I found an easy way to make charcoal assuming you have ready access to wood and like to cook out.
I was grilling out yesterday and had found some wood from a tree at our church. I decided to see what would happen and when the food was done I threw it in the grill.
I use a small Webber which is important because it needs to seal. I let the wood burn and when the flames died down I knew that it was mostly done off gassing. I put the lid on and sealed it up. Then I let it cool.
This was pretty dry wood logs about the size of your fist. I wouldn't go any bigger. Greener wood would take longer.
I live in the city so wood is a little hard to come by. I do see palates in alleys sometimes, I might experiment with that.
Lump Charcoal is $24 a bag in my area. Assuming that you find the wood, this is a simple method to never run out of charcoal. You can actually make more than you use and get ahead.
squashkin@wolfballs.com 1 year ago
nice to see some practical low tech experiments
Charcoal can also be used to filter water although idk how that all works, it's very useful to have on hand
iamtanmay@wolfballs.com 1 year ago
Also, if you have nitrite from household chemicals and sulfur from garden supplies, you can grind and mix in 80-15-5 ratio to make gunpowder for fireworks or bullets
Scruffy_Nerfherder@wolfballs.com 1 year ago
You grind up charcoal into small granules. Squirt an acid on it, like lemon juice. IDK how much, prolly just wet it.
iamtanmay@wolfballs.com 1 year ago
Activated charcoal is full of nanoholes. It traps everything that's not water.
Right way to filter unpolluted water, as I learned in primary school is stack of filter material like pebbles, then smaller rocks, then sand, then activated charcoal top to bottom, with a hole at the bottom of the container to let clean water drip through.
The water can still have microorganisms in it. An easy way to kill those is to put it in any transparent plastic bottle and then leave it in the sun for a day. The UV from the sun will disinfect it.
If you your water is seawater or contains industrial or sewage runoff, such as drugs, chemicals, heavy metals, then this isn't enough. Those molecules are 100,000 times smaller than virii or bacteria.
In that case, I would recommend collecting the water in a plastic bottle, and leaning the mouth at 45 to 60 degrees into another bottle. Put some rocks or plinths to keep them in place like this and leave in the sun or start a fire under container 1 (then it must be made from heat resistant material). The water evaporating from 1 will collect in 2. Provided 2 was clean, you will have pure H20 even from a polluted source.
sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 1 year ago
Plus in 1 you get free heavy metals, drugs, and chemicals. Win/win!