True, but what you’re essentially saying here to use an analogy, is that we should all be traversing the country in Model T Ford cars because the pioneers of scaled transportation didn’t have the Mercedes AMG. If you are living a period enactment by choice, I certainly won’t stand in the way. Recognize though that knowledge, science, and technology has brought amazing advancements to myriad human pursuits. Ash in itself is a boon to most soils for a variety of reasons, does that make it biochar? No.
Discussion
No, what I am essentially saying is that there is no reason to invest in equipment when producing biochar on a home or small farm scale, feed source flexibility is not a consideration for most people as they will be using branches in that context.
You said that you doubt that the required temperatures can be reached, well they can. Many people have shown this is possible, not least the indigenous. Clearly they were not producing mostly ash, as if they were, the soils would not persist to this day.
I never claimed that science or advancement is not something to be pursued, but there is a calculation to be made on barriers to entry. When discussing sovereignty and self sufficiency, the least equipment and reliance on external resources, the better.
Additionally you are operating on the flawed assumption that biochar is not created in the process aforementioned, while the modern pyrolysis may be slightly more efficient than traditional techniques and with an ability to use a wider range of fuel sources; it is erroneous to say that they only produce ash, as if they did, no one would have discovered biochar from those same techniques.
Congratulations on writing a paper on biochar in college. I encourage you to investigate more simple techniques as they certainly can produce great results.
I hear you man, we’re saying similar things. The differences are substantial because of oxygen. It’s cool, the subject of this discussion messaged me and said he has a lot of volume to process and for him the ancient protocol is good enough. I just wanted him to know about the improved process, then you ran away with the discussion. I’m a big fan of simple basics, but it’s also important to not sully the potential of biochar in reputation because inferior techniques produce sub-par performance. Burning fields is good for yield too, but it is not biochar.