Charcoal from Leaves

[ThomasPowers]

Interesting thought; in general the metamorphic form of bituminous coal is Anthracite for lower types and graphite for more highly metamorphosed types.   If you have a lot of that big stuff you could build your smithy from it!  (And burn the scraps...)

[SLAG]

Folks,

This topic has motivated me,  (the SLAG), to do a little research on the web, actually U-tube, There is enough at that one site to spend a lifetime reading all manner of 'nifty stuff'.

One video was particularly informative,

It gives a very thorough description of the pyrolysis, and shows an excellent view and description of a sample retort.  

It is long winded, but worth viewing. (I managed to see it to its conclusion. Me with a text book type of attention deficit disorder.

Sorry about the picture. I just wanted to show the u.r.l. but the software generated this picture.  GRRR.

Moderators feel free to make that exchange.

Anyways, there you have it,

Nota bene,  there a large number of videos showing the process, and variations thereof.

Regards,

SLAG.

 

[Anachronist58]

200 plus pounds in these two blocks is all I have. Will be minimally sectioning them off for test pieces and display purposes.

Ah, Thomas, these blobs are from crude oil. I will be surprised if I am incorrect, but not to proud to be proven wrong by more than my very amateur analysis. There was a distinct absence of volatile aromatics under the torch.

What would one call "the anthracite of crude oil"?

Test samples will be made available upon request.

SLAG, thanks for the added info.

Robert Taylor

[SLAG]

Anach…,

Said,

"What would one call "the anthracite of crude oil"?

"Coke breeze",

SLAG.

[ThomasPowers]

Petroleum Coke? it's used a lot in China for home heating.  Very polluting too.

[Marc1]

No one mentioned peat. Do you get peat in the states? 

[JHCC]

There's a lot of peat in the States, but little is used for fuel. Most commercial peat use is in agriculture, as a nitrogen-rich soil amendment.

[ThomasPowers]

Mentioned it yesterday at 8:28 am: "though even more like a peat burning forge."

But peat as a fuel is very much not a common thing here in the USA.

"Peat Moss" is a much looser lighter thing for soil use than peat headed towards lignite and used as fuel in the UK and northern Europe.

[anvil]

back to tumbleweeds, they clean up nice as Christmas trees, but alas, no entrepreneur has yet set up a tumbleweed lot during the christmas season. 

[ThomasPowers]

Thousands of seeds; I'd think the "invasive species" pitchfork and torch crowd would not be amused.  (It is amusing that such an iconic US western item is actually an invasive species from elsewhere...) 

[Frosty]

I wonder where they blew in from? Across the ice sheet during the last ice age? 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Charles R. Stevens]

Best Christmas tre we ever had growing up was a staghorn (cactus) skeleton. 

[Anachronist58]

6 hours ago, anvil said:

back to tumbleweeds

Thomas, 'twould be a shame to eradicate an invasive species of such song and story.......

......and did it invade on its own (the winds) volition?

I need to know - where DID they blow in from?

Charles, I would like to see that!

Robert Taylor

[Charles R. Stevens]

I will see if Mom has a picture. We also had a cholla skeleton and a manzanita branch at one time or another.

[ThomasPowers]

Wikipedia:   "They are thought to be native to Eurasia, but when their seeds entered North America in shipments of agricultural seeds, they became naturalized in large areas. In the cinema genre of Westerns, they have long been symbols of frontier areas. Kali tragus is the so-called "Russian thistle". It is an annual plant that breaks off at the stem base when it dies, and forms a tumbleweed, dispersing its seeds as the wind rolls it along.  It is said to have arrived in the United States in shipments of flax seeds to South Dakota, perhaps about 1870. It now is a noxious weed throughout North America"

What I remember from more definitive sources that are not online to copy...Amazing how they arrived just in time for the "old west" decades!

[JHCC]

They didn’t; they arrived in time for the cinematic version of the “old west”. The seeds arrived about 1870, the frontier was closed in 1890, the very first western (“The Great Train Robbery”) was filmed in 1903, and the genre became popular in the late 1930s. That’s more than sixty years for tumbleweeds to spread enough that when westerns really took off in the 1950s and 1960s, everyone assumed that they’d been there the whole time. 

Interesting object lesson in how our perception of historic events is conditioned by our media exposure. We see the same thing with people whose “knowledge” of blacksmithing is formed by movies and video games. Even a “reality” show like “Forged in Fire” presents a version of reality that’s staged and edited for entertainment value rather than a comprehensive depiction of actual bladesmithing — and that becomes everyone’s “understand” of what blacksmithing “really is”.

[ThomasPowers]

I was recently reading "Roughing It" by Mark Twain and in it you can see the "creation" of the Old West getting started, written 1870-1871. In contrast I also was reading a journal written by a Dr travelling out to the gold fields in California, a much grimmer read as a cholera epidemic was in progress.  I also remember stopping by one of the Iconic cattle trails in Oklahoma and reading the historical marker that mentioned that a bunch of cowboys on a dive had been camped nearby and died of measles.

Not specific to the old west, there is a classic work by Norm Cantor about "Inventing the Middle Ages"

[tjdaggett]

Several people on this thread have commented that they'd rather be forging than using their time to make charcoal from leaves. 

That's great! I have no problem with that. For me, I'm finding that part of the joy of this hobby is the logistics puzzle. I'm not just learning how to heat and form iron. I'm learning how to acquire fuel, burn it in a way by which my neighbors remain my friends, organize my friends into a labor force, and still care for my family. I'm having fun and I haven't even started forging.

[Neale]

Good subject.. it can be done similar to sawdust charcoal.. Densification can be done after .. and also utilize the heat released during charcoal making  instead of letting it global warm

[mabachi]

On 11/23/2019 at 9:02 PM, tjdaggett said:

Has anyone tried making charcoal from leaves? I was thinking about it while working under my gargantuan silver maple on--you guessed it--clearing the gutters and deck. Initially it seemed far-fetched.

The more I think about it, the more it seems plausible. You take a steel 55 gallon drum, pack it firmly with leaves, drill a couple holes for the gases to escape, and cook it over a fire. I imagine you'd be left with something similar to fines.

I see moisture and low density/return rates being a problem. Likely very inefficient.

Thoughts?

actuallymy worry about this is comparison of heat energy usd to hat, and the charcoal dust produced, is the charcoal dust more than the heat used to produce it?

[Frosty]

Welcome aboard Mabachi, glad to have you. If you put your general location in the header you'll have a much better chance of meeting up with members living within visiting distance.

I don't think anyone on IFI has tried using leaves to make charcoal. I believe this thread was more idle speculation than a serious thought. Were I to consider using leaves in the coaling process I'd be more inclined to use them as the heat source for the retort.

IF coaling leaves turned out to be practical how would you burn charcoal powder in a forge?

Frosty The Lucky.

[mabachi]

On 11/23/2019 at 9:02 PM, tjdaggett said:

Has anyone tried making charcoal from leaves? I was thinking about it while working under my gargantuan silver maple on--you guessed it--clearing the gutters and deck. Initially it seemed far-fetched.

The more I think about it, the more it seems plausible. You take a steel 55 gallon drum, pack it firmly with leaves, drill a couple holes for the gases to escape, and cook it over a fire. I imagine you'd be left with something similar to fines.

I see moisture and low density/return rates being a problem. Likely very inefficient.

Thoughts?

converting leaves to charcoal isn't the problem to me. the problem to me is, the amount of charcoal in comparison to the heat energy consumed. is the energy less than the energy value of the charcoal produced from carbonizing the leaves?

converting leaves to charcoal isn't the problem to me. the problem to me is, the amount of charcoal in comparison to the heat energy consumed. is the energy less than the energy value of the charcoal produced from carbonizing the leaves?

 

[MeltedSocks]

On 11/24/2019 at 9:24 PM, Frosty said:

Boy am I Yahooing this morning!

 

Other examples:  Today, I will duck-duck-go.  Yesterday, I duck-duck-went.