Thanks for all the suggestions and info regarding the spontaneous combustion. I think it is more chemical (oxidation of inorganics) as the samples that do combust at a low temperature seems to contain a lot of inorganics (perhaps from vegetative feedstocks). It makes me wonder if we are not looking at a real potential problem.
Frank From: Stoves [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Anand Karve Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2012 9:28 PM To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves Subject: Re: [Stoves] Burning Char Dear Stovers, charcoal contains many substances other than carbon. Iron used to be extracted in ancient India using charcoal, which reduced the iron oxide to metallic iron. The minerals in the charcoal got mixed with the iron to impart special characteristics to the iron. We have an iron pillar in New Delhi, which was erected some 1600 years ago. It has still not rusted. Crispin sent me an article about this pillar and it says in the article that this pillar had iron having a high phosphorus content. They have even named the plant from which the charcoal was deriv. The spontaneous combustion of char, reported by Frank, could be due to elemental phosphorus in the charcoal. Yours A.D.Karve On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 11:38 PM, Frank Shields <[email protected]> wrote: Greetings Stovers, Drying some biochar on paper plates at less than 100c and the plate starts smoldering and actually glows red. The last batch that did this has very high carbonates (not sure what that means). Most chars do not do this. Any suggestions as to why? Thanks Frank Frank Shields Control Laboratories, Inc. 42 Hangar Way Watsonville, CA 95076 (831) 724-5422 tel (831) 724-3188 fax www.biocharlab <http://www.biocharlab/> .com _______________________________________________ Stoves mailing list to Send a Message to the list, use the email address [email protected] to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_lists.bioenergylists .org for more Biomass Cooking Stoves, News and Information see our web site: http://www.bioenergylists.org/ -- *** Dr. A.D. Karve Trustee & Founder President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)
_______________________________________________ Stoves mailing list to Send a Message to the list, use the email address [email protected] to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org for more Biomass Cooking Stoves, News and Information see our web site: http://www.bioenergylists.org/
