Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>]

I was't even concidering atomic weights here Marty which makes the problem 
worse.
Start with taking one metric ton of timber.
Turn it into charcoal and weigh the result. How much have you left over? In 
my experience that won't be much more than 40 kilos or in other words you 
loose 24 out of every 25 carbon molecules as CO2 gas.

That weight loss was the most important and practical reason that people 
made charcoal in times gone by. We cook and warm our house mostly with 
timber and you have no idea what an enormous pile we need to get through a 
winter. In fact that pile is so huge that it is only possible to do this on 
a farm.
Charcoal was always made where the timber was, deep in the woods. Timber is 
very heavy and charcoal is very light and thus much easier to transport and 
charcoal is also a superior fuel. It will smelt iron while timber won't get 
quite hot enough for that. That most of the energy in timber was lost was 
not important then compared to the advantages.
john

> John
>
> That 25 pounds of CO2 for every one pound of charcoal sounds high. I know 
> that carbon has an atomic weight of 12 and oxygen is 16 and O2 would be 32 
> with a total of 44 but that still sounds high. When i look at the retort 
> videos on youtube they are charring quite a bit more wood than they are 
> using for fuel. Then there is the factor that all the carbon that is char 
> is being taken out of the cycle for a long time. The CO2 that goes into 
> the air is then cycled back into wood where we have another crack at 
> making char later. Right now i'm only using the charcoal from my fireplace 
> insert for char. That means i'm using the energy to heat my house. Messy 
> process but i think it's worth it. Where did you get that one to twenty 
> five figure?
>
> Marty
>
> On 12/14/10 2:52 PM, John D'hondt wrote:
> > I think a study by Johannes Lehmann found that charcoal added to
> > temperate soils didn't add much if any productivity. However if
> > productivity stays the same and i can sequester carbon by adding it to
> > the soil i will do it. I figure if we can mitigate global warming in
> > this way we humans might survive to garden in the future.
> >
> > The part i don't like about making biochar is the waste of energy when
> > the wood is burned. We need stoves designed to make charcoal AND heat
> > our homes and businesses.
> > Marty
> >
> > <<<For every pound of charcoal you make you produce at least 25 pounds of 
> > CO2 gas. You really figure that is going to help global warming? Glad you 
> > seem to see that yourself.
> > john
> >
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