[Terrapreta] Industrial Carbon for Making Terra Preta Soils

[Greg and April]

IIRC, several people already did, the last time it was brought up.

If he didn't listen, why bother doing it again?


Even I, who am skeptical about AGW, can see it doesn't make any sense - even from a efficiency standpoint.

Part of the problem is that there are a few companies that are already promoting the concept, and as such he may be sold on it.


Greg H.

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Sean K. Barry 
  To: terra pretta group ; Robert Klein 
  Sent: Sunday, April 27, 2008 23:33
  Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Industrial Carbon for Making Terra Preta Soils


  Hi Robert, Kurt, et al.

  Kurt, if your medicine is working now and you forced your way through this diatribe of Robert's about making charcoal for Terra Preta Nova out of coal, then pipe up and repeat yourself (like you force me to do every goddamned day).  Go ahead, tell Robert that the idea of making charcoal for use in Terra Preta like soils out of mineral coal goes against everything we are trying to do on the 'terrapreta' list.

  Regards,

  SKB
    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Robert Klein 
    To: terra pretta group 
    Sent: Monday, April 28, 2008 12:23 AM
    Subject: [Terrapreta] Industrial Carbon for Making Terra Preta Soils


    Hi Folks


    I am publishing this article on my blog 


    http://globalwarning-arclein.blogspot.com 


    tonight to open the discussion on a real industrial protocol for producing carbon for soils.  It is not well known, but I learned years back that coal dust was used to make commercial charcoal briquet's for you barbecue by certain suppliers.  I do not know how true that is, but they sure as hell are not going to tell us unless they have to.  It also makes good sense since it uses up coal fines.


    My article goes all the way with an end product that is steel grade coke.  A better solution would be a much lower temperature coke that was easier to grind and process, if it can be done without any nasties.


    My other point is that this sets the price point that we must meet with any other system.  Coal will likely always be the cheapest industrial source.  Transportation and handling costs are minimized and a bagged fertilizer  product is delivered to the  farm gate ready to use. 



    Industrial Carbon for Making Terra Preta Soils



    I set out in this article to
    address the industrial production of carbon for agriculture.  I am treating it as an industrial process in
    order to establish the most cost effective way of getting the task done.  The reason that I do this is that is that
    will always be the prime competition for other industrial methods.  We have already done this for the subsistence
    economies were we applied onsite earthen kilns using the unique nature of corn
    culture.
     
    I am not constraining myself to
    sustainable methods for this article, although I certainly think that all agricultural
    carbon should be made from agricultural waste where possible.  It will not be possible for a large portion
    of the earth’s croplands simply because biomass production is way too low for
    it to be feasible.  If you cannot grow
    corn for lack of moisture, then you surely cannot make an earthen kiln or even
    hope to gather enough biomass to make a difference.  This describes a lot of good farm land in
    Africa, to say nothing of the grain lands of western America and Australia.
     
    I also think that the principal
    benefit of terra preta soils is totally a function of the elemental carbon,
    rather than any other carbon form.  This
    is because of the long lasting fertility to this day, of terra preta soils,
    centuries after any other carbon compound was destroyed.  It is unlikely that any other factor matters.
     
    So let us stop dragging vast
    amounts of wet wood waste out of the forest in monster convoys of trucks to the
    central processing plant.  We start
    instead with bituminous coal.  This coal
    does not even have to be the highest quality because a good chaser of shale may
    even be a good thing.  That also means
    that huge reserves of poorer quality coal can be exploited.  There is plenty of that to do the whole job
    once and for all.
     
    The coal is then coked in coking
    ovens which are fueled by process gases and produces a highly porous product of
    virtually pure elemental carbon.  This
    then has to be crushed into a finely powdered form for agricultural use.  It makes very good sense to also blend in
    fertilizers during this powdering stage. If we are fortunate it should produce
    a possible non corrosive product that does not damage equipment.  At least that should be the objective.
     
    It may prove better to pregrind
    the coal before it is roasted for forty eight hours.  This form of carbon has high crushing
    strength and this must mean a high wear rate on the grinding equipment.  It makes one appreciate the elegance of
    reducing corn stover to elemental carbon which must naturally produce a finely
    subdivided powder.
     
    We now have an agriculture ready
    product that can follow current fertilizer distribution channels.
     
    There is no need to attempt to
    match terra preta in a single year obviously, but even putting in five hundred
    pounds per acre, will easily get us there in three generations.  Integrating properly with the fertilizer
    industry facilitates the whole process and allows a slow transition for the
    soils.  Even a hundred pounds per acre as
    part of the fertilizer blend will put a ton per acre into the ground every
    twenty years.
     
    Field experiments will need to be
    done, if only for safeties’ sake.  We all
    know, thanks to the Amazon that the end product is fantastic.  However, a hundred pounds even of completely
    activated charcoal may be simply too aggressively reactive to easily be accommodated.
     
    This or a similar low level can then
    be even mandated by regulation without putting the industry out of sorts and
    assuring that soil futility will henceforth be improving no matter how
    incompetent the individual farm.
     
    This would establish pricing
    benchmarks that a wood waste charcoal industry must work towards in terms of
    their feasibility.  Biochar kilns on the
    farm should still produce a better product, but the commercial carbon
    fertilizer industry can establish a price point for farm labor input.
     
    What I have just described could
    be implemented today with very little fuss.  Experience only has to be gained in grinding coke and blending the
    various forms of fertilizers to see what is quickly practical.
     
    I want very much to convert
    atmospheric CO2 into soil carbon by way of carbonizing agricultural waste and
    thus resolving the CO2 issue.  That
    desire is however equal to the desire to do everything possible to hasten the
    evolution of global agriculture to sustaining highly fertile soils everywhere
    and reversing the massive destruction of good farmland everywhere.  I even suspect that the soils of the Fertile Crescent can be brought back to ancient fertility
    and perhaps even reversing the salinity problem there.
     
    The damage done by ten thousand
    years of often lousy agricultural practice is a problem that puts the current
    damage of pollution and industrial practice in the shade.  We are actually doing a better job as we have
    industrialized agriculture over the last two generations.
     
    A really great and overly
    ambitious experiment would be to take a barren field no longer productive
    because of salinity and attempt an irrigated crop using a ton of carbon
    fertilizer.  It should not work at all,
    but changes with adjacent untreated plots should inform us if we are onto
    something.  I am optimistic that at some
    point we will be able to actually produce sweet soil.
     
    Most importantly, the conversion
    of the industrial fertilizer industry over to carbon based application protocol
    will assert the primacy of terra preta style soils everywhere and greatly
    facilitate the adoption of other protocols achieving the same objective.


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