A couple weeks ago I sat in on a meeting with Joe James of Agritech and a group of USDA researchers to learn about biochar and its potential as a agricultural additive. Joe James and his company are working on commercializing a torrefaction machine created by NC State. His unit is expected to produce large quantities of biochar in a very short amount of time very efficiently.
I'm not quite ready to invest in this scale of biochar production, but I do want to try my hand at creating some of my own to play around with. With a little web searching I stumbled across this video of a very simple two barrel retort.
For those who want to read further, look at some charts, and graphs here is the link to download the technical article on the "Impact of Biochar Amendment on Fertility of a Southeastern Coastal Plain Soil" produced by Jeffery M. Novak, Warren J. Busscher, David L. Laird, Mohamed Ahmedna, Don W. Watts, and Mohamed A. S. Niandou.
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