The Charcoal Oven, 2016

The charcoal oven, at the start.

This is the kiln line in April 2016, when the work began. Selected Curupau was not sent to a factory. It was loaded into these adobe and brick ovens, under a shed, and fired. White charcoal starts here — not in a bag of crushed agricultural waste.

Adobe and brick charcoal ovens under a shed, 27 April 2016, at the beginning of production

27 April 2016. Beehive adobe kiln and brick oven line. The arched mouth is where the stacked Curupau entered the fire.

Brick, earth, and heat.

The round oven in the photograph is built of earth over brick. The line behind it is the same idea, repeated: a closed chamber, a door, barrels for draft and quench. High-temperature Korean pyrolization was practiced in this yard — slow carbonization of ironwood, then a hard finish, so the log stays whole instead of turning to powder.

2016

The first season

This photograph is from 27 April 2016. The Spectrolab assays in Oruro followed in May and August of the same year. The ovens came first. The laboratory numbers came from what left this shed.

LOAD

From stack to mouth

Materia prima — the selected Curupau logs — was cut, then stood upright inside the chamber, bark still on, packed wall to wall. Softwood never belonged in this fire.

FIRE

White charcoal

The kiln is sealed. Temperature rises. Volatile matter leaves. What remains is the carbon matrix: a hard, glassy log. That is why IronMatrix is sold as whole pieces, not dust.

Draft at the door. Wood standing in the dark.

The wall is marked in chalk: puerta, 13:00, humo. A barrel fan sits on a timber frame in front of the arch. Inside, the selected Curupau is already charged — whole logs on end, floor to roof, ready for fire.

Barrel fan in front of the adobe kiln mouth, chalk notes on the wall, 27 April 2016

27 April 2016. Fan at the kiln mouth. The arch is open; the charge is already inside.

Curupau logs standing vertically inside the kiln

Curupau charge packed wall to wall in the oven

Selected Curupau standing in the kiln chamber

Whole Curupau logs charged on end before firing

Interior of the charcoal oven packed with Curupau

Inside the oven, 27 April 2016. Curupau stood upright, bark on, before the chamber was sealed.

One origin. Three documents from the same year.

April: the ovens. May–August: Spectrolab, Universidad Técnica de Oruro, assays of carbón vegetal from Santa Cruz. The stacked red-heartwood Curupau is the wood that went into these mouths. The 89.73% fixed carbon is what came out.