[Terrapreta] challenges for the future of TP

[MMBTUPR at aol.com]

          from          Lewis L Smith

Many thanks to Michael for his "stream of consciousness" comments on the NSW 
conference.

The one phrase which leapt of the page at me was this >

"The first revelation for me at the conference was this – there are massive 
variations, in the chemical and structural composition of char. This is the 
first key in understanding the need for large scale trials and research."

This is analogous to the results of my own experience with Dr. Alexander's 
"energy cane/energy grass" project, with the PR cane industry, with shrimp 
farming and with searching the Web for gasification processes suitable for Puerto 
Rico. 

The world of bioenergy is not like that of manufacturing, with its "six 
sigma" control concepts and specifications stated in ten-thousandth of an inch. The 
world of bioenergy is one of endless variation, with conditions varying from 
one part of a field to another, with feedstock characteristics varying from 
one load to another, with reactor parameters varying continually during a run 
and so forth. Moreover, in gasification and pyrolysis, for example, there seem 
to be an endless variety of configurations for the basic process and for 
product clean up. For example, when I last looked, there were over 250 firms in the 
World offering advice and/or products for biogas cleanup !

It sounds to me that at this point, terra preta is ripe for some massive 
random block experiments. 

The first task would be to sort out just what do we mean by a "variety" of 
terra preta and what are the significant parameters for evaluating these. Words 
like "agrichar", "char" and "charcoal" need to be given a meaning which can be 
defined by analytical methods, much as petroleum products are defined in the 
pre-retail markets, not by words such as "premium" and "regular", but by a 
list of ASTM specifications and the corresponding test methods to verify each 
one.

Then we need to rank these varieties in terms of various desired incomes and 
then, establish a "best practice" management system for producing each of the 
desired varieties.   

Cordially. ###



**************************************
See AOL's top rated recipes 
(http://food.aol.com/top-rated-recipes?NCID=aoltop00030000000004)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /attachments/20071213/44613ccc/attachment.html