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  • From: Jennifer Nazak <jnazak@yahoo.com>
  • To: "permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>, "bioreg@yahoogroups.com" <bioreg@yahoogroups.com>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Seeking Thanksgiving rideshare
  • Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 14:09:16 -0800 (PST)

In response to my post seeking a rideshare for Thanksgiving, someone on the
"90PercentReduction" Yahoo Group email list posted a link to a discount bus
service called Megabus. Its website is megabus.com

If you are traveling in the East, I highly recommend it. Even making a
reservation only a few days in advance, I'm going to be able to get from
Florida to DC for less than $50. Some people have reported traveling from DC
to Boston (for example) for as little as $5.

It's good to have another option for reduced-carbon-footprint travel.
 
Jenny Nazak
permaculture publicist at large!
jennynazak.com

"We are seldom, if ever, locked into a reality that we can't change simply by
deciding to change our beliefs." (Harry Palmer, author of the Avatar®
materials, www.TheAvatarCourse.com Avatar® is a registered trademark of
Star's Edge, Inc. All rights reserved.)
>From christopher.nesbitt@mmrfbz.org Tue Nov 15 20:01:56 2011
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Subject: Re: [permaculture] Fwd: Biochar
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Again, read the book. That charcoal will be full of microrganisms in a short
amount of time.

I am not a biochar true believer. Others may be. I am not going to discuss
this further. I do suggest, one last time, that you read the book.
On Nov 15, 2011, at 3:47 PM, John D'hondt wrote:

>
> Christopher,
>
> Charcoal has been a priced commodity for thousands of years and the main
> reason for this was that charcoal is light. A cubic meter of timber would
> weigh easily 3/4 metric ton but even a child could lift the half cubic
> meter
> of charcoal resulting from charcoaling that cubic meter of timber. It was a
> good bit easier to get 50 kilos of charcoal down the mountain than 2 ton of
> fresh firewood. And of course another advantage is that charcoal burns a
> lot
> hotter if you give it oxygen with a bellows than the original wood. (If you
> don't give it enough oxygen it produces carbon monoxide that will kill you)
> Charcoal was necessary for blacksmithing and smelting metals before cokes
> became available.
>
> The disadvantage is that most of the energy (and most of the nutrients)
> captured in the wood went to waste and up in the air as CO2 (and SO2). And
> that did not matter much in far away days. However, most of the bio-char
> sites still use the same techniques of making charcoal as in the middle
> ages
> and the result, the production of 20 times more CO and CO2 gas than is
> retained in the charcoal remains the same too. As a means to sequester
> carbon this is ridiculously wasteful and inefficient and damaging to the
> planet.
>
> Advanced pyrolisis on the other hand makes use primarily of the gasses
> produced while charcoaling which is mainly CO and methane with some
> hydrogen. It is well possible to drive petrol engines on this gas mixtures
> and that was done extensively during WW2 in many places.
> Unfortunately it is not quite that simple. I know a man not far from here
> who drove a WW2 truck on wood gas in his youth in Holland and according to
> him the only timber that would give the truck a range of more than a few
> miles was very dry beech wood. Not even seasoned oak would do. (we have
> none
> of the above trees here in any quantity)
>
> These days one can buy (or make) very advanced woodgas makers that can be
> used to drive turbines to produce electricity but the installation that I
> would need to produce 4 KW (not enough for electric welding) would cost
> around 40 thousand euros if we bought it and probably more than 20 thousand
> if we made it ourselves. It is mainly but not only the price that has put
> me
> off this. It takes about an hour to fire up and since we have mostly
> softwood available that produces lots of tar it takes hours to clean after
> a
> run.
> It also needs an electric supply for start up. This is not appropriate
> technology for poor rural people even if it is admittedly quite efficient
> since it uses primarily what was waste in earlier systems. But of course
> many essential mineral nutrients still go up in smoke as is the case in
> original charcoal making.
>
> I would be very grateful to learn more of your planned wood gassifier for
> the price of even one tank of propane is much higher here than your
> complete
> installation. We ourselves at the moment use mostly very efficient wood
> stoves that release luke warm air only up the chimney but of course we burn
> the charcoal as well in this process. Meaning that we use much less wood
> than we would if we tried to save the charcoal.
> I do think that there are other low tech solutions to produce gas that are
> more efficient and environmentally friendly such as methane fermenters. In
> warm places they would be even more efficient and cheaper. I have seen
> Chinese systems that get by with one steel drum dropped into a cylindrical
> hole in clay and a length of flexible pipe straight to the gas cooker. If
> you don't have an impermeable clay soil you would need some cement to coat
> the hole. Gas pressure can be easily controlled by some stone put on top of
> the barrel.
> We built a big methane fermenter here in Ireland but unfortunately the
> speed
> of fermentation depends on temperature. We measure just 7 C average in our
> tank. The fermentation speed doubles with every ten degrees extra
> temperature. We are working (much too slowly) to install a passive solar
> heather into our tank.
>
> In your previous mail you stated that the "science" of bio-char use was
> well
> established. You know, I have had good quality charcoal at my disposal for
> over 20 years and being a scientist myself I did a lot of experiments.
> Sorry, but at best I found no effect at all even with charcoal that had
> matured for over a year in a compost heap. Many of the bio-char sites think
> it is necessary to mature the charcoal for the fresh stuff contains traces
> of organic hydrocarbons that are most obviously toxic to soil life and
> plants. Benzene and Xylene are found in fresh charcoal to name but a few.
> Used out in the open garden I never found any (positive) effect and in
> trials in pots with seedlings I found negative growth results and more so
> if
> the concentration of charcoal was higher. I have yet to meet somebody who
> is
> sold on the charcoal hype who has done a single convincing experiment
> himself except for one single person who used charcoal in soil to remediate
> severe pesticide toxicity. (and after that still decided it was safer to
> grow vegetables in imported soil in plastic wading pools above the ground.)
> I would also think that charcoal would help in binding heavy metals in soil
> but that seems not to be a problem here.
>
> To me if charcoal was really that good there would be no reason to call it
> "living coal" for charcoal is completely inert and life less. It will still
> be in soil unaltered in a thousand years. Real life means change.
>
> john
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> Lawrence,
>>
>> Thats absolutely not true. Biochar is about making heat from pyrolysis,
>> heating biomas to get the biomas to off gas, burning in a non oxygen
>> environment. The heated gasses can then be burned, and the heat from that
>> be used for things that we need heat for, cooking, space heating, water
>> heating, running a sterling engine, etc. The "bad" gases are burned off,
>> and what is left behind is the carbon, which has a lot of surface area for
>> your soil bacteria and fungi. Its like an apartment building for
>> mocrorganisms, and greatly aids in fertility. The carbon applied to the
>> soil is very stable, and will be effectively removed from the atmosphere
>> for a long time.
>>
>> We are working on developing a home stove at low cost for families who
>> burn wood for cooking here in southern Belize. This is an alternative for
>> rural people who cannot afford the natural gas/propane/butane/fossil fuel
>> that people in more developed countries use. We have a design that uses a
>> 55 gallon drum and a welded old propane tank. Total cost? About USD75,
>> less than the price of two full tanks of propane, and it gives heat for
>> cooking, has fairly complete combustion, and leaves us with carbon to bury
>> in the soil. This is not an industrial byproduct, or a way to make money.
>> It is a way for small farmers to improve their soils while sequestering
>> carbon (generated in natural gas/propane/butane/fossil fuel run stoves,
>> for example), while getting the heat they need to do their cooking.
>>
>> Again, I suggest anyone considering the merits, or lack of, of biochar, to
>> read Albert Bates book, "The Biochar Solution". That is one way to become
>> an informed person on the subject.
>>
>> Christopher
>>
>>
>>
>> On Nov 14, 2011, at 11:01 PM, Lawrence F. London, Jr. wrote:
>>
>>> On 11/14/2011 5:31 PM, John D'hondt wrote:
>>>>
>>>> They don't yet know how it works? But they are already telling everybody
>>>> how
>>>> to make it? Burning the planet to cool it?
>>>> If it were not for the very name which comes under the heading of
>>>> "new-speak" in Brave New World more people might wonder if it worked at
>>>> all
>>>> as do I. Bio means life and char means coal and freedom is slavery and
>>>> war
>>>> is peace.
>>>
>>> Its all about using an industrial (probably wasteful and polluting
>>> processes) byproduct to create another product to market for high dollar.
>>>
>>> It does not make any sense to char biomass to make charcoal that then
>>> must be pulverized and field spread (often using fossil fuel) when all
>>> that needs to be done is to allow weeds to control weeds, crimp or roll
>>> them to make a semi living mulch that controls weeds, adds seeds and
>>> organic matter to soil to increase OM and eventually humus while
>>> significantly building soil quality and productive capacity.
>>>
>>> Thumbs up for notill agriculture (and minimum till).
>>>
>>> LL
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>>
>>
>>
>> _____________________________
>> Christopher Nesbitt
>>
>> Maya Mountain Research Farm
>> San Pedro Columbia, Toledo
>> PO 153 Punta Gorda Town, Toledo
>> BELIZE,
>> Central America
>>
>> www.mmrfbz.org
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>
>
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_____________________________
Christopher Nesbitt

Maya Mountain Research Farm
San Pedro Columbia, Toledo
PO 153 Punta Gorda Town, Toledo
BELIZE,
Central America

www.mmrfbz.org






  • Re: [permaculture] Seeking Thanksgiving rideshare, Jennifer Nazak, 11/15/2011

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