[Terrapreta] Fwd: compost and charcoal

[lou gold]

yep, old design but contemporary use

On Nov 25, 2007 7:23 PM, <mmbtupr at aol.com> wrote:

> from  Lewis L Smith
>
> The "contemporary charcoal stove" was very popular in Paraguay, when I
> worked there 1959-61. In fact, we used one for a little while, until we
> replaced it by a kerosene stove. The same kind of stove can also be
> found in some of the residences in Pompei, so the design is a little
> bit older than "contemporary" !  ###
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lou gold <lou.gold at gmail.com>
> To: Tom Miles <tmiles at trmiles.com>
> Cc: terrapreta preta <terrapreta at bioenergylists.org>
> Sent: Sun, Nov 25  3:07 PM
> Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Fwd: compost and charcoal
>
> 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/_______________________________________________
> Terrapreta mailing list
> Terrapreta at bioenergylists.org
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/biochar/
> http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org
> http://info.bioenergylists.org
>
>
>
> ________________________________________________________________________
> Email and AIM finally together. You've gotta check out free AOL Mail! -
> http://mail.aol.com
>



-- 
http://lougold.blogspot.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/visionshare/sets/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /pipermail/terrapreta_bioenergylists.org/attachments/20071125/d3eda9a9/attachment.html