Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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

Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] the learning curve - charcoal


> John
>
> Albert Bates on page 78 of his book The Biochar Solution compares Carbon 
> sequestered by charring to carbon sequestered by biological decomposition 
> in the following paragraph. He also seems to state that percentage of 
> carbon sequestered from the raw feedstock is 25 to 50 percent instead of 
> the 4 to 5 percent that you are stating. How do you come by your 
> estimation?

People write all kinds of things in paragraphs in books even the bigest 
drivel. Unless you use electric or gas or nuclear energy to make charcoal 
you will follow tradition and use the energy in the timber to char itself. 
It costs a lot of energy. I thought you were making charcoal yourself? So I 
can only say to try weighing begin product and end result (before soaking in 
anything) and then tell us all what is what. I am sick of people who can no 
longer use their own senses and instead use quotes. That way you can prove 
that our planet is an hollow ball with a civilisation inside that moves 
about in flying saucers or that immortality is yours if you wear a small 
Cheops pyramid on your head. With quotes you can be sure that man landed on 
the moon and that man did not land on the moon. With just quotes you can 
prove everything and it's opposite.
I did weigh my charcoal and my starting timber. Just can't help myself but I 
was trained as a scientist and we are supposed to deal in verifiable facts 
rather than estimates.


> "There is a big difference in the amount of carbon sequestration
> realized from recalcitrant versus labile carbon management practices.
> Recalcitrant carbon sequesters 25 to 50 percent of the carbon of its
> source feedstock for 1000 years. By comparison, making labile carbon
> by biological decomposition (plowing under) or torrifaction (stubble-
> burning) sequesters less than 10 to 20 percent for 5 to 10 years."
> Bates

I take it that you understand all these expensive words Marty?
Recalcitrant carbon is supposed to mean charcoal in this context but we 
would be as justified or unjustified to call diamond like this or the coal 
that is dug up by the billions of tons to make electricity. Not too presize 
so but there is more...
Recalcitrant according to most dictionaries is defined as"being stubornly 
resistant to authority, domination or guidance" and as synonym you will 
often find given "unruly". Does this sound right to you?

Labile means : " constantly liable to undergo change or fluctuation; 
unstable." This has deliberate negative conotations imo. Living wood will 
decompose and turn into soil. The direction of the change is rather very 
constant whether you start from card board, wood chips, straw or dead fish 
in combination with the others. Soil in my experience may be extremely 
stable as well. For instance, a few years ago we discovered at about 12 foot 
deep a brown soil that had a lot of morenal debris from the last ice age on 
top of it. I would think that it had remained covered for at least ten 
thousand years but three weeks after making this layer bare it started 
sprouting green. Our morenal subsoil stays bare for years.

Sequestration simply means "moving or setting apart; segregate" and with 
wood mulches that is just a wrong description for they are definitely part 
of something bigger, an ecosystem, and they are constantly being changed by 
it in a very definite direction.
I agree that charcoal is inert and does nothing much in the ground but that 
is not what is usually claimed by charcoal adepts.

The word torrifaction comes from the French torréfaction which is usually 
used to name the process of roasting coffee beans into coffee. A 
"torrefacteur" is a coffee roaster. The word is also used to descibe 
breaking up some metal ores by heat but for burning stuble in the field it 
is a new one to me.

On top of these "new speak" examples that mess up the proper meaning of 
words the figures given are much more inpresize. Nobody would be able to 
lift a bag of charcoal if they were correct for starters. What is further 
with the one thousand years? Is that not as long lasting as a certain 
"Reich"?
I know for a fact that charcoaled timber remains from human habitation have 
been found that were 4-5 thousand years old at least. I have used the same 
system extensively myself for charcoal is a very good wood preservative. 
However, rot will eventually set in exactly at ground level and much faster 
than that. Maybe 20 years here but depending on how much precipitation one 
gets.

A last point and to show how the authors deliberately skew the facts : 
biological decomposition is ideal on the surface and problematic when plowed 
under and stuble burning is also completely unnecessary. Where they get 
10-20 % for 5 to 10 years is a riddle to me. Figures plucked out of "peer 
reviewed research" or straight from the great pie in the sky? There must be 
hundreds of factors that can influence this.

The great difference is whether you opt for living carbon under the form of 
trees, vegetation and a soil ecosystem or dead carbon under the form of 
coal, too widely dispersed to be useful.
john





> Marty
>
>
>
> On 12/16/10 4:21 PM, John D'hondt wrote:
> > 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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