[Terrapreta] Backyard Biochar

[Tom Miles]

Andrew,

Yes, chicken litter or ash from litter is a good fertilizer on its own
without the char so it is not a good example of what char alone will do. At
various times we have dried, composted, burned or pyrolyzed chicken manure
and chicken litter. Our neighbors definitely do not approve of the odor from
the dried or composted manure when applied on our lawn and garden. Drying
(high temperature sonic drying with a pulse jet -ram jet - engine) and even
composting wasn't very effective at sterilizing the manure and litter. We
got abundant weed crops. Burning out the organic matter makes a good
fertilizer. I'm sure that charring makes a very nice product. We haven't
tried that yet but there has been a lot of work done in Georgia and now is
starting in Virginia.

I understand that in the Flanders area of Belgium they give every family two
chickens to dispose of the kitchen waste. Not only does it cut down on what
goes to the landfill and produces eggs but it clearly produces good
compostable, or potentially biochar, material.
(See "Flanders Waste Management Performance" slide in Kit Strange
presentation. "Bioenergy and landfill policies in Europe and the UK: lessons
learned and prospects for future development", California Biomass
Collaborative, Fourth Annual Forum, March 27-29, 2007 
http://biomass.ucdavis.edu/pages/forum/4th/forum_program.html )
 
Tom
          



-----Original Message-----
From: terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org
[mailto:terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of AJH
Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2007 1:21 AM
To: terrapreta at bioenergylists.org
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Backyard Biochar

On Fri, 6 Apr 2007 17:37:29 -0700, Tom Miles wrote:

>The example of Peter's chicken litter tests is not a very good one. Chicken
>litter is an excellent fertilizer. 

Are you saying that this example of charring chicken litter is not a
good example of how the biochar adds fertility to a soil because the
chicken litter was already a good fertiliser and could have been used
neat?

>chicken litter. When you pyrolyze litter most of the nutrients like
abundant
>potassium and phosphorous stay with the char so it will make the charcoal
>look very good.

To my mind this is why a low temperature pyrolysis is a potentially
good treatment for this waste.

It sterilise's it
It de odourises it
It makes it inert

AJH


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