[Terrapreta] Fwd: compost and charcoal

[lou gold]

Hi All,

I might as well toss in a few pics from Acre State in the Amazon region of
NW Brazil

Old charcoal kiln
http://www.flickr.com/photos/visionshare/373350669/

Contemporary charcoal stove
http://www.flickr.com/photos/visionshare/373339790/

I live here part of each year.

hugs,

lou





On Nov 25, 2007 5:57 PM, Tom Miles <tmiles at trmiles.com> wrote:

>  Duane,
>
>
>
> Beautiful countryside. The beehive kilns shown are described in detail in
> Robert Massengale's book but as a Missourian forester he concentrates on
> Missouri.
>
>
>
> He does provide great history of charcoal use for iron production in the
> east and describes how it moves west and south to show the periods in which
> charcoal was produced, first for iron, then for wood distillation
> (methanol), then for domestic use. Production for iron revolved around wood
> plantations owned by these mining companies like the silver mine you saw.
> These were company towns of the kind we had in the wood industry. He
> describes a period of what you might call "sustainable use" in which
> companies consumed as much wood as they could regenerate. As in the wood
> products industry this gave away to overcutting when demand for iron rose
> and small producers gave way to corporations.
>
>
>
> When high temperature blast furnaces were able to use coal to reduce the
> ore then wood was no longer in demand. Production of charcoal as a byproduct
> of wood distillation stopped when cheap synthetic  (coal based) methanol was
> available from Germany, in about 1935, for substantially less than it could
> be produced from wood. For the wood technologies see books like Hermann F J
> Wenzl, The Chemical Technology of Wood, Academic Press, 1970 or N.E.
> Rambush, Modern gas Producers, 1923, Benn Brothers Ltd., London.  The
> chemical products are now made from natural gas.
>
>
>
> There was a vigorous spurt of charcoal kiln development in the 1930-1950s
> to meet the demands of the increasing briquette market. At the time New York
> City, for example had a very large consumption of charcoal for domestic use.
> I did not understand the significance of the development of the Missouri
> Charcoal Kiln until I read Massengale's book.  That was a very active period
> for wood science. (He quotes people like Andrew Baker, formerly of the USFS
> Forest Products lab in Madison, Wisconsin, who was very active in charcoal
> development in the 1950s and 1960s.) These labor intensive kilns have
> largely been displaced by modern continuous retorts using waste wood as raw
> material.
>
>
>
> Tom
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Duane Pendergast [mailto:still.thinking at computare.org]
> *Sent:* Sunday, November 25, 2007 10:53 AM
> *To:* 'Tom Miles'; 'Kevin Chisholm'; 'lou gold'
> *Cc:* 'terrapreta preta'
> *Subject:* RE: [Terrapreta] Fwd: compost and charcoal
>
>
>
> Tom, Kevin, Lou
>
>
>
> My wife and I ran across this little bit of US charcoal history in the
> spring of 2003 and visited while on a trip through the Death Valley area.
>
>
>
> http://www.nps.gov/archive/deva/Charcoal.htm
>
>
>
>
>
> http://www.terragalleria.com/parks/np.death-valley.4.html
>
>
>
>
>
> The websites above note they were in operation for only about ten years.
> They don't say what happened to the surrounding forest. It is high and dry
> there and the trees in the immediate neighborhood are quite small now.
>
>
>
> We got some nice pictures, but I'm giving list members a bandwidth break.
>
>
>
> I wonder if this was mentioned in the book you referenced.
>
>
>
> Duane
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org [mailto:
> terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Tom Miles
> Sent: November 25, 2007 11:15 AM
> To: 'Kevin Chisholm'; 'lou gold'
> Cc: 'terrapreta preta'
> Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Fwd: compost and charcoal
>
>
>
> The meaning of "charcoal" in the US has simply changed. Until 1925
>
> "charcoal" meant charcoal, lump or sold in various fine grades. Now most
>
> people think it means charcoal briquettes.
>
>
>
> In the 1920s Henry Ford was faced with a shortage of wood alcohol which
> was
>
> used as a solvent in lacquers and as anti-freeze. So he built a sawmill, a
>
> (wood) auto body plant and a wood distillation plant to make his own in
>
> Michigan.
>
>
>
>
>



-- 
http://lougold.blogspot.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/visionshare/sets/
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