Biochar Research Results

2013 summer intern Jonathan Pollnow kept the biochar retort glowing, and the written results of his work with it are now available free from the Kerr Center website.

Pollnow wanted to know which of the materials available from the Kerr Ranch would make good feedstocks for biochar produced in the center’s two-barrel nested retort.  He charred up a range of feedstocks, ranging from pine slash to cornstalks to shredded office paper, and had professional laboratories evaluate the biochar produced from each one.  He also added samples of the biochar to sand, and then had the carbon content of each sample measured to see how much soil carbon increased with additions of biochar from the different feedstocks.  The results of all that analysis are contained in “Biochar Feedstock Research Using a Two-Barrel Nested Retort.”

For the less technically-minded, and those who just want to get some char into their gardens ASAP, Pollnow wrote up a “Feedstock Guide for a Two-Barrel Nested Biochar Retort,” which is exactly what the title says – a guide to which feedstocks perform best in the simple, low-cost biochar retort used at the Kerr Center.

Putting on his chemist’s hat again, Pollnow also ran a series of experiments to see whether adding common salts to feedstocks could alter the character of the resulting char in useful ways.  The findings of that work are the focus of his third report, “The Effects of Added Mineral Salts on Biochar Yield Using a Two-Barrel Nested Retort.”More free Kerr Center biochar resources are available from the center’s “Building Healthy Soil” resource page, and the “On-Farm Fertility” page.