On February 7th, we tested our newly fabricated Oregon kiln. It worked great – and produced BioChar!
The Lands Council’s Reducing Forest Fuel Loads Through BioChar Conversion program is up and running. This program will convert post timber harvest residual woody debris to BioChar to be left onsite on the forest floor, promoting forest health through moisture retention and sequestering carbon as a climate change mitigation tool. The Oregon Kiln is our technological choice due to its portability.
Who we are working with:
The Washington Department of Commerce has awarded us $25,000 to get our program underway, which we will match. We ordered the first of two kilns to be fabricated from Cockle Welding out of Spangle, WA. We are in the process of acquiring all of the necessary equipment to establish a mobile BioChar facility that will be moved from site to site.
The Lands Council has established relationships with Colville National Forest (CNF) staff and County Commissioners from Pend Oreille, Stevens and Ferry Counties where the CNF is located. The Washington Department of Natural Resources and the Department of Ecology are interested as well as Spokane County, our local utility company and two universities. We will be sharing information and collaborating with multiple community partners.
Background:
Active forest management and fuels reduction programs in the Wild-land Urban Interface are leaving residual wood deposited in the forest in stacked slash piles. Our Biochar program will convert this residual woody biomass to BioChar onsite. This process eliminates the fuel load and keeps carbon sequestered in the soil and from entering the atmosphere as CO2.
BioChar, a solid carbon based material obtained from thermochemical conversion of biomass in an oxygen limited environment, has the potential to address some of our toughest global problems including but not limited to soil moisture, food security and climate change through carbon sequestration. It is estimated that BioChar has the potential to reduce emissions of anthropogenic green house gas production by 12%.
The Oregon Kiln consists of a simple metal container known as a flame cap kiln. It is an inverted, truncated pyramid constructed of 14-gauge mild steel, with a solid bottom and a five-foot square top base, a four-foot square bottom base and a height of two feet. Total capacity is 40 cubic feet (1.1 m3). It is optimized for low cost manufacturing and use in forest settings as an alternative to pile burning.
Oregon kilns work on the principle of flame carbonization, a pyrolysis method that uses a cap or curtain of flame to exclude oxygen from the biomass. These use bulk woody debris as feedstock with no requirement for chipping and transport of raw biomass. These kilns have a production capacity ranging from several cubic feet up to about 20 cubic yards.