[Terrapreta] The Reason for Pottery Shards in Terra Preta. Re: Char and compost ( was Char made made under pressurized conditions? )

[MMBTUPR at aol.com]

               from          Lewis L Smith

The case of the pottery shards and the role of urine in terra preta is 
fascinating.   Congratulations to all on a fine piece of "detective work".

However, a question sticks in my mind. Did the presence of lots of shards in 
terra preta accidentally contribute to the effectiveness of the ongoing 
chemical processes ?

In Puerto Rico, researchers at the Bacardí rum distillery learned that 
microbes which "snip" big molecules into smaller ones, like to "sit down" while they 
do their work. So they greatly improved the efficiency of the Company's 
digester for distillation slops by placing a honeycomb like structure within in it. 
Without taking up a lot of volume, this structure greatly increased the 
available surface area to which microbes could attach themselves.

I also recall from research into ocean-thermal energy conversion by a former 
client, that there was a considerable loss of transfer efficiency in the heat 
exchangers because the microbes in the sea water like to attach themselves to 
the available surfaces rather than float around. 

[ The solution turned out to be pretty simple. Every so often clean the 
insides of the heat exchangers with a pots-and-pans cleanser, such as Ajax. ]

Query :   Is it possible that the surfaces of the shards contributed to the 
terra-preta processes in an analogous fashion ?

Cordially.


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