻

I'm very glad to find this video right before i light up my container, looks like i need to adjust many things up before the go.

Hi I've watched your video over and over, I'm using this simple setup, it is yielding a good result, I always pick up on small details that I implement. hopefully one day I can use the heat to run a hot house or warm up water for an outside shower. I live in Australia Victoria in the high country of South Gippsland. in the winter it gets down to 0-1 degrees Celsius. the humidity here is about whats at the sub tropic 87% to 90% most of the time yet this is a could climate. Just to make tings wright, charcoal is only charcoal this its charged up with nutrients after that is BIOCHAR Kind regard from Down Under Endre

Some pallets are made from treated lumber. We were allowed to take the pallets home from work but we were warned not to burn them in the house because the pallet themselves were chemically treated

Love your 4 goals, hope you become the most powerful company in the world with that business model

Great stuff! Thank you 25:00 I think I would put a few heavy stones on that lid! especially if you were to leave it. Just so that the hot top don't blow off.

I have been thinking that biochar could be added to concrete to make it really light and insulative. I have noticed that it really preserves fence posts too. Charring the underground part of the post. I think you are onto something here. You can run engines on the gas too. Just need some processing first. I think you can condense the gasses into an oil too and that could be useful too.

Thank you for a very clear explanation on how to make a cheap, workable biochar retort.

this is my goto 101 to teach people about what i'm doing. thank you.

Very good explanation of the biochar process. I couldn't do this at my home because my homeowners association would throw a fit.

drill small holes in the stack and you will burn off the smoke as it rises through the chimney. which will increase the draft

Firstly I would incorporate a more robust system to reduce the cost of replacing the drums over time. Also I would incorporate a water or oil based system that could transfer the heat to a home or a stove top using pipes. Use mixing valves with temperature controls to automate the system so that you could heat a house or stove top to your desired temperature. There are a million ideas in my head that to utilize that clean and dirty energy coming out of the stack.

Very nice information about charcoal, the energyCan be used in many ways, your idea is very simple & safe. Your explanation & demonstration is very good . I liked it , thanks to you

Thank you so much! You changed my life . I would of loved to have this information sooner . Thank you so much !!!!!

So amazing and thank you for sharing. Is it possible to estimate the amount of energy input from the wood and also the time required to get the best biochar?

I appreciate the design used here. Seems to be about the right spot in terms of efficiency / cost / simplicity. I'm sure there are tweaks and enhancements for this design, but not sure if they're posted somewhere else.

Only started last week. Still have a lot to learn. Thanks for sharing 👍

I love those who say easy peasy.., will find that getting the right balances of wood stock and the right burn to get biochar and not just ashes is anything but easy to begin with. And it changes every-time your inner stock and outside stock changes. I will point out something I have not heard him really mention though he did touch on it with “neighbors”...is your local fire laws. Not everywhere especially if drought or high fire season...can you burn this. It’s the beginning stages that are dangerous or if anywhere the can could possibly get knocked over and catch the area on fire or windy. He touched in the many safety issues. Many times folks (especially guys) think “oh I got it, I’m not stupid” and the next thing you know they have burned the back shed down. Always have a strong flow working hose (hoses) with good strong wide distribution (like a firemen’s type) nozzle at the burn site period. Have several shovels and plenty of loose sand, or dirt. I like sand because it also helps anchor the barrels as long as you plan for the holes at the bottom not to get blocked (have to be higher up the can). But in case of an accident...you can easily shovel sand on the fire to put it out. Dirt works too but it can get hard and difficult to deal with if a lot of clay. I think the top should be anchored with fire bricks - regular will get too hot and may explode. But using a couple of kettles for making hot tea etc and for a big pot of chili, potato soup, etc even fry up some eggs or make cast iron biscuits or fruit cobbler is very good too. If you use fire bricks and get them very hot on the other side you can set them on cast iron lodge kettle to cook the biscuits and cobbler evenly. Or as mentioned below...start some coals to put on the top of the cast iron lid same as cooking on campfire.

A lot of possibilities: neighborhood heat plant, electricity generation with a microturbine, then use the heat (cogeneration), composting toilets, reclaiming grasslands, fracking water filtration, water reclaiming in drought areas. I will watch this again, a few times, I think!

Great video (finally). Thumbs up if you saw the white squirrel

is there a video showing how the barrel was made? I'm curious as to how to attach that chimney to the lid.

Soooo its charcoal?

A suggestion, you might appreciate. After the first burn period is over and it starts smoking, you can rebalance the oxidizing by adding a section of exaust stack to the existing stack until the draft is rebalanced. (the correct length stack)

How about dropping a copper coil down the top of the chimney to heat water and store it for washing, floor heating.

Great video, excellent explanation and seminar. I would argue that wood smoke is not bad for the environment and is not a pollution. In Woodtimber country and the great plains fire is a natural thing, the Native Americans and lightning used to burn the planes off all the time. In Woodtimber country the same thing would happen, and still does. Plants readily use all the carbon that is produced from wood smoke. I see it as a natural thing. In my opinion the wood smoke is a natural resource as much as the charcoal. Just my opinion and what I have observed naturally. Respectfully Luke

extraordinary technology, we in Indonesia call it charcoal. Thank you for sharing the information, sir

I have an abundance of dead fall (Aspen) around my property. Any recommendations, pros/cons regarding this relatively soft material for Biochar. Also can saw dust be used in any capacity within this process? Thanks in advance. P.S. the enlightenment in regards to the Biochar process is greatly appreciated. Thanks again. 👍

You say that the steel drums will be used up / rusted away after around 10 runs. Do you know if by building a similar design with firebrick would work out better for longevity? Also do you have or know of any good videos that cover smoke re-burn for wood burning stoves? Thanks.

Good setup. I'll share it. However you dont need to be afraid of ash so much. Ash is potassium. A good bio-available fertilizer

The best video of my life

would like to see biochar energy being used for something more, could you use the heat generated from the process?

Two questions: 1. How do you ensure a good seal on the lid of the inner barrel? Is it just a good metal to metal press fit? My barrel didn't have a good press fit and so I tried using a fiberglass seal made for wood burning stoves, but it melted. 2. What limitations do people see for scaling this design up to larger barrels? I imagine it could take longer to heat the inner barrel if the outer fire is further from the center--and therefore you might have to keep adding wood to the outer fire until the smoke from the inner barrel can sustain the process. (This was one of the biggest problems I encountered with mine when using wet wood--the outer fire would go out before things were done, so I had to monitor it for over an hour and sometimes restart the outer fire from scratch).

Great method. I'm curious to see how you attached the stack to the can top. I'm watching part 2. What a cliffhanger!

I have an idea for you. You could use restaurant used waste frying oil in a waste oil heater to run the retorts in your commercial operations. Just filter the food particulates out. Mix it with wood chips or something. Then when gassification begins and is enough to be self sustained, just turn the waste oil heater/burner off or low. That's the theory of it anyway. I hope that makes sense. Let me know what you think. And if you could somehow attached a steam turbine generator to use the heat being generated, all the better for you and your company.

If you are using pallets with nails, use a magnet to retrieve them after the burn-off.

I like the video, but retort doesn't come from or mean reburn. Retort is a vessel used to distill something. What you are doing is technically destructive distillation of wood.

100% handsomest Farmer ive foundt thus far paroozing youtube besides Barre Lando King of Pharming THANK YOU

Thanks for amazing education… mind blown 🤯

This is really great.

I like the instructors way of encourage creativity but use caution.. things that worked and didn't work and the sharing of ideas.

This is a great video especially for recycling the chimney heat (though they didn't show anything). Also, you can tip a barrel on its side to get the wood burning.. Once the fire is going tip the barrel up as normal while adding sticks.. Once full, cap it.. Really, it's that easy.. Also, the barrel doesn't need any holes.. I'm not sure why most people but holes in the bottom when oxygen isn't desireable (other than keeping the fire going to an extent).. But yeah, if this works for you great

Thank you, I'll probably try to make it for my sandy soil at some point. And for the planet, of course.

This reminds me of the Retort I used to use to make Coke for my Forge. I've since switched to Whitesmithing.

could you put metal ring larger than the barrel itself and placed over the pipe thus giving a wider area to cook on and no smoke. all so could this be used in the home as a source of heating .

What I do is take a barrel a lot like your outside one, fill it full of wood (big pieces as much as possible up to ~4inch diameter). then fill the space between those with sticks to get the fire going. Light a fire on the top, let it burn down. As it starts to burn, I keep putting wood in, but every hour or so I reduce the diameter of the feed stock by an inch or so. By the time I finish adding the 1 inch diameter stuff, the 4 inch diameter stuff has mostly charred through to the middle. I let it burn until the last sticks that I threw in have turned to charcoal (you can tell when this is because the big flames of the wood gas go away). At that point you just douse it with a hose until it stops steaming. If you plan to use it all for biochar, you can crush it, but I use the bigger bits for my charcoal barbecue, so I lay it out in the sun for a few days and rake it with a wide tooth metal rake and take all the medium to large charcoal and store it for the BBQ. The small chips are perfect size for biochar. Realistically, while this method is a bit less efficient, you also aren't dealing with a smaller airtight barrel, and you get more char per burn (I generally get a third to half a barrel full of charcoal). The method of using the smaller barrel works better for making BBQ charcoal actually, since you can use dense heartwood in the inner barrel and get good quality lump charcoal, but if you want biochar just burn it in the barrel, and if you want both, you'll get plenty of decent lumps along with the small chips in the burn barrel method, and all it takes is a bit of sorting afterwards to separate the larger stuff for the BBQ.

This is very educational and a lot of help in our environment.

I gotta try this now!

Slash-and-Char: Boost Crop Yields for Subsistence Farmers Slash-and-Char (instead of slash-and-burn) is one of many, many ways of doing things in an improved manner that can benefit all life. To the degree that this is implemented by subsistence farmers, they can gradually reduce the amount of new tillable land that they need to clear each year - instead of slash-and-burn and then having to move on again and again and eventually coming back to the first plot and repeating the process, the can gradually lengthen the time that they can utilize a spot before it becomes depleted. Eventually, they can continuously farm just one spot and allow the other spots to be used to raise nut or fruit trees or whatever else that doesn’t require tilling. Thus, food production expands. Note: This practice can be encouraged by international organizations that work to improve the lives of poor people, especially in the education of women. Search: international groups educate women

Thanks for sharing such useful info!!!!!!

I'm thinking if the exhaust had enough pressure, you could have it run into a pipe that curves down into the bottom of a barrel of water, maybe ending with a bunch of pinholes to percolate the gases evenly in the water. I'd attach a spout to the bottom of the water barrel, so that if I started seeing smoke or steam coming out of the oxygen holes in the burn barrel, due to back-pressure, I could drain some of the water to alleviate that. Any gases that exhaust would absorb into the water, making fertilizer water. CO2 and CO turns into carbonic acid (H2CO3). NxOx turn into HxNxOx (N-based gases to N-based acids). N-based gases can also turn into ammonia and ammonium compounds. Sulfur gases turn into sulfur acids. Phosphorous compounds could be carried over too, making things like phosphorous nitride, phosphates, and P-based acids. Potassium may be carried over a bit too, making potassium nitrate, and other compounds. On top of all this, most gases absorb into warmer water better, so the water being warmed will help with this. All these compounds I mentioned are keys nutrients for plants growth, (N, P, and K being the most important). The only problems is that the water would likely be quite acidic because of all the acids produced. It might turn out to be great for plants that like acidic soils, like potatoes, (which also like a lot of sulfur). If you need to neutralize the water a bit, you could crush up sea shells or egg shells (both CaCO3), which would also add calcium, another important plant nutrient. Potassium carbonate would be better, but I like to do things organically a lot of the times and I can't think of a natural source of potassium carbonate off the top of my head, other than going out and finding a mineral source to mine, which would likely be in a desert of scrub-land area. Boom, huge idea and information rant, haha! I can't help it, I'm an Environmental Sciences major who just got serious about organic farming, about a a year ago.

thank you so much for this video! very very interesting!!!

Can you add an overview at the _beginning_ of your video telling us the benefits of biochar?

I'm so glad I found this! I will be working with biochar for my thesis project, this video is really helpful :D :D

Can I biochar bamboo (green). How do I make activated biochar/charcoal for water filtering? Thx

Hi, could your way of making an oven for producing biochar be converted into the development of wood ovens for residential purposes so that they could become more effective and less polluting giving that your oven seem to be quite effective in regards to both of these parameters?

I wonder if you could redesign that biochar furnace so you can use the heat as a kiln for firing clay pots

Such an in depth and informative video. 👍

Love learning new things. Thanks for sharing and I'll let you know if I come up with a new idea. Ps. Tell the crew to smile a bit lol