 | The Bullroarer - Friday 25th September 2008 | The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand | The Bullroarer - Monday 29th September 2008 |  |
99 comments on Terra Preta: Biochar And The MEGO Effect
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
99 comments on Terra Preta: Biochar And The MEGO Effect
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
User login
Contact
- anz at theoildrum dot com
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Archives
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
GAIA Host Collective
Gav,
This is an excellent post. Certainly the sort of "carbon geosequestration" that I can live with!
;-)
I imagine that most of the scientific unknowns could easily be answered with only a fraction of our current "clean coal research" budget. (And if you ask me, I think plants will end up being the only workable solution to getting rid of our coal emissions, since I can't see people giving up their addiction to coal...)
While reading your article, I started to worry about "scalability", "centralisation", "transport" etc... And then it suddenly hit me. Biochar is an ideal decentralised solution!
;-)
- Have each wheat farmer put in a stand of the local eucalypts on a percentage of their land, set up a small processing plant and churn out their own biodiesel and topsoil dressing, as well as keeping the dreaded dryland salinity at bay. (Actually, why not put the biochar plant on wheels and trundle it between farms like a contract wheat harvester!)
- Plantation timber harvesters should have a mobile unit with them, making their fuel and eliminating most of the current CO2 emissions from waste burning, etc.etc.
Inspirational!
Thanks Cretaceous.
The last section on the old Amazon civilisations that generated the terra preta in the first place was intended to demonstrate the point you make - its appropriate for use in a very decentralised environment.
I thought the phrase "terraforming the Amazon" was a striking one too - the sort of thing which needs to be done in a number of degraded modern landscapes (some of which are here in Oz).
This is brilliant. Thank you.
I like the article.
I have built a "retort" kiln for the production of charcoal. It uses a standard 275 gallon home heating oil tank and a 55 gallon barrel. Gasses driven off of the "load" are piped under the barrel and burnt to give addition heating.
So far what I have learned...
Since I have no thermometers I can only say that it takes a substantial amount of heat over a long period of time (hours to days)to get the process to be self sustaining. This may be my understanding of "dry" in the "load" is not the same as "oven dried". Once started, however, gasification is nothing short of amazing.
My tank is not insulated which I think would help. I plan to use this "kiln" to heat my shop and get charcoal at the same time. Some modifications are needed to provide combustion air and mixing to get better use of the gasses.
Grinding charcoal is very messy. I have built an electric grinder that uses 2 carbide saw blades 1/2 inch apart with a hopper above. This gives me charcoal less than 3/8 inch at the biggest.
It would be easy to divert the gasses from my kiln to other purposes. There are a number of different chemicals that can be "distilled" from wood. This "is" what you are doing, perhaps you backyard moonshiners can relate practical experiences.
While there are internet sites that deal with retort kilns the amount of information that I have found that relates to different temperature ranges to distill different chemicals is lacking in a consolidated site. I suspect that MSDS sheets for know compounds might have the very best information.
No measurable result on plant growth. We are already blessed with highly fertile soils so your result might be more measurable than mine.
best hopes for increased sanity...
D
Unfortunately, we're already "terraforming the Amazon," in the worst possible way:
We're just cutting it down and burning it up. Climate change will finish it off in other couple of decades. (By the way, that's 90 gigatons of sequestered carbon we'll be releasing, once the whole forest is destroyed.)
Maybe is should be called "marsaforming" ... turning it into a rusty desert with a CO2 atmosphere?