Terra Preta - The parent thread which started it all

[erich]

In another forum a guy said that running over it did a fine job, it reminded me of doing this to bust open Black Wallnuts as a kid.

[davidgmills]

Chris Brandow:

I know that terra preta's charcoal is ground to smithereens. But was it done that way by the aboriginals? I have serious doubts about that. That seems like way too much work. It seems to me that most of this charcoal started out in good sized chunks and nature broke it down. How long did that take? I have no idea.

So I just dumped mine on the garden. A shovel will easily break these lumps into small pieces. As I continue to turn the soil, I break up the bigger pieces. Do I get them to dust? No. But I am basically experimenting to see how long it takes nature to do the job and how well this works even without small particles of charcoal. Obviously on large farm, if farmers make their own charcoal, they are going to have a problem turning the charcoal to dust. So I guess I am experiementing. On the epreda website, the eureka moment was when the owner was told large parsnips were growing in a charcoal pile. It seemed to me that there had been no attempt at all to particlize this charcoal. So that tells me the process works even without particlizing it.

[Taildragerdriver]

David:

I think on a large farming operation most everybody will pretty easily turn the charcoal to dust pretty fast. I my case I plan to use a rotovater to till it into the soil. That is just a big rototiller and it basically turns almost everything to dust in the first foot of soil.

Even if farmers don't use these same methods. In most cases I can think of, if they want to use charcoal they will have to do a least a single major tilling operation to incorporate the charcoal into the soils. This at least entails plowing and disking which would pretty much turn the top layer to dust. After that no till farming fits best with charcoal in my mind for row corp type uses. In fact one of my concerns is how to not grind it too much and have the charcoal sifted to the top and be susecptable to wind in the first year before the planted cover protects it.

I hope after tilling gets it incorporated initially the charcoal affinity to water will keep it bound to the soil particles and reduce any loss if the field is well irrigated.

I think carcoal can work even if not well ground up but the particle surface is not as great so the best condition to present maximum surface area would be all ground up. If I understand this process it takes time to develop so I think it should not be critical either way.

Thanks

Taildragerdriver

[davidgmills]

Experimenting today with grinding up lump charcoal, I found that using a pair of pliers worked the best. I don't think putting a brick in a large sealed can and rolling it will work (rotisserie fashion) unless you are willing to rotate the can a long time. I tried dropping a sledge on the charcoal in the bottom of the 2 and 1/2 gallon popcorn can and that didn't work well at all.

Of course using pliers is tedious and I was just making potting soil for potted plants. Pliers do get most of the lumps down to 1/4 inch size with lots of powder produced in the process.

But it takes some pretty good pressure in the right spot to get some of this to break down.

Running over it with a car tire on the asphalt sounds like a good idea but I don't know what I would put it in that wouldn't break.

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by davidgmills

Experimenting today with grinding up lump charcoal, I found that using a pair of pliers worked the best..

That sounds like hard work.
The BBQ charcoal I buy, I bash with a brick while it is in the bag.
It breaks up fairly well. For finer particles I use a mortar and pestle.

I visited Stephen Joseph , a lovely man at Best Energies, yesterday and he gave me a big bag of fine char. I am like a kid with a new toy running around putting it in different spots/pots.

He also gave me lots of articles/information to read- including some of the Japanese stuff I had found hard to access
As I go though them I will post any salient points here

It looks like all the Terra preta gurus will be here for the Terrigal Conference

[Michaelangelica]

QUOTE=davidgmills;151903]Chris Brandow:

I know that terra preta's charcoal is ground to smithereens. But was it done that way by the aboriginals?

I imagine it being done as grain is powdered. Have you seen pictures of Native peoples using a long thick tree pole and slamming it up and down into a big high walled container -a little like a huge mortar and pestle?

Our government (The Land of Oz) just gave $60M to Chevron Mobil to sequester CO2 gas underground! I read the UK is contemplating a similar scheme

I can't understand how anyone can contemplate this technology.
How do you know if the gas will stay there?
How would you know if it left?
Will it stay for a day, a month a year, a 100 years?
Charcoal in soil has been shown to be stable for thousands of years and make soil more fertile and productive.
(O yes, we get rid of waste, make bio-gas and electricty into the bargain).
What is the problem with governments?
Terra preta is the way to go. It is a 'No-brainer'
--
michael

PS
can anyone translate this and see if there is anything interesting?
terra preta

SOLOS DE TERRA PRETA PODEM SER SOLUÇÃO PARA A AGRICULTURA NA AMAZÔNIA

Pesquisadores de vários países correm contra o tempo para descobrir como se formou um dos solos mais férteis do mundo: a Terra Preta Arqueológica

[Michaelangelica]

A FEW LINKS ON MAKING CHARCOAL

Charcoal Retort

Discovery Online, The Skinny On ... Charcoal

Renewable Energy Generation » Making Charcoal from Sugar Cane Leaves - Renewable Energy News

Making Charcoal

Top Five Things to Do With Oil Barrels When There’s No More Oil To Fill Them - #1. Make Charcoal. » Transition Culture

Charcoal photos

English Charcoal, environment, history and woodmanship


Yet another link:-
ruminations from the distant hills: Terra Preta

[Michaelangelica]

HOME

An anti TP article

Notes on the debate over sustainability of pyrolization of biomass ...
If you wish to add in other factors, along with the charcoal, then the discussion will be very different. Charcoal, by itself, as an addition to soil,

http://mail.google.com/mail/?ik=55ad...x=j14bp7fe183x.

Occasional Randomness: Saving the World, Destroying the Rainforest

the addition of carbon decreased root size, nodule number and nodule size.

SpringerLink - Journal Article

The Ergosphere: Sustainability, energy independence and agricultural policy

Paying farmers to take carbon out of the air and put it in the ground, out of reach (e.g. as charcoal mixed with earth) could be the ultimate price backstop for anything they grew. The risk of price collapses due to bumper harvests would be a thing of the past; sequestration would be the ultimate backup "market" able to absorb anything beyond marketable quantities.

SANET-MG Archives -- September 2006 (#65)

Back

Carbon negative energy to reverse global warming

Back

Dr. Ogawa, from Kansai Environmental in Japan, a division of Kansai
Power the 2nd largest electric producer in that country, presented
their research on charcoal addition to the soil.
Their work, which has
been ongoing for more than 15 years, has been studying the causes of
the charcoal effect and led to thee Japanese government approving
charcoal as an official land management practice.
The impact of manystudies in Brazil to Thailand to Japan, showing increased crop yields of 20-50% and total biomass yields increasing as much 280%, led Kansai Electric to fund a reforestation research plantation in Australia with Dr. Syd Shea for producing charcoal and returning it to grow more trees and crops in the arid west of that country.

Low temperature woody charcoal (not grass or high cellulose) has an
interior layer of bio-oil condensates that microbes consume and is
equal to glucose in its effect on microbial growth (Christoph Steiner,
EACU 2004).
High temp char loses this layer and does not promote soil
fertility very well. Tests by Finnish researcher Janna Pitkien, on
highly porous materials like zeolite, activated carbon and charcoal
show that microbial growth is substantially improved with charcoal
. . .
What we know now is that the properly prepared charcoal can increase
crop yields and sequester carbon for thousands of years (5000 years is
an estimate by Dan Gavin, charcoal dating researcher.(U. of Ill). Its
properties can allow even more carbon to be sequestered with more
biomass growth and soil carbon from microbial-fungi proliferation.
. . .

we have the capability to go carbon negative today. As we make
the switch, it will need to be a global effort as positive feedbacks
are kicking in and will likely accelerate.

What about areas for use? Considering the 6.1 gigatons of CO2
accumulation, we would need to utilize this land and biomass
production technique on only 10% of the total of biologically
productive and human degraded lands per year to attain carbon negative
status.
If we added desert lands for reclamation the number declines
further. Is is a big number, yes, but it is doable and a culture from
2000 years ago clearly understood its value then. Considering that
the majority of new emissions will come from developing countries,
what ever we choose, needs to be simple and profitable.

What can you do? Read up on terra preta
. . .

Then tell everyone you know.

[redgreenblue]

Originally Posted by Michaelangelica

Our government (The Land of Oz) just gave $60M to Chevron Mobil to sequester CO2 gas underground! I read the UK is contemplating a similar scheme

I can't understand how anyone can contemplate this technology.
How do you know if the gas will stay there?
How would you know if it left?
Will it stay for a day, a month a year, a 100 years?
Charcoal in soil has been shown to be stable for thousands of years and make soil more fertile and productive.
(O yes, we get rid of waste, make bio-gas and electricty into the bargain).
What is the problem with governments?
Terra preta is the way to go. It is a 'No-brainer'

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has a ginormous report on sequestering CO2 underground ( (www) ipcc.ch/activity/srccs/index.htm). The executive summary and the summaries at the beginning of each chapter do a really good job of concisely presenting the current knowledge related to this technology. These are the same folks who get a lot of media attention when they put out their comprehensive climate change reports.

The general consensus is that this technology is safe and the gas will stay down there for millions of years. The CO2 is monitored through methods such as seismic surveys and long term predictions are done through computer simulations. Both of these techniques have been well developed by oil and gas industries over the past several decades for exploration purposes. Underground storage of natural gas has already been used for over 100 years (even in urban areas), and underground injection of CO2 has already begun in places such as the US, Canada, and Norway.

...so... there's a lot of research indicating that this could work... but... you're still basically putting CO2 down a hole in the ground, and the economics aren't that good yet even with CO2 trading. The US and Canada have used CO2 to pressurize oil fields to increase oil recovery, and the Norwegians sequester CO2 near one of their gas fields because the country has a carbon tax. The gas they extract has too high a CO2 concentration for pipeline transport, and they would get taxed heavily for venting it to the air.

While Terra Preta could be a much more elegant solution, there still isn't that much awareness about it. I often talk to academics studying environmental issues, and nearly everyone has heard about sequestering CO2 underground, but very few have heard about Terra Preta. If they have heard, then they are either skeptical or don't know what to make of it yet. Research interest is definitely picking up though, which should help remedy this situation.

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by redgreenblue

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has a ginormous report on sequestering CO2 underground ( (www) ipcc.ch/activity/srccs/index.htm).
While Terra Preta could be a much more elegant solution, there still isn't that much awareness about it.

Thanks for the link I ddn't know anyone had done any research on it.
60m still seems like anice gift for Chevron.

The concept of Terra preta has not hit public consciousness yet.
Re-creating Terra preta (nova) has to be the best solution yet for the problem of Global Warming.