Comment by tastyfreeze
6 days ago
Sounds like that isn't far from the truth. Cooking wood in an anoxic environment creates wood gas and charcoal. Wood gas can be burned as it comes out of the retort or can be refined into methanol and other hydrocarbon fuels. The charcoal product is a high quality activated charcoal. That can also be burned as fuel or charged and put back in the ground as biochar.
Indeed charcoal fueled the early stages of the industrial revolution, and its massive production was one of the primary reasons Western Europe lost most of its forest cover. As wood became scarce, charcoal was replaced by the more difficult to extract coal and lignite.
One can get about twice the liquid fuel from wood by reacting it with hydrogen than one can get from the wood itself. Wood is (simplistically) carbohydrates. So, C(H2O) + H2 --> CH2 + H2O. This treats wood more as a carbon carrier than an energy carrier.