Straw Pyrolysis Machine

[Dirtmechanic]

Ok I want one of these. And a Tractor while you are feeling generous. Read what the machine can do, and think about your town and its debris.

Straw Charcoal Machine - Promotes Sustainable Agriculture

Straw charcoal machine converts agricultural waste into up to 6,000 tons of biochar per year. You can get biochar that meets EBC standards.

bestonpyrolysisplant.com

 

[ducks4you]

I like that somebody is thinking about using materials, BUT, I use sawdust and straw for horse bedding 1/2 of the year, and some in their shelter, too, during the summer. It is Not an unused resource. In fact, it is a wonderful by product of wheat and oat farming. Even so, it would help the soil, if the farmer decided to till it under. I never seem to see that happen, though.
When I talked to a Vet at the University of Illinois some 20 years ago about my water, he talked to Me for some 30 minutes, told me that he had raised draft horses and wintered them exclusively on straw.
It's somebody's pipe dream that straw ISN'T utilized. If so, it would be practically free, yet I still pay a good price/bale for my 50 bales each year.
Do you know that a company is making paper towels out of bamboo, now?

I use these reusable paper towels to cut down on waste — they can be cleaned in a dishwasher or washing machine

These affordable reusable bamboo paper towels from "Shark Tank" clean my home better than regular paper towels, and they're more eco-friendly.

www.businessinsider.com

I think that is genius! Bamboo can grow so fast that you can see the difference every day.
So, no burning up bamboo, either, in my book.
Wish I could buy you that tractor @Dirtmechanic! No offense to folks who own the other tractors, but I sold on Kubota from 2 sources, a friend who had owned one for many years AND a guy I met doing a refinanced loan package at his house, who told me, that although he had owned a John Deere dealership before retiring, he would not recommend their compact tractor, but suggested I buy a Kubota compact, instead.
I love the features that let you put on and take off implements without getting any of your fingers in the way.
However, if somebody GAVE you a John Deere OR a Mahindra OR a New Holland, I wouldn't refuse it.

 

[Zeedman]

Ok I want one of these. And a Tractor while you are feeling generous. Read what the machine can do, and think about your town and its debris.

Straw Charcoal Machine - Promotes Sustainable Agriculture

Straw charcoal machine converts agricultural waste into up to 6,000 tons of biochar per year. You can get biochar that meets EBC standards.

bestonpyrolysisplant.com

An interesting machine. More than I can afford, obviously... and too bad its made in China. Be wonderful if someone on this side of the ocean made something similar.

This summer, I'm combing through my burn-pit-turned-burn-hill, to screen out the ash, remove all the nails & clay plugs (from spent fireworks) and recover as much charcoal as I can. There should be a pretty fair amount of charcoal buried in there, which I will coarse grind & add to one of my gardens. Wish I could add the ash as well, but my soil pH is high enough as it is.

I'd have started that project already, but sifting out the ash generates a lot of fine dust, and dust masks are hard to find right now for some reason.

 

[flowerbug]

An interesting machine. More than I can afford, obviously... and too bad its made in China. Be wonderful if someone on this side of the ocean made something similar.

This summer, I'm combing through my burn-pit-turned-burn-hill, to screen out the ash, remove all the nails & clay plugs (from spent fireworks) and recover as much charcoal as I can. There should be a pretty fair amount of charcoal buried in there, which I will coarse grind & add to one of my gardens. Wish I could add the ash as well, but my soil pH is high enough as it is.

I'd have started that project already, but sifting out the ash generates a lot of fine dust, and dust masks are hard to find right now for some reason.

i'm lucky that i have a large enough area i can spread ashes that it isn't a problem to do that and not have to sift them. all that dust would be difficult.

the other approach would be to wet them down and leach out the lye and then sift it while it is still a little damp. then you would end up with a less intense result too. including if you wanted some sulphur could even shift the pH towards acidic, run it through the compost pile with everything else in the mix and you'd be ok. i'm not sure how easy it is to source large amounts of elemental sulphur nor do i know the amount of ashes you are having to deal with.

i don't mash up the carbon chunks here in the ashes, i just let them gradually get crunched up when i turn a garden or walk on it. if i feel like i really do have to have some carbon black i can get a few bricks and squish some chunks, but it isn't often i have that kind of play time here - especially with so few nice weather days.

oh and as a post script, i have a bunch of rusty nails and have to figure out how to get them back to the recycler so they can be turned into new steel someplace. i dropped a can the other day and all the dust from the nails was left on the floor after i picked up the nails and put them back in the can. i swept up that dust and put it on a garden. nothing that useful would get wasted. cannot put the nails in the ground though. all the work of removing them from the pallets was to avoid having them be a hazard to gardening puncture wounds/injuries (some of those nails were degraded to being super fine threads of steel so they'd make a nasty wound). about 40lbs of rusty nails. worth maybe a nickle to a scrapper these days... if that... :/

ok, here's an idea. take the rusty nails, put them in a can (they're already in a can here) and wet them down once in a while. put some holes in the can so the rust can fall out (holes smaller than the nails will ever be that you'd want to worry about). then as they rust you can roll them around a garden to leave the rusted iron flakes behind as a garden soil amendment). nothing else needed. risk, your nails actually do come out the holes. then you've defeated the purpose of picking up the rusty nails to begin with... hmmm... ok, so perhaps just using rusty water would be good enough. no need to put holes in the can or roll it around a garden, just dump off some water once in a while and replace it... we have a little rust in our water anways so iron isn't a deficiency i've noticed, but some others may have it...

 

[Zeedman]

No iron deficiency here, as indicated by the need to use "iron out" periodically due to my well water. Besides, there is already additional iron being added just by what falls off of the fence posts & rebar I use for trellises. I did add some elemental sulfur & gypsum, though, in my last tilling.

Compost would be a good use for the wood ashes; acting as lime, it would speed decomposition & the finished product would be more pH neutral. At present, though, I do all of my composting in situ, just as the local farmers do - and it has been working well. Maybe I'll make just enough compost outside the garden to do something useful with the wood ashes, if I can separate them from the debris. This ash pile is about 10 years old, probably several hundred pounds. Wet sifting would probably work, and if done with a hose, would really speed up the separation & sorting process. The ash would be unrecoverable if washed out that way, and it sure would make a mess... but it may realistically it be the fastest & healthiest way to deal with this quantity, considering that my primary purpose is to recover the charcoal.

I've often considered making compost over the years; but due to the size of my garden, it would take a lot of compost to make any significant soil improvement - and more time than I could spare. Then too, I already have serious problems with rodents (they are in all of my outbuildings) so I'm understandably hesitant to offer them additional nesting sites. Still, I'm reconsidering it now that I am (semi) retired, and have more time. There is plenty of carbon available, in the form of Autumn leaves - which the neighbors don't mind me taking off their hands. If I do so with the mower (which is how I collect my leaves now) there will even be green material mixed in... as long as I am careful to avoid neighbors with treated lawns. A lawn vac would allow me to quickly collect & unload large quantities, and is an investment I've been considering for several years. Even then, I would try in-ground composting first, to test how the garden would respond to such a large increase in raw organic matter.

 

[Dirtmechanic]

No iron deficiency here, as indicated by the need to use "iron out" periodically due to my well water. Besides, there is already additional iron being added just by what falls off of the fence posts & rebar I use for trellises. I did add some elemental sulfur & gypsum, though, in my last tilling.

Compost would be a good use for the wood ashes; acting as lime, it would speed decomposition & the finished product would be more pH neutral. At present, though, I do all of my composting in situ, just as the local farmers do - and it has been working well. Maybe I'll make just enough compost outside the garden to do something useful with the wood ashes, if I can separate them from the debris. This ash pile is about 10 years old, probably several hundred pounds. Wet sifting would probably work, and if done with a hose, would really speed up the separation & sorting process. The ash would be unrecoverable if washed out that way, and it sure would make a mess... but it may realistically it be the fastest & healthiest way to deal with this quantity, considering that my primary purpose is to recover the charcoal.

I've often considered making compost over the years; but due to the size of my garden, it would take a lot of compost to make any significant soil improvement - and more time than I could spare. Then too, I already have serious problems with rodents (they are in all of my outbuildings) so I'm understandably hesitant to offer them additional nesting sites. Still, I'm reconsidering it now that I am (semi) retired, and have more time. There is plenty of carbon available, in the form of Autumn leaves - which the neighbors don't mind me taking off their hands. If I do so with the mower (which is how I collect my leaves now) there will even be green material mixed in... as long as I am careful to avoid neighbors with treated lawns. A lawn vac would allow me to quickly collect & unload large quantities, and is an investment I've been considering for several years. Even then, I would try in-ground composting first, to test how the garden would respond to such a large increase in raw organic matter.

It is common for modern gardeners to exceed 30% OM and begin to suffer problems as a result. It is best measured by mass, but thats an impossible task really. Maybe the intrepid could weigh a dried sample and then burn it off and weigh it again, if they had a gram scale that could measure 10ths.

 

[Zeedman]

It would be hard to exceed that level of OM by weight, especially if the measurement is dry weight (leaves). Digging to a 6" depth, that would be about 25 cubic yards of topsoil in my home plots. So at about 1080 # per yard, that's 27,000 # - 30% of that would be 8100 pounds.Possibly doable, if I had a front loader (I am looking for a used one); but considering the volume of 8100 pounds of leaves, unlikely. Provided that the material is shredded, it would probably break down fairly quickly once turned under - that soil is more than 10 years organic, and very active.