davidgmills

I figured that someone might have seen this article and that it was discussed it already. I wonder though if the scientists included the microbes in their C count. If you replace dead organic material with live organic material it seems that the C of live organic material should be included in the analysis. Even if the C counts of dead vs. live organic material were essentially equal, it still seems that their needs to be an analysis of which is better for the soil for both growth and long term carbon sustainability.

Limitations Of Charcoal As An Effective Carbon Sink

Just saw your thread. I kept waiting for an update but didn't know where to look. I have always thought you would be the one to kick TP off in a big way, because you are a farmer and the rest of us are not. I will say this about the selling of small bags of charcoal. You will have competition. I buy mine from Cowboy Charcoal in 8 lb bags for about $5. Also one of the major charcoal companies -- I think it is Matchlight -- is also making lump charcoal for about the same price. These of course are for barbecue not soil remediation but I use them in my soil. To really compete you would have to do something different -- make something specifically for soil remediation. Of course if you did that, then you would lose sales for barbecue. My soil continues to improve. I live in the suburbs on about .4 acres. But my trees seem to be improving and potted plants are doing well as are my gardens. My goal is to put one ton of charcoal on my property before I die. So far I have added about 100 pounds. Long way to go.

How about coconut oil? Coconut oil has lauric acid, the only plant with significant amounts of lauric acid. Lauric acid is the compound in human milk that purportedly gives babies their immunity. See lauric.org for more info. Lauric acid lyses the lipid envelopes of many viruses and bacteria. I have used coconut oil now for about six years to combat many colds (influenza is a lipid enveloped virus) and for herpes (also a lipid enveloped virus) cold sores. I will give you two personal stories. I used to have herpes cold sores regularly. After taking about three tablespoons of coconut oil for about six months, they disappeared. Have had very few since. And all it takes is a bit of coconut oil on the sore now and the sore is generally gone in less than a day. But even more interesting. My daughter got mono in college about five years ago. Mono was confirmed with a blood test on a Tuesday. I looked up the virus and found that it was lipid enveloped. I sent her a bottle of monolaurin (humans break down lauric acid into monolaurin) and told her to start taking it. She got it and started taking the monolaurin on Wednesday. Nine days later on a Friday she was fine. On a Monday, 13 days after the original tests showed mono, all traces of the mono virus was gone. HIV is also a lipid enveloped virus and there have been some tests which show that it is effective in lysing the HIV virus. Another interesting thing about coconut oil that indicates that it is extremely effective as an anti-viral anti-bacterial and antifungal is that it has a shelf life of over a year. It never seems to go ransid or be affected in any way by any microbe. It freezes at 76 degrees and at any temperature below that it looks like a waxy lard. Because it looks like lard, it was deemed to be bad for human consumption in the US and virtually banned. A huge mistake. In the human body, coconut oil always is an oil because it melts at 76 degrees. It does not act like a solid fat at all. Coconut oil is absorbed through the skin in about 15 minutes. So if you don't want to swallow three tablespoons a day, just rub that amount on your skin. Every time my grandbaby gets sick, she gets a coconut oil rub.

freeztar: What do you consider a high temeperature? Terra Preta charcoal was presumably made in temps in the 400 degree F range or less. From my playing around, the real problem seems to be with variations in heat. Hot spots create areas where the biomass turns to ash. To me the danger of high heat would be in creating ash. So a system that avoided hot spots would have some real value. I do know however that there are some charcoals that are made in temps of 800 degress or more. I presume that to make these there would have to be some mechanism to limit air to keep the biomass from turning to ash. No one seems to know whether these charcoals make good terra preta though. Is your idea to make charcoal from a near zero oxygen system and to drive out the water, gas and oil in a near zero oxygen environment? If so, what would be the advantages of this? Just curious.

I don't get it. Apparently posters on this thread do not appreaciate the problem because people apparently have never made charcaol. I repeat, making charcaol does not take any kind of sustained external heat. Last weekend, I bought a 30 gallon galvanized trash can with a lid. I needed to get rid of four or five boxes of out-of-date legal files which I usually send to the land fill. I decided to see if I could make charcoal out of these files. I did and it worked great. It took one match. There was never a flame for more than about 30 seconds before I put it out. (Today I started another trash can full and never had a flame at all. All I did was get the paper smoldering to begin with. Once it gets smoldering, I put the lid on the can leaving a crack of about an inch. Later I damper it to almost no crack. In fact, last week the can simmered for three days with the lid fully on allowing almost no air for three days. Somehow managed to smolder that long once the trash can got hot (I also added some large rocks to retain some heat). I thought I might have to punch holes in the lid or sides of the can. Even this was not necessary. All one would need to do is have a method for capturing the water vapor and gas and oils as they burn off. External heat just is not necessary once the wood or paper or biomass starts to smolder. It could be started with a spark from a spark plug or with a magnifying glass. By the way, the paper made excellent stock and I guess because it was dried out I was able to make a much higher percentage of charcoal than I have been able to do with wood. I probably only lost 40% in volume whereas with wood I usually have about a 70% loss in volume. The great thing about paper -- no pulverizing problem. I worked this paper charcaol into my garden today and treated about 50 cubic feet of clay with approximately 25 gallons of charcoal. Here in Memphis we have clay very similar to what I have seen of Amazonian clay -- a yellow / tan clay. Made 50 square feet of terra preta a shovel depth (12 inches) deep. Dumped shovels of clay in the trash can, then diced the clay into small chunks with the shovel. The charcaol readily sicks ot the clay. Shoveled the terra preta back in the garden then added new chunks of clay and repeated the process. Very easy for the family gardener.

Taildragerdriver: "We hope to get funding under this grant for our work if the Los Alamos grant application fails, or use it as joint funding if we get the Los Alamos grant." I think this is a great project for a grant. But if you are trying to reach politicians and make talking points for them, I think you went over their head. My suggestion is to first tell politicians about what terra preta is. It really is a very interesting history and science lesson on several levels. Give some talking points about the people who discovered it, how scientists think it might have been made and most of all make the point it is charcoal. There was nothing in your talking points that made these points in anything but a very subtle way. Politically, it makes sense to give credit to the aboriginal peoples of this continent and makes us all see them in a different light. That will sure get their support. (They may be in the process of taking back their continent anyway). Secondly, everyone knows about charcoal. But the idea that charcoal can help us all needs to be front and center in the minds of everyone. So mention the word numerous times and make sure you talk about how it is different from ash. Bottom line. You have to make sure people clearly understand it is about putting charcoal in the soil. My two cents.

GreenPowerScience: Are you talking to me? If you are, maybe you have never made charcoal. I have. All charcoal is made with reduced or almost no oxygen. It is oxygen starved by definition. When you make charcoal in a can or drum, you put a lid on it. But no charcoal will be made in a zero oxygen environment. It needs some air to smolder. And it needs a means of driving off water, gas and oils. The water, gas and oil have to go somewhere. You can drive them off and capture them but you still have to drive them off.

Having made both a solar furnace many years ago and having made my own charcoal, here is my two cents based on experience. Way back in the early sixties when I was in the eighth grade I won a science fair by making a solar furnace out of cheap materials, and it worked great. I bought six six- inch concave mirrors and twelve three-inch mirrors and affixed them to a two by two sheet of plywood. I used bent paper clips held to the front of the board by screws to hold the mirrors in place and screws through the back of the board to the backside of the mirror as focusing devices. This is genuine eighth grade technology. Did this thing ever get hot! Focal length was approximately 18 inches away and the light was focused on an area about the size of a quarter. On a sunny day, black paper would start to burn in three seconds! White paper in about 30 seconds. In a flask darkened with soot, I could boil water in about two minutes. Not bad for something that probably didn't cost fifteen bucks (1963 dollars) to make. The problem with the solar oven design is that it will not get hot enough. You need a solar furnace design which concentrates the light on a very small spot. You either need lenses or concave mirrors for the job. Now here is what many of you seem to be missing since you have not made charcoal. Early on I made several posts about making my own charcoal. I used a two and a half gallon popcorn can with a lid. After a few trials, I figured out the best method. Put a few leaves and twigs in the bottom of the can, light them, get a good fire going, then slowly fill the can up with fist sized lumps of wood. Add the lump sized wood slowly enough to make sure the flames die out, all the while making sure the fire continues to stay smoldering. Put on the lid and allow just enough of a crack to make sure the fire continues to smolder. Two hours later you have charcoal. In this process, I maybe wasted five percent of my fuel to get the fire started good enough to where it would continue to smolder without completely dying out. All you need a solar furnace for or a solar oven for is to get the wood hot enough so that it begins the process. Once the process is going, no further heat input is necessary. All the solar oven or solar furnace will really do is be the match that gets the fire started. And a box of matches is probably a lot cheaper than concave mirrors or lenses.

Taildragerdriver: I realize there has to be a benefit (really a huge benefit to farmers) before they will charcoal the ground. I sincerely hope the benefit to farmers is obvious and emerges very quickly. For suburbia it is different. I need a different pitch so the global warming angle along with healty yards and gardens is the pitch I use. But since I suck at gardening and am getting too damn old for yardwork, for me terra preta is my way of helping the earth. For me, buying a few bags of lump charcoal and putting them in my gardens is not a significant expense. And I hope it will reduce the need for fertilizers. I wish they had a solution for weeds. Unfortunately, they won't just allow us to let our lawns go natural. Hell, I got a neighborhood fine last year for failing to trim my bushes! I see no reazon though that farmers shouldn't terra preta for agricultural purposes and suburbanites and urbanites have to terra preta for global warming reasons. Of course today, I had a discussion about global warming winners and losers. There will no doubt be global warming winners as well as losers. It will be hard politically to get those who win with global warming to get on board.

Truly humbled by your ambition and project Taildraggerdriver. As I continue to put lump charcoal in my yard at 8 lbs a sack, thinking my goal in life is to put a ton in the ground before I die (primarily for global warming purposes) I am truly glad someone out there is cranking up large scale projects. But on the other hand the world rally needs everyone of us to reverse global warming so I continue to try to get my neighbors to put charcoal on their grounds and lawns in good ole suburbia. I just started my vegetable garden last Sunday. Planted about 40 seeds or so of corn. The package said germination would be twelve days. At least half of the seeds have already sprouted and it is only Friday. Six days. Half the time. Don't have a clue if that means anything but I thought I would post the observation anyway.

All of the above posters seem more concerned about the zoology of terra preta. My real concern is to help Al Gore solve (or shut him up depending upon one's view of Al) the global warming crisis. So far Al seems to be unaware of TP. Will TP be the answer to global warming? If so, then the challenge has to be getting the word out and at the same time fighting off the huge lobbies that will undoubtedly be pestering governments everywhere for more dangerous and costly (to most of us but certainly highly profitable to a few) carbon sequestering solutions.

In earlier threads I have discussed my numerous attempts at making charcoal and it turned out to be quite decent. What it taught me is that making your own gives you a real good sense of what kind of charcoal to buy when you actually find some to buy. I now buy mine at Lowe's -- a brand called Cowboy Charcoal. It seems like exceptionally fine charcoal, better even than I could make. My own attempts to make charcoal really make me appreciate it. It is made primarily from pieces of scrap lumber. Quite obvious many times that what I am looking at looks like trim molding. Probably most is pine. But the problem has been how to pulverize it since this is lump charcoal and in good sized lumps, many being several inches in length by a half inch in depth and a couple inches in width. Here is the aboriginal method I "discovered" to make small particles. Quite simple. Take a flat rock. Take a rubber mallet. Put charcoal on rock and pound. Imagine an aboriginal with a wood mallet instead of a rubber one. Would not recommend a metal hammer face at all because of the danger of a broken piece of rock flying. Works very well for the small garden. Sat right in the middle of the garden and began pounding chunks of charcoal. Very efficient at pulverizing the charcoal. Good therapy as well. I didn't have a very large mallet face. No doubt a larger mallet head would speed the process up. I also discovered that taking clods of dried clay and breaking them with the mallet on the rock makes for a pretty good mix. About time to begin planting my garden here in Memphis.

On the original thread I discussed my numerous attempts at making charcoal and it turned out to be quite decent. What it taught me is that making your own gives you a real good sense of what kind of charcoal to buy when you actually find some to buy. I now buy mine at Lowe's -- a brand called Cowboy Charcoal. But the problem has been how to pulverize it since this is lump charcoal and in good sized lumps, many being several inches in length by a half inch in depth and a couple inches in width. Here is the aboriginal method I "discovered" to make small particles. Quite simple. Take a flat rock. Take a rubber mallet. Put charcoal on rock and pound. Imagine an aboriginal with a wood mallet instead of a rubber one. Would not recommend a metal hammer face at all because of the danger of a broken piece of rock flying. Works very well for the small garden. I also discovered that taking clods of dried clay and breaking them makes for a pretty good mix. Perhaps this is a bit off topic, but if you are going to make biochar, you still are going to need some means to break it up.

I have read numerous times here to not disturb the soil much or turn it. While that may be a good idea if the charcoal is pulverized, from what I see it would take a lot longer to get lump sized charcoal degraded to particle size if the soil is not frequently tilled. I intentionally did not pulverize my lump charcoal just to see how quickly it would degrade into smaller pieces. What I find is that constantly turning it exposes the charcoal to new soil and it degrades much faster.

On the day before Valentine's day, I bought my wife some herbs and put them in a single pot with my homemade terra preta. The news is bad for my cilantro. The rosemary is doing great. What did I do wrong to my cilantro? Soil is well drained. TP stayed surprisingly moist. I am wondering if cilantro can not stand the excess water retention of TP. Any ideas?

If you don't mind a little patent infringement, I will have to try that.

I think he is saying that charcoal breaks down into fine particles over time and that is the thinking now. That seems to be what I am observing, as I am not attempting to go to great lengths to pulvarize my charcoal. Not having found a good means of pulvarizing the lump charcoal I buy from Lowes, (bought two more bags today) I have just gone to spading it in the ground. Maybe one day I will rent a tiller, but I have my doubts as to how well a tiller would even work. I have had to take a pair of pliers to the lumps in order to get them into small fragments. I don't see how a tiller would do anything more than throw them around. I feel confident that this lump charocoal I buy is very good quality, after having made my own. Charcoal is harder to break up than one might think.

I thought the retort method used lots of feedstock. That is why I went with a small raging fire in the popcorn can. Much less wasteful of feedstock as even much of the feedstock becomes charcoal once it's flames are extinguished.

created by the pyrolysis process is the real challenge. Unfortunately, since I am a lawyer not a scientist, I can't help much with the design. But I had envisioned a ceramic based stove, potentially made out of pottery for third world applications. Even better would be a stove made out of something like soapstone for first world applications. Modern wood stoves burn exceptionally clean, combusting the gas with catalytic converters or secondary chambers that get intensely hot. I have kind of envisioned a three chambered stove/barbecue/smoker. The first chamber would have a small amount of sacrificial starter woodstock. The second chamber would contain woodstock for charcoal and the third chamber would be an oven for cooking/barbecuing/smoking. Obviously, the gases produced in the second chamber need to be redirected into the first chamber where they ignite and keep the oven going. Maybe catalytics are necessary here -- maybe not. But that is what I have envisioned. If they can make woodburning stoves that recombust all the gases, why not take this technology and use it for making charcoal in our homes? After all, heating and cooling our homes takes up about 60% of our energy requirements, depending upon location.

created by the pyrolysis process is the real challenge. Unfortunately, since I am a lawyer not a scientist, I can't help much with the design. But I had envisioned a ceramic based stove, potentially made out of pottery for third world applications. Even better would be a stove made out of something like soapstone for first world applications. Modern wood stoves burn exceptionally clean, combusting the gas with catalytic converters or secondary chambers that get intensely hot. I have kind of envisioned a three chambered stove/barbecue/smoker. The first chamber would have a small amount of sacrificial starter woodstock. The second chamber would contain woodstock for charcoal and the third chamber would be an oven for cooking/barbecuing/smoking. Obviously, the gases produced in the second chamber need to be redirected into the first chamber where they ignite and keep the oven going. Maybe catalytics are necessary here -- maybe not. But that is what I have envisioned. If they can make woodburning stoves that recombust all the gases, why not take this technology and use it for making charcoal in our homes? After all, heating and cooling our homes takes up about 60% of our energy requirements, depending upon location.

Making your own charcoal and terra preta. Before I found lump charcoal from Lowe's, ( I now buy Cowboy Charcoal, see : Cowboy Charcoal Co. ) I made my own. I suggest everyone do it at least once or twice as it is very safe IF YOU DO NOT MAKE IT IN YOUR HOUSE! YOU MUST MAKE IT OUTDOORS. YES YOU WILL POLLUTE THE NEIGHBORHOOD WITH YOUR SMOKE, SO BEWARE, BUT NO MORESO THAN IF YOU WERE BARBECUING. The smoke just won't have the aroma of a barbecue. It will smell like smoke. The principle is very simple. You are going to roast the wood just like you would roast a chicken. You do not want the wood to catch on fire anymore than you would want your chicken to catch on fire. Roasting the wood drives off three things, in order of lowest temperature: water, gases, oils. The water, gases, and oils are what we call smoke. When the water is burning off at the beginning of the process, the smoke will look gray or white. When the gases burn off near the middle of the process, the smoke begins to yellow. When the oils burn off towards the end of the process, the smoke turns blue. When it quits smoking altogether, you have charcoal! Here is the most efficient method I found for urban use. I started with a small popcorn can about 2 and 1/2 gallons. It must have a lid. A galvanized trash can with a lid would be great, but I could not find one to buy. So would a 55 gallon drum with a lid. In the bottom of the can start a small raging fire. Once the fire is going good, put in just enough lump sized pieces of wood to extinguish the flames but still leave the wood smoldering. From here on out you will be roasting the wood, not burning it. Branches 1 to 2 inches in diameter and cut to 3 inches or so in length are perfect to make "lump" charcoal. Slowly fill up the can with the "lumps" of wood keeping the wood smoldering at all times. Once the can is filled up, loosely put on the lid, leaving a crack between the lid and the sides of the can (usually about 1/2 to 1 inch) to let the smoke out. DO NOT LET THE WOOD IGNITE. The lid is necessary to keep the wood oxygen starved so that it smokes not ignites. REMEMBER YOU WANT TO ROAST THE WOOD, NOT BURN IT! When you are done, if the lump charcoal tinkles like a wind chime, you have made it right. If not, you probably didn't cook it long enough, or overcooked it. The process, which seems to waste the least amount of stock, takes a coupe of hours depending upon how much stock you begin with. When the process quits smoking, you have charcoal. Put on the lid tightly and extinguish the fire. About 1/3 of the stock you started with will be charcoal. Once the process is complete and the charcoal lumps are completly extinguished, pulverize the lumps (I use a pair of pliers) and put the charcoal particles in your garden. Mix thoroughly with the soil. The first year, you must kick start the terra preta process with fertilizers, because the charcoal has not yet had the ability to filter out of the air or rain water, any nutrients for the plants and bacteria. The bacteria which thrive in the charcoal have a symbiotic relationship with the root hairs of plants and they are constantly taking the nutrients captured by the charcoal to the plant roots. You are done. Welcome to the new world of terra preta. Now feel very good about yourself! Oh, and feel free to make a claim for some of Al Gore's and Richard Branson's prize money. You have earned it.

Making your own charcoal and terra preta. Before I found lump charcoal from Lowe's, ( I now buy Cowboy Charcoal, see : Cowboy Charcoal Co. ) I made my own. I suggest everyone do it at least once or twice as it is very safe IF YOU DO NOT MAKE IT IN YOUR HOUSE! YOU MUST MAKE IT OUTDOORS. YES YOU WILL POLLUTE THE NEIGHBORHOOD WITH YOUR SMOKE, SO BEWARE, BUT NO MORESO THAN IF YOU WERE BARBECUING. The smoke just won't have the aroma of a barbecue. It will smell like smoke. The principle is very simple. You are going to roast the wood just like you would roast a chicken. You do not want the wood to catch on fire anymore than you would want your chicken to catch on fire. Roasting the wood drives off three things, in order of lowest temperature: water, gases, oils. The water, gases, and oils are what we call smoke. When the water is burning off at the beginning of the process, the smoke will look gray or white. When the gases burn off near the middle of the process, the smoke begins to yellow. When the oils burn off towards the end of the process, the smoke turns blue. When it quits smoking altogether, you have charcoal! Here is the most efficient method I found for urban use. I started with a small popcorn can about 2 and 1/2 gallons. It must have a lid. A galvanized trash can with a lid would be great, but I could not find one to buy. So would a 55 gallon drum with a lid. In the bottom of the can start a small raging fire. Once the fire is going good, put in just enough lump sized pieces of wood to extinguish the flames but still leave the wood smoldering. From here on out you will be roasting the wood, not burning it. Branches 1 to 2 inches in diameter and cut to 3 inches or so in length are perfect to make "lump" charcoal. Slowly fill up the can with the "lumps" of wood keeping the wood smoldering at all times. Once the can is filled up, loosely put on the lid, leaving a crack between the lid and the sides of the can (usually about 1/2 to 1 inch) to let the smoke out. DO NOT LET THE WOOD IGNITE. The lid is necessary to keep the wood oxygen starved so that it smokes not ignites. REMEMBER YOU WANT TO ROAST THE WOOD, NOT BURN IT! When you are done, if the lump charcoal tinkles like a wind chime, you have made it right. If not, you probably didn't cook it long enough, or overcooked it. The process, which seems to waste the least amount of stock, takes a coupe of hours depending upon how much stock you begin with. When the process quits smoking, you have charcoal. Put on the lid tightly and extinguish the fire. About 1/3 of the stock you started with will be charcoal. Once the process is complete and the charcoal lumps are completly extinguished, pulverize the lumps (I use a pair of pliers) and put the charcoal particles in your garden. Mix thoroughly with the soil. The first year, you must kick start the terra preta process with fertilizers, because the charcoal has not yet had the ability to filter out of the air or rain water, any nutrients for the plants and bacteria. The bacteria which thrive in the charcoal have a symbiotic relationship with the root hairs of plants and they are constantly taking the nutrients captured by the charcoal to the plant roots. You are done. Welcome to the new world of terra preta. Now feel very good about yourself! Oh, and feel free to make a claim for some of Al Gore's and Richard Branson's prize money. You have earned it.

Several pages back I posted my experiment to not extensively pulverize the charcoal I had bought from Cowboy Charcoal and just spade it into my garden using only a shovel. I had wondered whether the Amazonians had gone to the trouble of meticulously grinding up their charcoal as it seemed highly labor intensive. Maybe they did not grind it up after all. Just spading the charcoal into the ground seems to have worked fairly well. After a couple of months there are very few large pieces left. Added a couple more bags today.

Experimenting today with grinding up lump charcoal, I found that using a pair of pliers worked the best. I don't think putting a brick in a large sealed can and rolling it will work (rotisserie fashion) unless you are willing to rotate the can a long time. I tried dropping a sledge on the charcoal in the bottom of the 2 and 1/2 gallon popcorn can and that didn't work well at all. Of course using pliers is tedious and I was just making potting soil for potted plants. Pliers do get most of the lumps down to 1/4 inch size with lots of powder produced in the process. But it takes some pretty good pressure in the right spot to get some of this to break down. Running over it with a car tire on the asphalt sounds like a good idea but I don't know what I would put it in that wouldn't break.