Ok so here is my very first attempt at building a charcoal retort. This first one uses a 10 Gallon and a 30 gallon metal drum with sealable lids.
Ok the retort vessel that the material you are trying to convert to charcoal must be vented. So what I did here was install a center venting tube in the ten gallon drum. This allows the gas to vent from the top and then down. The Pyrolysis gases produced once the moisture is cooked out is flamable and can be used to provide process heat. This makes this much more efficient. However the water your gross feedstock the more smoke this thing is going to make. So if no smoke is desired you will want to run only seasoned feed stock that is dried bellow 20% MC.
On the 30 gallon barrel that contains the combustion process has two 1 inch tubes installed just bellow the bottom stiffening ring of the barrel. These tubes serve two purposes. One is to support the retort drum inside and to suppoly second stage air to the Pyrolysis gas that is produced. I drilled (5) 3/8 holes spread 1 1/2 inches appart centered in the span of the tubes.
The 30 gallon drum lid I addapted a duct flange to addapt 6 inch stove pipe for the chimney. I added 1 1/2 inch ball valve to feed the primary oxidation process. I am probbably going to add a second one to the opposing side. Then I simply fabbed up a simple door to feed the fire box with a pull latch to secure it.
So ive installed this in the shop and this thing is working quite well. It burns very little wood to keep the shop warm and at the end of the day I have 10 gallons of charcoal. That adds up very fast when you use this for daily heating.
Im harvesting a fallen oak tree from my parrents house. This is one of prabably 4 or 6 loads to get it all over here to the shop. Cut this up yestureday, hauled it here and then spiit it up with the WEN electric splitter. Everything is done with electric, this way you run one thing from the gasifier. Thats the generator and that generator then runs the tools. I love that WEN splitter its a great tool.
Next is Ill be scaling this up to a 20 and 55 gal drum set up. The plan is to build two of them and between all this will be more than enough to keep up with my needs. This is FAR easier than wood chip and chunk processing.