[Terrapreta] Successful charcoal burn

[Tom Miles]

Larry,

It looks like you started with about 1 cord (80 ft3) of alder. At a dry
density for alder (0.41 sp gr.) of 25 lb/ft3 that's 2000 lb. If you got a
40% yield that's 32 ft3 (80 x 0.4) of charcoal with a bulk density of about
15.6 lb/ft3 (250 kg/m3) or 500 lb. That would be a yield of about 25% (500
lb/2000 lb) by weight. 

Can you make 11 more 500 lb batches and put them in the ground? That would
make 6000 lbs, or 3 tons, which is equal to the amount of dinosaur-derived
carbon I've been putting into the atmosphere each year as CO2.Using any of
the CO2 offset calculations on the internet I come up with about 10 tons of
CO2 Emissions per year. (I cheated to make it "10"). At 0.3 tons of carbon
per ton of CO2 that's 3 tons of carbon that I need to sequester each year. I
calculate that's about 385 ft3 or about 15 yd3 of charcoal. (If I'm guilty
in metric terms it's 3 tonnes of C or about 12 m3 of charcoal. )

See: http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/carbondioxide

At an application rate of 5 tons per hectare (2.05 tons/acre) I need to find
0.6 ha (1.5 acres), or at 10 tonnes per ha (4.1 tons/a) that's 0.3 ha (0.75
a). I can disappear 3 tons for the first year at my place but after that I'm
going to be buried in black dust.

Since I work hard for my guilt money I'd like to put it where it will
contribute toward productive agriculture. If it takes 10 t/ha to improve
soils in the drought are of Northeastern Brazil I could help improve 3,000
m2 of cropland per year. I'll have to find a worthy NGO in Ceara (where I
lived long ago) and figure out how to do that. Unless, of course, some local
nursery will be selling carbon offsets. 


Tom Miles
          

   

   

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Haard [mailto:richrd at nas.com] 
Sent: Friday, April 13, 2007 9:49 PM
To: terrapreta at bioenergylists.org
Cc: Larry Williams; Tom Miles
Subject: Successful charcoal burn


Making charcoal at 4CN for our experimental study.

Engineer and Landscaper, Terese and Larry, did a great job last  
weekend building this woodstack for a charcoal burn.

  restacking wood from last weeks partial burn for a top lit down  
draft charcoal burn

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/169/458350065_21b4d4379c_o.jpg

Finished pile with air supply pipes

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/235/458350069_b31b1a9b05_o.jpg

earth covered pile a few hours after lighting

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/206/458350077_eddb136e0a_o.jpg

Larry estimates a 40 % yield in charcoal by volume.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/175/458342450_8f7ccb5c98_o.jpg