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  • From: Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Charcoal
  • Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 12:01:51 -0800

The reason they call it biochar is because the intent is to use it in a
biological context (soil amendment) instead of burning it as fuel. Like
biophysics, bioengineering, biomechanics, bioswale, etc.. A non-living thing
used in a biological system. So that's a standard usage.

The main difference between biochar and charcoal is that the optimal temp to
produce combustion charcoal is 300-350 degrees C. The optimal temp for
biochar is 450-700 C. That removes the aromatics that, as John notes, are
present in charcoal. Aromatics are generally not present in biochar.

Initial experiments using mycelial-inoculated biochar to grow vegetables show
20% more growth and 20% higher brix in fruit than controls grown with compost
or mycelium alone. Biochar can hold greater numbers of microbes than
compost--more properly sized "apartments" and sites for colonization. These
results will be released by a well-known mycologist in the spring, but I've
seen the data and methods, and they are good.

A good ref for charcoal vs biochar is
http://www.hedon.info/tiki-view_forum_thread.php?forumId=13&comments_parentId=152&topics_offset=9&topics_sort_mode=lastPost_desc


Toby
http://patternliteracy.com


On Nov 8, 2013, at 4:00 PM, John D'hondt wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I seem to have caused a flood of mails about charcoal.
>
> Let me first explain why I don't like the name "bio-char". Charcoal has
> been made by mankind for thousands of years for very specific reasons one
> important one being that it does not decay and will stay in it's original
> form for an extreme long time. That can only be because it is dead and most
> definitely not alive as the name "bio"= old Greek for life suggests.
> The bio part is only there to make it a good sales argument imo.
>
> The most economically important reason for making charcoal was/is that as a
> fuel it is very superior to the wood it was made from. Before coal mining
> came to be it was essential to have charcoal for smelting metals and to
> work blacksmith forges. It burns much hotter than wood.
> Another reason for making charcoal was that it makes it much easier to
> bring fuel from the woods down to human population centers. A freshly
> felled tree might take extreme hard work for several horses to move while a
> child could lift and carry the charcoal that was made from that tree.
> Another reason was that charcoal does not soak up rain water as wood does.
> You can leave it out in the open under the worst of weather and it will
> remain the same.
>
> The internet is full of recipes to make charcoal at home and all of these
> use a large amount of energy to convert wood to charcoal. Which is OK if
> you use the waste heat for cooking and heating but not if you think to do
> well for the planet and to sequester carbon because for every kilo of
> charcoal you make you are going to immediately release, there and then,
> 20-50 kilos of carbon dioxide into the air. Much more if the timber you are
> starting from has a high moisture content and admittedly less if you use an
> electric system that is fed by nuclear or alternative energy.
> If you use the energy of burning timber to make charcoal you should weigh
> all the timber used in the process beforehand and then weigh what is left
> over as charcoal to give you an idea of the truth of this. The missing
> kilos have gone up as carbon dioxide mostly.
>
> OK you have made charcoal which means that for the most part only the
> original cell walls of the timber are now left over and they consist of
> crystalline carbon.
> If you look closer you will even find Bucky ball and grapheme structures in
> there. Is that all?
> No there are also still aromatic hydrophobic substances there and for those
> without much chemistry, aromatic means benzene like hexagonal ring
> structures and many of these are known carcinogens to man and beast.
>
> It can take a year to multiple years for these aromatics to leach out under
> average weather or soil conditions. And even if the remains of those plant
> cells look like nice apartments for microbes and fungi to some, just like
> flats in a high rise they are a toxic habitat without food for micro
> organisms. If anybody can see with the naked eye colonies of bacteria and
> fungi in there they have better eyes than almost anybody alive. It is
> thought today that almost ten % of our body weight consists of such
> organisms and they are completely unnoticed by most until they cause a
> problem.
>
> Is there any way to get rid of these aromatic compounds fast? Thankfully
> yes. The process is called activating charcoal and it is simply done by
> setting the charcoal back on fire under high oxygen conditions (bellows
> from below is a good way) and then quenching with clean water.
>
> This activated charcoal is what is used in gas masks and water filters and
> it has extremely beneficial medicinal uses. This sort of charcoal will bind
> extremely willingly with all kinds of man made toxins everywhere. As David
> Muhl says, it will be chockfull of glyphosate in most American soils before
> long. I am thinking that this is the main reason that some people see good
> effects from adding charcoal to soil.
>
> Christopher Nesbitt mixes his charcoal into the compost and sees extreme
> beneficial effects from this mix. I wonder what compost on it's own would
> do? Just maybe, charcoal in the mix could slow down decomposition of his
> compost under tropical conditions and have a beneficial effect that way. As
> a side note, according to the late Dr. Bargeela Ratever, a fore runner of
> scientific organic farming, rice hulls were the best thing to break
> impossibly heavy clay soils into more workable and plant friendly soil.
> She advocated harrowing in the raw hulls into the top 2 inches of clay. I
> do think that the charcoaled hulls would still have a residual beneficial
> effect because they would still contain silicon for instance.
> Heisenhauer seems to drench his charcoal with urine and sees good effects
> from that. Unfortunately urea is not readily adsorbed by charcoal. So I
> don't know why he should see immediate colonization of the charcoal.
>
> One other important point is to quantify the sequestration of carbon. Even
> if we burned the complete biomass on the planet to make charcoal it would
> still be a ridiculously minor bucketful compared to the sea of CO2
> pollution caused by the oil and coal industries and our burning of their
> products and there is no doubt in my mind that it would make us all
> extinct if we attempted it.
>
> All the best to all,
> John
>
>
>
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