MAKE YOUR OWN CHARCOAL From: shannon@som-uky.campus.mci.net (shannon wagoner) Newsgroups: misc.survivalism Subject: Re: bio-filter? cheap/home made? Date: Tue, 31 Dec 1996 05:58:23 GMT Blue chili (bluechili@aol.com) wrote: I have a friend who makes his own charcoal in fairly large amounts and its easy. take a 55 gal barrell the kind with lid that fastens down and set it on blocks. punch a hole in the top. fill with small blocks of hardwood. build fire under barrell. fisrt steam comes out. very visible. then it changes to a gas. light gas. gas will burn with a blue flame. when you can no longer keep a flame going let the fire go for a while and put out. let charcoal cool. and remove. before you ask. barrell will not explode when you light flame steam has driven out the oxygen. wonder if it would be easy to capture this flamable gas (methane right?) might be a easy way to generate fuel for a generator to make electricity as well :) Yes it is very possible, in fact many internal combustion engines have been run on such "wood gas". The resulting fractions you get from destructive distillation of wood include a variety of tars and oils and the like. The problems you'll find trying to convert an engine to run on such a fuel is the lack of uniformity in what you get from the wood. The first products will be the lightest ones, moving on up into the heavier tars and creosote. So you have to constantly be adjusting the fuel/air ratios to stay close to stoichiometric as possible. I have something to say to John