[Terrapreta] The Reason for Pottery Shards in Terra Preta. Re: Char and compost ( was Char made made under pressurized conditions? )
Gerald Van Koeverden
vnkvrdn at yahoo.ca
Wed Apr 2 09:06:57 CDT 2008
The making of charcoal and pottery are inextricably related.
Charcoal is used to fire ceramics in kilns, but also kilns are used
to make charcoal.
for a neat review of the history of the development of ceramics from
the earliest times, see
http://www.ceramicstudies.me.uk/index.html
gerrit
On 2-Apr-08, at 7:16 AM, David Hirst .com wrote:
> Is it possible that the pottery pots were used in the manufacturing
> process? When full of stuff, it was set light, sealed up, and then
> smashed open as part of the spreading process. Could it be that the
> pottery baking was a by-product of the char-making? Could the clay
> have been a soft, unbaked lining to a wooden container?
>
> Pure speculation, of course.
>
> David
>
>
>
> David Hirst
>
> direct: +44 (0) 1723 570113
>
> mobile: +44 (0) 7831 405443
>
> email: david at davidhirst.com
>
> From: terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org [mailto:terrapreta-
> bounces at bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of lou gold
> Sent: 02 April 2008 11:54
> To: MMBTUPR at aol.com
> Cc: terrapreta at bioenergylists.org
> Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] The Reason for Pottery Shards in Terra
> Preta. Re: Char and compost ( was Char made made under pressurized
> conditions? )
>
>
>
> Another good guess, I believe.
>
> If you look at the images in the BBC documentary of the "cut-away"
> terra preta dig, it really looks like a honeycomb structure.
>
> And the density of shards is amazing. I wondered why? What function
> and why so many? If you consider the population densities reported
> by Francisco de Orellana (for example, a stretch of river where
> people were living house-pressed-to-house for 20 miles) and the
> normal volumes of human waste, it is easy to imagine huge amounts
> of pottery shards.
>
> It seems to all be coming together, thanks to everyones' speculation.
>
> On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 7:29 AM, <MMBTUPR at aol.com> wrote:
>
> 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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