I was lucky to spend some time in beautiful country Victoria recently, I was there helping Russell Burnett move his kick ass continuous flow pyrolysis system to a new location. I was also lucky enough to spend a day before hand looking over his amazing system, seeing it running and asking 100′s of questions, I had to laugh going to Russell’s home for lunch noticing his pyrolysis development graveyard behind his workshop, it was great to see how someone else has gone about development of smallish scale batch reactors and gasifiers. We talked about the development of my GIBBR system (gas ignition Biochar batch reactor) and I have since up-scaled my wood gas pipes by a factor of 4 due to Russell’s advice.

Russell’s system is a continuous flow pyrolysis system developed to produce the highest quality Biochar possible, the system runs at 500 deg C and this temperature is kept constant which helps in producing a higher quality Biochar than possible with gasification based system.  His system converts virtually all the retained carbon in a fixed form which means fixed carbon has a very long life once added to soils. Russell said emissions his system emits are less than the Ford Ranger Diesel ute at idle, but feels he can still improve the combustion process in the furnace area of the system.

His system also produces a high temperature condensate, which is commonly called liquid smoke, wood vinegar or Pyroligneous acid, Russell is sending me some of this amazing liquid up to see what I can do with it, it’s an understatement to say it has a strong smell.

One other thing I noticed was insects were drawn to any open bags of his Biochar, Russell’s Biochar has a slightly lumpy texture but not dry or dusty, it has quite an earthy smell with just a slight wood smoke smell.

Russell has taken up an offer on some web space with in biochar.net, he has amazing knowledge about Biochar, pyrolysis development and he has made it his life work, I look forward to reading what Russell’s insights into Biochar development will bring.