[Terrapreta] Pottery Shards and Terra Preta

[MMBTUPR at aol.com]

          from          Lewis L Smith

This thread, especially the pictures of fungi and microbes on and within 
charcoal, which Tom unearthed a while back,   reminds me of a development which 
took place here in Puerto Rico some time ago and which may be relevant for the 
understanding of how terra preta works.

Many years ago, our largest rum distillery, that of the Bacardí Corporation 
in Cataño, used to dump its distillery slops into the Atlantic Ocean through a 
long outfall. At some point, the US Environmental Protection Agency staid 
"stop". So with the aid of a university from the state of Florida, Bacardí 
scientists developed an anaerobic digester to convert the slops into a biogas and 
other useful products. This digester eventually   came to supply the heat 
necessary to produce all of the low-pressure process steam used by the distillery.

Now anaerobic digestion is typically a process in which three different kinds 
of microbes inhabiting a slurry, in succession "snip" big molecules into 
small ones. At some point, the chief scientist [ whose name escapes me at the 
moment ] figured out that the microbes would do a better job if they had more 
surface on which to "sit" while they "snipped". So he and his associates devised a 
honeycomb type structure and inserted it in the digester. Digester 
productivity improved substantially. 

Although the chief scientist has retired, the improved process continues in 
use today. In fact, use of the related patents is available under license. And 
I believe that one may even still visit the digester control room, as I did 
years ago.

The point of interest here is the concept that microbes do their work better 
when attached to surfaces than when they are floating around in a liquid or 
semi-liquid. This may help to explain the increase in soil productivity obtained 
by creating terra preta and perhaps even the use of shards, which of course 
adds to the surface area available to microbes within the terra preta.

What does the List think ?

Cordially. ###




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