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  • From: mdnagel@verizon.net
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Biochar questions
  • Date: Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:22:04 -0600 (CST)

This is all fine and dandy for individuals, but keep in mind that the mighty wheels of capitalism will snag this and take off with it.  And when it does, you can be assured that our woodlands will end up looking like West Virginia's mountain tops!


-Mark Nagel
Everett, WA


Nov 9, 2009 08:14:29 PM, livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

> 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" target="_blank" class="parsedEmail parsedEmail">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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