GVI Kenya

Category: Charcoal Burning, Coastal Forest, Shimoni Forest | Date: Aug 27 2009 | By: gvikenya

Ok people, so in the last two blogs we’ve discussed how charcoal is made here in Shimoni forest, and how it is done mainly by desperate people with no other choice who, given the opportunity, would gladly do something else.  So I’ve spent the last day fighting a battle with our temperamental internet connection to see what kind of alternatives I can find.  I shall continue my search relentlessly, until we find an option that will work here.

Kenya’s coastal forests 

All of the techniques I’ve manage to find so far all seem to revolve around a similar principle.  One puts the organic material of choice into a large steel drum, burns it under low-oxygen conditions (to allow for carbonisation), mixes it with some sort of binding agent, and then presses it into charcoal briquettes.  Depending on the organic material used, the methods differ slightly, but not by much.  Here are some of the options…

Corn cobs
Get a 200 litre steel drum and fill it 1/3 full with dried corn cobs.  Ignite the contents, and burn until the smoke disappears.  Refill the drum approximately 2/3 full and reignite.  Allow to burn until the smoke disappears.  Allow the contents to cool, empty the drum and sprinkle the contents with water.  Allow to dry in the sun, and then separate the “charcoal” from the ashes.
These were all the instructions given – they appear a bit basic and I’m skeptical about the quality of the resultant charcoal.  Quick and easy though, so worth an experiment!

An earth-mound kiln

Coconut shells
Again, get a 200 litre steel drum.  Cut a hole in the top (30cm diameter), and attach poles to the cut section so it can be used as a lid.  Drill a series of small holes in the bottom of the drum and place the drum on stones to allow air to enter.  Fill the drum 1/3 full with coconut shells, add a little bit of kerosene and ignite.  Allow to burn for 5 minutes before putting the lid on.  The colour of the smoke should change from black to white.  Take the lid off, add more shells (up to 10kg’s apparently) and wait until more black smoke is produced (this means the new shells are burning).  Repeat this process until the drum is full of charcoal.  After 8 hours, remove the drum from the stones and seal the lid with mud so no oxygen at all can enter the drum.  Leave in this state for 12 hours.  Remove and sieve contents. 

Sugarcane waste (bagasse)
This method is very similar to the above method.  The instructions I found however are written by a student of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and are very detailed.  She gives much more instruction with regards to the different stages and required airflow through the drum.  This method differs in that once the initial carbonisation stage is over, the resultant charcoal “fines” need to be mixed with a binding agent.  In this case she uses a porridge made from cassava – a hardy root vegetable.

Various organic material
I found another set of instructions that again, is a similar process to the ones above.  It follows suit with the sugarcane method, and requires a binder.  They suggest using soil with a high clay content.  This method claims that almost any organic material can be used (coconut shells/husks, corn cobs, sugarcane bagasse, roots of vetiver grass, dry leaves etc.). 

So there we have it.  Finding all of that took a matter of a few hours.  I think with a bit more digging, plenty more is out there.  It is time for me to ask a small favour from all of you wonderful readers who would also like to see the end to the destruction of our beautiful forest.  If anyone has any bright ideas about what we can use as a binding agent (we don’t have soil with high clay content, and I don’t think cassava is abundant here – I will check though), please throw them our way.  Remember it has to be cheap (preferably free…!).  And of course, if anyone has any information / ideas / websites / friends / contacts / suggestions about alternative charcoal – you know where we are!

I’ll keep you all updated on our experimentation progress…  

Tags: bagasse, binding agent, briquettes, carbonisation, carbonised, cassava, charcoal, coconut husk, coconut shell, corn cobs, experimentation, kerosene, methods, MIT, organic material, oxygen, porridge, root vegetable, Shimoni Forest, smoke, steel drum, sugarcane