Burning Rice Husks for Nuka?

[grace.et.al]

I have a 50lb bag of rice husks that I want to burn down for use in creating a Nuka glaze.

What’s the proper way / best way to burn it to create the ash for the glaze?

[Min]

Hi Grace and welcome to the forum.

Former forum member John Baymore was the go to person for Nuka glazes. He would say US rice husks made a quite different ash to Japanese ash. In Japan piles of husks were burned at a smouldering fire in the fields, not a clean burn. Link to a thread discussing it here. 

[grace.et.al]

Thanks so much for sharing that, Min!

I've read through that post, and am trying to brainstorm ways of actually turning the rice husks themselves into ash on a smaller scale. I can't have a pile burning in a field, but maybe folks have experience with burning it in other ways?

[Kelly in AK]

I’ve never tried this, but seems like it would work- Put some in a metal can, like a coffee can, and stick it on a fire. Maybe in a barbecue grill. 

[neilestrick]

You can burn it in a metal can or grill, but you'll find that you have to burn a lot of anything to make a worthwhile amount of ash.  Ash weighs very little, so making enough for a recipe like Nuka that uses 30% will take a whole lot of rice husks. You'll need several pounds of ash to make a 5 gallon bucket of glaze.

[Min]

Really interesting article on rice husk ash here. 

A few snippets from it below, worth reading the full article though:

"Every 100 kg of husks burnt in a boiler for example will yield about 25 kg of RHA." 

"The ash obtained from uncontrolled combustion (as in open-field burning or in industrial furnaces at temperatures greater than 700°C–800°C) will contain significant amounts of cristobalite and tridymite which are nonreactive silica minerals."

"Rice husk is difficult to ignite and does not burn easily with an open flame, unless air is blown through the husk."