permaculture

["John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>]

Which must mean that only bought in charcoal from a well controlled 
pyrolisis installation will have good results Toby. Back garden charcoal 
making is not good enough. Almost impossible to get and maintain the right 
temperatures all through the charcoal.

And again, I have been doing tests on growth rates for nearly twenty years 
with activated charcoal and I have never seen positive efects with charcoal 
on it's own. None. Compost yes, fish emulsion most definitely, ormus (sea 
solids) fantastic. When I mix these nutrients with charcoal I find a neutral 
effect at best of the charcoal.
Is it possible that "bio-char" gives better plant growth in some 
environments? Possibly but not here in Ireland. Solar energy is the defining 
factor and that is not a given here.

Is it good for the planet to burry biochar in the soil? Extremely doubtful 
unless you do see very good growth results.
If you buy your biochar for this purpose it may have high potent fertilizer 
mixed in and you would still not know.
The fertilizer on it's own will probably have the same effect.
John



> 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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