10 min charcoal…
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This is an older video or one that has resurfaced. It turns to biochar fast but it leaves the salt on the char which doesn’t make it good for plants. I think they may of also had a heat retention issue, and it wasn’t energy efficient enough to be viable. Im not even sure he still has his research project. I vaguely recall something happening but I don’t recall what, something like it caught fire, since you are superheating the wood to char, and the char will catch fire with some oxygen if it is still hot.
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Thanks… Yeah I was looking at this and was wondering if the energy one puts in, and the cost in salt was worth the squeeze of the product one gets out. I believe the slow method of making char is more cost effective for the final result… just from what I have seen.
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I love the statement at the beginning that says the machine does in 10 minutes what the Earth does in 100 million years. (or what DOW’ers do in a few hours 
)
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What is actually going on here? Small pieces of wood, surrounded by a special salt with a melting point of around 300–450°C, float in this hot, molten bath; this ensures the efficient heat transfer from the heated vessel walls required for a rapid process. In the DOW process, the wood is heated by hot gases, making the whole operation slower; furthermore, heating in a molten salt bath entails additional steps—allowing the hot salt to drain off, washing the charcoal with water, recovering the salt from the water, and so on. In short, it is a complex industrial process completely unsuitable for home use.
I’m sticking with my wood gasifier—though I wouldn’t rule out making charcoal at some point…
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Thank you for the input.
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