permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

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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