[Terrapreta] pyro-7 for field production of charcoal

[Gerald Van Koeverden]

Christelle,

Thanks for checking that out with them.  Since it is a continuous  
feed system, there was a chance it could be adapted for field travel  
use.

Perhaps I'm being naive in thinking this is just a matter of  
mechanical ingenuity and perseverance...but  until we do get a field  
charring system,  I'm very pessimistic about terra preta becoming a  
'field' reality, unless it is heavily subsidized.

Gerrit


On 21-Sep-07, at 5:22 AM, ch braun wrote:

> Hello Gerrit,
>
> I was also curious to know more about this Pyro-7 and could ask a  
> representative of Pro-natura here in France about it. So first the  
> charcoal produced has never been used for soil amendment so far,  
> but he believes there could be indeed very interesting perspectives  
> there.
>
> On the other hand, he considers an "ambulant" pyrolyzer as totally  
> infeasible. He said basically they are built to remain at the same  
> place and even in the case of "lighter" models, it's already very  
> hard just to move them from one place to the other.
> I know, additionnal details about this last issue would have been  
> fine, but I really couldn't ask more... without being suspected of  
> industrial spionage :-)
>
> Sorry, charcoal transportation remains an open problem!
>
> Sincerely yours,
> Christelle
>
>
>
> On 9/17/07, Gerald Van Koeverden <vnkvrdn at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> Because of the huge transportation costs for charcoal, I keep looking
> for ways of making charcoal directly in the field from corn stalks,
> just as a few people on this site have claimed that the Amazonian
> Indians must have made it.
>
> Pro-natura has a small-scale continuous pyrolysis unit for vegetative
> biomass (Pyro-7).
>
> " http://www.pronatura.org/projects/green_charcoal_en.pdf"
>
>   Form their description, it seems simple enough that it could be
> increased in size somewhat and re-designed to be mounted on a
> platform to be pulled behind a tractor to process cornstalks as they
> are gathered and chopped up, allowing the char produced to be spread
> simultaneously as it is produced??
>
> If this could work, then it would be the cheapest way of producing
> char for the field to promote the idea of terra preta, since both raw
> material and char transportation costs become zero.
>
>
> Gerrit
>
> _______________________________________________
> Terrapreta mailing list
> Terrapreta at bioenergylists.org
> http://bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/ 
> terrapreta_bioenergylists.org
> http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org
> http://info.bioenergylists.org
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /pipermail/terrapreta_bioenergylists.org/attachments/20070921/74d5983b/attachment.html