[Terrapreta] Terra Preta CHAR QTY

[Edward Someus]

Short notice on char QTY and VM: .............."nobody knows for sure what
the "best" (or right) kind of charcoal is".........higher VM content .......
.....is better" char to use for a soil amendment to help plants "
 
.............."nobody knows for sure what the "best" (or right) kind of
charcoal is".........YES WE KNOW IT EXACTLY. This is already evaluated and
developed. Scientific + product publication will be made on this in 2008. 
Higher VM content .............is better" char to use for a soil amendment
to help plants "   NO absolutely not. TP soil char is very much different
than energetic char in several characteristics. VM means tar residuals,
those are partially decomposed and these organic complexes are very bad for
soil microbiological life.  Wood tar is also used as disinfectant which
kills microbes, tars generally are high toxics. 
 
Beyond that, high VM residuals in char for open soil use will no get
application permit, at least not in most European countries, as it will not
pass the Authority Ecotoxicological tests + analysis for toxic leach out to
water base. Past 3 years I have been spending €500,000 only at German labs
for ecotox deep evaluation of my soil char production which specifically
goes to soil application combined with soil microbiology, so it was not an
easy task to meet these very complex conditions. 
 
 
Be sure, that this whole carbonization issue is far far more complicated and
complex in economical industrial scale, - aiming commercial products for
market sale, than to making "simple char" in barrel at low temperature under
home conditions in the garden.  Once the EU and US Authorities start to
investigate a new product for open environmental use in their sophisticated
labs, than they will come up with complex aspects + findings in terms of
environment, ecology, complex product safety + legal aspects. 
 
 

Sincerely yours: Edward Someus (environmental engineer)
Terra Humana Clean Technology Engineering Ltd. 
(ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certified organization for scientific research,
technical development and industrial performance engineering design of
agro-biotechnological and pyrolysis methods, apparatus and applications) 

ADDRESS: H-1222 Budapest, Szechenyi 59, Hungary
TEL handy:  +(36-20) 201 7557
TEL / FAX:   +(36-1) 424 0224
TEL SKYPE phone via computer:  Edward Someus
WEB:   www.terrenum.net 
-------Original Message-------
 
From: Sean K. Barry
Date: 2007.09.25. 0:13:46
To: Kevin Chisholm;  terrapreta
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Terra Preta discussion topics
 
Hi 'terrpreta' list,
 
I meant to acknowledge this, Kevin Chisholm and Edward Someus, but I forgot
to do it at the time.  Kevin posted a very pragmatic list of questions (or
discussion topics for Terra Preta) and Edwrd added to it a bit ...
 
Where to get the right charcoal 
What qualities to look for 
What are reasonable costs 
How much per acre 
How to incorporate it into soil 
How to modify conventional fertilizer practices 
How to manage for the long-term 
How to assure effective microbial inoculation 
What are the national permit and legislation aspects 
What are the application follow up control practices 
What are the comprehensive environmental and human health safety aspects
(life cycle analyses)
I thought this was just a fantastic idea you had.  We can use this as a
guide to confine and focus our discussions.  I would like to propose that we
have some new threads started, one for each question and we discuss these
things only.  Nat Tuivavalagi wanted us to to do something like this, too. 
We can't make any headway when we keep beating on one another about
disagreements.  Lets all try to ignore disagreements, listen more, and quit
being defensive about our positions.  I will admit to wasting the bandwidth
here, doing some of this myself.  I think a topic thread list will help
confine the discussions.
 
I think we should just do it.  No more topics for now.  Just this list and
see how it goes. Okay?
 
What would you all think about this ?
 
Regards,
 
SKB
 
P.S. Shall we start with my next post Subject: "Where to get the right
charcoal?"
 
 
 
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