permaculture

[Carl DuPoldt <cdupoldt@yahoo.com>]

                Some Web Links on Rainwater Harvesting for Stormwater 
Management:    

 
www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9Ku_xpyLK4    


www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wbyUz4IkjM     


www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ib0drunwTw    


www.projectcleanwater.org/pdf/rainwater/rw_harvest_city_la_pres.pdf     
            
        

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>From christopher.nesbitt@mmrfbz.org  Tue Nov 15 21:53:23 2011
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Subject: Re: [permaculture] Fwd: Biochar
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John,
Watch this, 
http://www.treehugger.com/lawn-garden/author-of-the-biochar-solution-says-its-not-a-solution-video.html
 

Christopher
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