[UPDATE 10/21/2021 -After 2018 I started posting my updates on my Patreon page, and so I'm filling in the back-logs for this project retroactively so the whole story is in both places. You can also read all of these posts with their original photo formatting here]

November 30th, 2020-

Happy full moon everyone!

As it gets colder, I find myself thinking more and more about how to generate heat, without burning propane. During the Summer, I got my new design for the biochar reactor dialed in and did the first test batches, turning wood and waste biomass into charcoal. 

I have been mostly focusing on how to power a generator using the gas driven off in the process of making the biochar. But once the batch is finished, the charcoal that comes out of the reactor also embodies an incredible amount of energy.

It's even possible to convert this charcoal back into a flammable gas, so that can be used to power internal combustion engines. (Check out this guy, who converted a mini-van to run on charcoal). But doing that can be tricky and I haven't quite gotten there yet, and as a form of simple portable heat, charcoal can be incredibly powerful.

You can think of it as a form of incredibly stable, cheap, non-toxic energy storage. 

Before burning it, I filtered out the chardust, and sprinkled it onto some woodchips in my garden, leaving the larger pieces of charcoal behind. Any biomass, like dry leaves, paper, and cardboard, can be turned into biochar, but the char it produces is flaky and turns to dust instantly. This dust can block the passage of air between the bigger chunks, and keep it from getting the oxygen it needs to burn, so its best to sift out the dust before burning.

Doing this ended up looking a lot like a mushroom spore print, which is fun because the Metabolizer has the same metabolism that a mushroom does, and this micro-char will help facilitate the growth of mycelial networks within this wood pile as the chips decompose. The finished soil will hold onto this Carbon, sequestering some it from the atmosphere.

I fed the rest of the charcoal into a small portable fire pit designed for burning wood pellets. Once it got going, it made a nice, warm, smokeless fire, that lasted for hours. 

By my calculations, the char that I produced and then burned had energy density of AT LEAST 10-15 kilo-watt-hours.

It's incredible to think how much solar energy is embodied in all the leaves, sticks, and yard debris that fall all around us every year. And it makes the fact that what most people do is load it all up into bags and pay a big fossil-fueled truck to drive to their house and haul it away to who-knows-where, seem even more insane.

Thank you all so much for your support, and stay warm out there!