permaculture

[Michael Pilarski <friendsofthetrees@yahoo.com>]

A piece of charcoal in the soil is carbon that is sequestered for hundreds or 
thousands of years.  To give you an idea how stable charcoal is, ponder that 
carbon dating techniques of archeology are based on measuring carbon isotopes 
in charcoal from ancient sites. 

More importantly, think of each piece of biochar as a giant apartment house 
for soil microbes.,  A place to sleep, eat, rest, procreate and evade large 
predators.  Each piece of biochar is a great place for cation exchange 
activitity and many soil nutrients are adfixed to the biochar.  They are a 
sink for soil nutrients. Each apartment house is occupied by an endless 
stream of tenants for hundreds or thousands of years. 

They also hold moisture and add texture and porosity to soil. 

this all adds up to increased soil life, increased crop yields, increased 
biomass.

All in all, a pretty good thing to have in your soil.  Multiply the 
beneficial affect on arable soils worldwide and we have one of the techniques 
that can help us build an exhuberant biosphere.  

Only one technique out of many, but let's use it where appropriate.  

I highly recommend research, experimentation and an open mind. 

Michael pilarski

--- On Wed, 11/16/11, Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com> wrote:

From: Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Biochar is part of a LOCAL solution
To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Wednesday, November 16, 2011, 8:50 PM

On Nov 16, 2011, at 3:33 PM, John D'hondt wrote:

> 
> I like this but still think that charcoal burning is detrimental if we want 
> to stop climate change. We produce 20 times more CO2 while making charcoal 
> than we ever sequester whatever system we use. 

I was just at a biochar workshop this weekend and the numbers given were that 
the method we used can sequester 40% of the carbon in a given piece of wood, 
and that's more than if microbes ate it, and far better than the "20x" that 
you state. Does your number come from an actual calculation? The numbers I've 
seen suggest that a clean pyrolysis is carbon neutral or even negative by 
weight, since putting pure carbon in the soil means that nearly 3 times that 
weight (the weight of one carbon plus two oxygens) is kept out of the 
atmosphere. (that strikes me as a funny way to calculate it, but that's how 
they do it for CO2)

I think the jury is still out on biochar in temperate climates, but replacing 
inefficient open fires or wood stoves with biochar pyrolysis makes a huge 
amount of sense, since you get a much cleaner burn (reduced pollution), more 
efficient generation of heat for cooking, and a useable product in the 
charcoal, instead of ash. So for cultures that rely on wood, it's very smart.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com

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