Casmance Kiln

Benjamin Domingo, Argentian, April 29, 2008

 

Agrichar Video
Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2007

Video on Agrichar, International Agrichar Initiative conference (April 2007), BEST Technologies, and use of agrichar in Australia.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/broadband/catalyst/asx/Agrichar_hi.asx

Simple charcoal kiln
Folke Gunther, April 24, 2008

A wonderfully simple method for making charcoal at home or on the allotment.

"http://picasaweb.google.se/folkeg/TheSimplestOfTheSimple

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There is a wide demand for charcoal kilns to be used by anybody having an allotment or garden sized plot. The idea of making char of surplus biomass instead of firing it is widely spread in Latin America (and Japan?). Burning the pyrolysis gasses instead of emitting them makes the method comparatively safe, although not efficient regarding their potential utilisation of gasses.

I agree that his is a very small scale method, bu imagine 2 billion people having it, making 1 kg char a week for their lots. That would imply about 0.1 Gt annually, or 5% of what would be necessary to sequester for making a change.

Naturally, this is not the method to save the world from entering a tipping point, but it could well be of some help.

Besides, making 50 kg of char annually, would certainly make a change for the production form a normal sized allotment, certainly so if you go on for several years.

I don't agree that using barrels for making char automatically would imply methane emissions. That must certainly be a consideration depending of the charring method, not the material used.

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Folke Günther
Kollegievägen 19
224 73 Lund
Sweden
Phone: +46 (0)46 141429
Cell: +46 (0)709 710306
URL: http://www.holon.se/folke
BLOG: http://folkegunther.blogspot.com/

Pyrolysis Reactor Tower Assembly
Sean Barry, April 21, 2008

I assembled the Pyrolysis Reactor Tower today. I had it fabricated over the winter.

Regards,

SKB

On the Practical Side
Max Henderson, SE Queensland, Australia, April 19, 2008

(Select photo to enlarge)
Dear All,

For those on the list who haven’t had the opportunity to experiment, here are some photos of my first trials. Apologies to those who are well ahead of this stage.

Photo 1 shows the very basic kiln, constructed of un-bonded second-hand bricks and sized to take a 200 litre drum (55 gallon in he US). This particular drum has a removable lid held in place with an over-centre clamp.

Photo 2 shows the drum in place and loaded with seasoned offcuts of local hardwoods such as Ironbark (Euc piniculata), which is hard and dense. The drum is raised off the brick floor the height of 2 bricks to allow firewood to be placed under. The base of the drum (on its side) is drilled with 8 x 8mm holes in a line evenly spaced. These permit the generated gases to exit and burn.

3 shows the flames after the load has started to gassify. Depending in the intensity of the external fire and the sizes, moisture content and density of the timber load, the beginning of the gasification phase can take from 30 minutes upwards.

4 and 5 show the char output.


Photo 6 gives an idea of the vast amount of energy released. At this trial the front of the kiln was also bricked up once the fire had started, to further concentrate the heat. For pure spectacle this is best done at night, preferably lubricated with copious cold beers. This is indeed hot and thirsty work. What you can’t hear is the whistling of the gas as it exits the holes in the drum, and the roar of the fire. Obviously there is huge opportunity to capture surplus gas and compress to store.

7 shows the first experimental vegetable bed prior to planting, approx 4m x 1.2m. The char was broken up before adding but this could have been done much better. Around 10cm thickness was added to the bed. Also added was 5 cm of compost and 1 kg of NPK fertiliser (13:13:15 + 2Mg). The bed was then forked a number of times to a 20cm depth. For comparison purposes an adjacent bed was prepared in the same manner including the compost and the NPK, but no added char.

Corni, broad beans and basil were planted in both. Definitely germination was better in the char bed and definitely initial growth was also more vigorous. Unfortunately the wallabies broke the fence ending that trial, but the fence has been reinforced and the beds planted again. This time I’ve added a third bed the same as the first with the char, compost and NPK, but added 5 cm of worm castings from my composting worm experimental pile. (I believe composting worms have equivalent miracle capacity as does char).

The test site is just above the creek flats on land that was a dairy farm for maybe 100 years before being abandoned some 20 years ago and allowed to return to natural forest, mainly eucalypts. Around 5 acres have been cleared. Soil texture is loamy, with recent tests indicating deficiencies across the full range of nutrients. Annual rainfall is in the 1500mm range. Being a fairly civilised part of the world we don’t have any of that snow stuff but winter daytime temps can plunge horrifically to 10 deg C (50F), with occasional night time frosts. Terrifying. Right now we’re at the beginning of Autumn.

I’ll update in a couple of weeks.

Max H
mfh01@bigpond.net.au

Jim Hansen on our side
Folke Gunther, April 15, 2008

In a recent letter (yesterday), Jim Hansen says:
There is tremendous potential for reducing atmospheric CO2 via reduction of
deforestation, improved forestry practices, and improved agricultural practices that
increase carbon storage in the soil. If governments were to encourage such practices,
rather than the converse, and if coal use were phased out except where the CO2 is
captured, it would be possible to literally roll back the net human-made climate forcing to
levels below those defining critical tipping points.
We must remember, at the same time, that the ability of the principal CO2 sink, the ocean,
to soak up human-made emissions is limited and slow (Figure 1). If we burn most of the
available coal (Figure 3) without CO2 capture, even with the lowest estimates of available
coal reserves, it will be impractical if not impossible to avoid passing climate tipping
points with disastrous consequences.
(My italics)
FG

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20080414_GovernorGibbons.pdf

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Folke Günther
Kollegievägen 19
224 73 Lund, Sweden
home/office: +46 46 14 14 29
cell: 0709 710306 skype: folkegun
Homepage: http://www.holon.se/folke
blog: http://folkegunther.blogspot.com/

URL:

http://www.sciencedirect.com

Keywords:

Bio-oil; Brazil; Microbial activity; Slash and char; Terra Preta; Wood vinegar

Abstract:

Summary The influence of charcoal and smoke condensates (pyroligneous acid, PA) on microbial activity in a highly weathered Amazonian upland soil was assessed via measurements of basal respiration (BR), substrate-induced respiration (SIR), and exponential population increase after substrate addition. PA extracts are commonly used for fertilizer or as pest control in Brazil, where phosphorus (P) availability and nitrogen (N) leaching are among the most severe limitations for agriculture. Microbes play an important role in nutrient cycling and solubilizing of phosphate. BR, microbial biomass, population growth and the microbe's efficiency (expressed by the metabolic quotient) increased linearly and significantly with increasing charcoal concentrations (50, 100 and 150 g kg−1 soil). Application of PA caused a sharp increase in all parameters. We suppose that the condensates from smoke contain easily degradable substances and only small amounts of inhibitory agents, which could be utilized by the microbes for their metabolism.

Sewage Sludge Charcoal
Michael Antal,University of Hawaii, April 2008
Sewage Sludge Charcoal
I am pleased and somewhat surprised to report that raw sewage sludge is a good feedstock for charcoal production. Details are available on the HNEI website below.

www.hnei.hawaii.edu
Flash Carbonization

Regards, Michael.

Michael J. Antal, Jr.
Coral Industries Distinguished Professor of Renewable Energy Resources
Hawaii Natural Energy Institute
POST 109, 1680 East-West Rd.
Honolulu, HI 96822

phone: 808/956-7267
fax: 808/956-2336
www.hnei.hawaii.edu

The Charcoal Vision: A Win–Win–Win Scenario for Simultaneously Producing Bioenergy, Permanently Sequestering Carbon, while Improving Soil and Water Quality
David Laird, USDAi, ARS, National Soil Tilth Laboratoryi, April 12,2008
In, Agronomy Journal • Volume 100, Issue 1 • 2008

ABSTRACT
Processing biomass through a distributed network of fast pyrolyzers may be a sustainable platform for producing energy from biomass. Fast pyrolyzers thermally transform biomass into bio-oil, syngas, and charcoal. The syngas could provide the energy needs of the pyrolyzer. Bio-oil is an energy raw material (∼17 MJ kg−1) that can be burned to generate heat or shipped to a refinery for processing into transportation fuels. Charcoal could also be used to generate energy; however, application of the charcoal co-product to soils may be key to sustainability. Application of charcoal to soils is hypothesized to increase bio-available water, build soil organic matter, enhance nutrient cycling, lower bulk density, act as a liming agent, and reduce leaching of pesticides and nutrients to surface and ground water. Th e half-life of C in soil charcoal is in excess of 1000 yr. Hence, soil-applied charcoal will make both a lasting contribution to soil quality and C in the charcoal will be removed from the atmosphere and sequestered for millennia. Assuming the United States can annually produce 1.1 × 109 Mg of biomass from harvestable forest and crop lands, national implementation of Th e Charcoal Vision would generate enough bio-oil to displace 1.91 billion barrels
of fossil fuel oil per year or about 25% of the current U.S. annual oil consumption. Th e combined C credit for fossil fuel displacement and permanent sequestration, 363 Tg per year, is 10% of the average annual U.S. emissions of CO2–C.

Sewage Sludge and The HEAP Trap
Folke Gunther, April 12, 2008

I was refraining from this, since I don’t think it is an item really belonging to the TP list, but now we are here.

1. Urine and faeces are excellent plant food. The reason we don’t use them directly is mostly cultural for the urine, I guess, but for faeces it is really an adaptive behaviour. Burning or charring cold be a good idea for faeces. The charring might make it sterile, and the non-gaseous nutrients, as phosphorus, would be returned to land, for a future production of new food. A large pat of the faeces is indigestible cellulose, why it could be a good thing to char it. The urine, which normally is sterile at the production site, could enrich charcoal very well.

2. Currently, the westernized wastewater behaviour is base on the MIFSLA (Mix First and Separate Later) philosophy This results in a mixture of high nutrient – high pathogen – high toxic – high water content mixture that is almost impossible to do something sensible with. Commonly, it is thrown away into the nearest lake or sea, where the harm it does is not immediately evident. On the other hand, avoiding the MIFSLA with a source-separating toilet is really easy, if you don’t live on the 21st floor and is forced to use the system, either you want it or not.

3. Living in dense communities (e.g. towns or cities) put another invisible restriction on you: As you use the MIFSLA system, you put the used nutrients on a smaller area than the food production area. It is like filling a glass of beer, when the glass is full, he leakage will equal the import. Normally, you stop the beer-filling process then, but you can not stop eating. It will end up in a steady state, which I call the HEAP trap.
I will add a ppt, trying to explain the HEAP effect and its cultural background.

YS
FG

Folke Günther
Kollegievägen 19
224 73 Lund, Sweden
home/office: +46 46 14 14 29
cell: 0709 710306 skype: folkegun
Homepage:
blog: http://folkegunther.blogspot.com/
folke@holon.se