I like the retort within a tlud design shown in some of your videos.
Do you have to add fuel to it until the retort starts off gassing or is the initial charge of fuel enough?
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Good evening William. No, we start the reactor filling the sides and top with scraps and hay and lite it; once it starts we put the lid and chimeny on the big barrel and it starts to burn the wood between the inner barrel and the outer one, you can see it from the outside on the walls of the outer barrel has the heat moves down. When the gases start to flow on the bottom, we help it with a small fire. Normaly we use scrap wood and bamboo for this, because it burns with lots of heat and little smoke (we have lots of it and use it for many things). When the color changes from orange/yellow to blue, there is no more smoke to burn and we retire the coles and close the chimeney hole and the three air intakes at the bottom. It chokes itself, next day it`s cool and dry. No water needed. The hole process takes about 2 to 2 1/2 hours. Very simple.
Big embrace to you
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Thank you very much for taking the time to give such a description.
I am encourage.
I will try this method myself, once I can source the materials.
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My charcoal crusher has been working great, now I just need to set it up on a ramp, build a feed hopper for it, add a big diameter pulley on it and hook one of my 12v motors.
If that doesn’t work out so well I might use Bicycle power.
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Cody,
Are you still using the small electric chipper?
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No it finally died on me. I made a prettty simple crusher using some bar stock and flat bar.
Drilled center holes in the flat bar to accept a 5/8" shaft and had them alternate so only 2 teeth would engage at a time. Right now I’m using an old steering wheel to rotate it.
The grinder itself is set into an angle iron frame and I built a wooden box to make a small compartment to put the Charcoal. Even with just hand strength it bends nails. Not a whole lot of dust from it either especially with hardwood stock.
I originally used it this ways up but I found a lot of the char had to be guided to the teeth.
I turned it the other way up and it works much better. With bigger pieces of char it will take small bites out and eventually work it down.
I should have saved that chipper for making filter media. I might try to copy the blade and anvil design of the chipper to make charcoal. I really liked the flake consistency it made for very dense fuel. 9 pounds per 5 gallons worth even with soft pallet wood.
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So far I haven’t gotten into the tluds or anything other than throwing wood in a barrel and lighting it. I just keep throwing more fuel in as I work at other things in the area but the other day I made a barrel of char. I had a lot of wood left over that I prepared for Jacob North. I made quite a bit more than he needed so I started burning all the little cut off pieces in the fire barrel. Usually I just feed it out of my wood stove fuel. The whole barrel of the cut up stuff burned perfectly and there were no brands when I ground it. Ended up with about 35 gallons of good char from about a two hour burn. I’m not sure I want to do all that cutting to make char from again but it definitely is a reason to seriously think about building a chunker.
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Tom that’s why I like using old/bad lumber for charcoal feed stock. It’s thin and burns to char easier than stove sized logs.
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Funny you mention that Cody , for many years i made all my charcoal from broken Chep pallets that are stripped down and in stillages for anyone that wants firewood i heated my home for years and collected the charcoal from my fire every hour making upwards of 50 liter’s a day of hardwood charcoal as a by product , this season i am using blackwood that was taken down by the storms and a few dead tree’s from the paddock next door , i realized pretty soon that if i want charcoal i had to split them so they were no bigger than 1 inch thick to be able to quickly turn the wood into good charcoal , burns a lot faster and so i have to refill the fire more often , but i don;t mind its a good way of making motor fuel on the side without using my outside kilns ,and . they are needed only when i need large amounts of engine grade for my generators
Dave
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Thought I’d go back to here for relevancy.
Has anyone that runs a TLUD have any success with long but narrow pieces of wood as feed stock?
I usually use pallet wood but I can’t expect that to last forever or frequent enough. I do have loads of trees and junky pest walnuts that I have to dispose of.
Trying to save time I think it would process a lot faster if I cut them to cubit long pieces or about 20"
I’d like to go back to a TLUD so it’ll be done more in batches than constant feeding. It actually takes longer to make a full barrel of charcoal with a constant feed.
I’ve even thought about using one of my 250/300 gallon oil tanks as a giant TLUD. Something I could light early one morning and cap off at the end of the day.
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I have limited experience making charcoal, but have used TLUDs for outdoor heating. Mine have been mainly round 5-gallon (20 l) or 1-gallon (#10 tin can, 4 l) cans. One can for fuel canister, one for combustion/chimney. Both cans the same size for each stove. Secondary air between the cans, with the top chimney can’s bottom cut to form a fan-like shape to swirl the burning gases and increase the time in the chimney. Chunks work well, half to one inch for the small TLUD, maybe 1 to two for the larger.
I do remember your question 
. It has worked pretty well to use sticks cut to the vertical length of the fuel cans, stacked vertically, but not too tightly. These seem to burn down their length just fine, without cutting into chunks. About half inch for the small can, 3/4 to 1 1/4 for the larger is good, according to my fiddling.
No, no, not fiddling. I meant art and experimental science 
.
Kent
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Cody,
Kent’s reply is right on. I have a friend in Rwanda who manufactures TLUD cookstoves and recommends long vertical sticks up to 1-1/2 inches as fuel. Any smaller size sticks works as long as the diameters are consistent – TLUD (Top Lit Up Draft) and (Totally Likes Uniform Dimensions). I make fuel with free wood chips classified between 1" inch and 3/8" screens in a 100 gallon TLUD. The trick here is a variable speed fan (blow drier on cool with simple light dimmer) at the bottom. A little forced air lets you fine-tune a struggling TLUD into clean and efficient charcoal producer.
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I was thinking of doing that with a TLUD actually, I could invert a solid drum and use the 2" bung as my air inlet with a grate and just use one of the bilge blowers.
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Cody,
I also will use pieces the length of the barrel, maybe between 2-3 inches in diameter and may get brands near the very bottom. Perhaps I don’t let it burn long enough, but with air coming in through slots in the side near the bottom instead of in the bottom, I think the air flow is not good. I do this with small diameter hardwood trees and limbs.
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You can use a busted grate from a curb found grill. It eventually burns through it.
A lot of times I was getting ash plugging up the air from underneath. A fan might help. but I have not tried it because that means I have to pull electric out that far.
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The TLUD worked pretty good. I’m going to use it for scrap wood that will be easier to just toss in willy-nilly. Having a pipe in the bottom worked wonders so I could supercharge it with a bilge blower.
Today I built a Hookway sort of kiln that I’m reserving for good hardwood. Still need to add the ceramic wool insulation, I’m going to apply hardener to it to make it less fragile and then put on a metal skin from a couple hot water heaters.
Reused a hot water tank pipe as the central chimney, 4" diameter. Drilled 8 3/8" holes at the base of the chimney for pyrolysis gas to self heat once it goes critical. Also put in the old baffle to help distribute that heat. The chimney is welded to the bottom, I’ll seal the lid joint with clay. I’d love to have it stop raining on my weekends.
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I went back and looked at this whole thread. Very interesting. Some video that newer members may not have seen.
I wonder what Gary is working on these days.
Anyway there are lots of paths to the same destination. I mostly use the Chuck Whitlock tilted barrel system now because it’s the easiest way to keep my dead fall cleaned up and works well with branches and small stuff which just get tangled up in a tlud barrel. I do use one if I want to burn my firewood to make fuel and have found that a little breath of air into the bottom of the barrel is helpful to keep a good burn going deeper into the barrel. Up to now wood gas and charcoal production have just been hobbies. I have to wonder what it would be like to have to keep a genset fueled and running 6 hours a day for a power supply if the grid were down. A whole different animal I’m sure.
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You do not have to wonder what charcoal fueling a reasonable daily electric maker would entail TomH.
The rough maths are already worked out.
A reasonable-useable electric making engine generator set will consume ~1/2 US gallons an hour of gasoline.
Wood charcoal replcement for engine fuel gasoline has time and again worked out to ~16 pounds of wood charcoal.
Again well worked out that it will take at least 2X the weight in wood to produce that engine fuel grade wood charcoal.
So for your 6 hour daily engine electrical generation a fellow/gal would have to handle ~200 pounds of wood to make the charcoal for each and every day electrical generating.
This is the same as full house 18 hours a day wood heating.
The same as the daily wood gas drivers are using.
Why of these three most can only wood-sweat out the one - house/shop heating.
A few doing two now.
I know of none who do all three of their energy maker needs on wood.
The good news is no one needs to heavy home/shops heat year around. And those times are generally the best traveling around times. Few need to heavy drive around daily, all year around.
Serious large animals tending and care have well known numbered daily/weekly/annual input needs.
A single cow/horse, a clutch of sheep/goats will need always 30-50 gallons of clean fresh water a DAY! Every day. Weekends and holidays too.
You must also meet their other daily needs too. No turning them off. Setting them aside on stand-by, until you have an interest or need.
Engines and motors you can do this set aside.
Thier fuels however are mostly all degrading “organic”. Hydro and winds and PV are seasonally very variable. “Organic” too.
Top score for engine fuel setting aside goes to wood charcoal along with bottled propane.
But neither cheap/easy/free to make; obtain; store.
Still Wooden-headed; S.U.
(because trees woods grow regenerate all of the time on their own in the favorable places you will want to live)
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Found a new-to-me charcoal making video. Very watchable!
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Thought i could post this here too, i made a video of yesterdays charcoal making.
This is my first try to video with my phone in a holder on my hat, so it’s pretty crappy filmed, but with some training maybe…
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