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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Biochar questions

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: Bobby G <bobbyg53211@yahoo.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Biochar questions
  • Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 18:35:37 -0800 (PST)


> Message: 8
> Date: Sun, 8 Nov 2009 16:17:50 -0600
> From: Marty Kraft <martyk@allspecies.org>
> Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Biochar Questions
> To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing
> <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID: <ADD51D2A-42E7-4173-85CA-D05F6065107C@allspecies.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>
> My interest is not just in improving my soil. I have been
> doing
> pretty good in that department. The carbon that i put in
> the soil as
> organic matter will cycle back out into the atmosphere as
> CO2 as the
> organisms break it down. If i create terra prita and add it
> to the
> soil i will be sequestering carbon in the soil for over a
> thousand
> years while i improve the cation carrying capacity, the
> ability to
> hold microrizzal fungi and moisture. I would rather not
> suffer the
> slings and arrows of outrageous climate change but rather
> take up
> arms against it.
>
Marty, my reading and understanding on this topic is about where you're at
with it. Biochar is not the same as "burning wood and throwing the ashes on
the ground." It's the result of a slow, oxygen-starved process that is
incomplete combustion.

Up-to-date processes for making the char involve using a retort, kind of a
slow-burn stove.

You can really take the process a whole lot further by capturing the
pyrolysis gases that come off the slow combustion. Most of the gases coming
off are hydrogen and other combustibles, not CO2, which is not combustible.

The reason the Europeans were able to run cars and trucks off pyrolysis gas
(or "producer gas" or "biogas") during World War II was because the burner
units produced these combustible gases, mostly hydrogen (though there are
other gases present, including some CO2). If the producer gas was mostly CO2,
no trucks would have run off the gas...

The modern retort leaves not ashes nor clinker, but mostly carbon (char) that
can be added to the soil. In the soil, it provides habitat for fungi,
bacteria, etc. and is very very slow to break down. It adds to the web of
life.

The pyrolysis gas driven off could be used on-farm to fuel power equipment,
heat buildings, heat houses, power vehicles or tractors, dry grain, whatever
uses combustible gases can be given.

I don't think anyone in biochar world is suggesting not to do composting, or
lasagna composting, or adding manure, or other processes to get organic
matter in the soil. The amount of carbon added isn't that big. And it's not
a "fertilizer" so much as a soil conditioner.

I think there's a lot more work to be done on this biochar question. I think
both the academics and the farmers in the field will play a part in it.

Bobby G.
Central Wisc. USA











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