[Terrapreta] Fwd: Early Terra Preta Production... and a Western Red Alder fantasy

[Robert Klein]

Hi Larry

This will take a bit of trial and error to shake out properly but I can make a couple of comments.  The roots can be overlapped a couple of times to get a thicker wall and better internal packing.  This has to be played with in the field until we get it right.  The main task is to create a thick enough wall of mud that is still porous enough to permit incoming slow airflow.  This will vary with the soil type.  The top of the stack can be well mudded of course.

It is a combination of slow incoming air and  exiting combustion gases reducing the stover that makes this work.  I suspect that slower works best as long as it is not so slow as to allow too much heat loss.  It would have to be tended by a chap with a shovel to throw dirt who develops the necessary experience.  Recall that a properly managed industrial system takes a good 12 hours to do its job, and then you have to wait for it to cool off.

I am skeptical about even alder since the root ball is not compact, or at least I do not think so. i never tried to pull one or if i did I was singularly unsuccessful.  Corn on the other hand is a sweetheart to pull.  The disc is perhaps nine inches across and the stalk with leaves is a good inch or so.  It could not be designed better for a planned packing procedure.  The only question is what packing plan will work best.  For that we need to go do it.

Unfortunately i no longer have a corn field at my finger tips, so I need access to like minded folks to do field tests.

The main thing about corn is that we can tight pack the stalks themselves, preventing uneven burning and hotspots that would destroy a lot of product.

I am pleased that you are experimenting.  There are plenty of problems with wood charcoal, but after all that work is done to make this very special product we have to actually crush it.  This means the use of grinding stones to reduce tons of char each and every year to a usable powder.  My sense is that this is way too hard and that it never happened that way.  Corn and other soft plant residues completely eliminates this problem.  And there is enough corn stover per acre to prove the value of the method the very next season.

A group of harvesters made it work the first time and it was then quickly adopted.  I suspect that we will discover that this method was far more widespread that realized but used only occasionally in drier climates.  It will take soil analysis to find that out but to date no one has really looked, or has misidentified any powdered charcoal seen.

A microscopic test procedure that we could trust would test that hypothesis.

bob

----- Original Message ----
From: Larry Williams <lwilliams at nas.com>
To: Robert Klein <arclein at yahoo.com>
Cc: Miles Tom <terrapreta at bioenergylists.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 8, 2008 3:04:34 PM
Subject: Fwd: [Terrapreta] Early Terra Preta Production... and a Western Red Alder fantasy


Robert-------Thanks for reposting this information. After making  
charcoal with Richard Haard, I can say that it takes a lot of work to  
build and manage a firing and have wondered how we could afford to  
make a mound type firing with very high priced fuel or no fuel. I am  
into efficiency. Richard has followed the work of John Flottvik and  
has received a fine grade of charcoal as a result. With many thanks  
for John's support, free charcoal is not in the cards in the future.

I fully agree that transporting organics to a distant site makes no  
sense or should I say "cents". Currently, we plan to do another  
firing of wood in a few months for acquiring more charcoal and to see  
what we can learn about the products from a firing. It seem that we  
should consider doing a field burn in the late fall with corn stalks  
to learn of the difficulties of using stover material. I would assume  
that freshly dug damp clayey soil is essential in the process that  
you describe.

We live under some regulations concerning air quality and this may  
mean that the fall timing of a test may be a problem.

Have you made stover charcoal? It would seem that the stacked roots  
would need some mudding to better seal the firing chamber. I have  
wondered is there is a fire proof blanket that could be used instead  
of dirt if we tried a similar technic using small Western Red Alder  
trees as you used the roots of the corn plants. As I write this it  
comes to mind that I might be able to use a mixture of hay/ straw/  
grass and clay to provide sealed surface to contain the firing  
chamber. In local areas of high water tables young and old alder  
trees have a flat roots mass. I might be able to use a jute mesh or  
stuff the spaces between the roots with hay/ straw/ grass and clay to  
assist in holding the surface together because the Alder roots are  
not close knit. Using alder as the wood source would allow for a year  
round firing potential... a fun fantasy. As you may be able to tell I  
am writing as I work out the details.

With a stover kiln, how air tight do you think that it was? I have an  
idea that it was fairly well sealed?

I much appreciate your thoughts-------Larry



-----------------------------------
On Jan 8, 2008, at 1:03 PM, Robert Klein wrote:

> Hi All
>
>
>
>
> Early Terra Preta Production
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>       As
> my long time blog readers know, terra preta is a man made soil
 located
> in the Amazon by the Indians up to the time of the conquest for at
> least a thousand years. Besides the substantial 15% content of  
> powdered
> charcoal we have an additional persuasive content of apparent broken
> pottery shards throughout.
>
> The Indians were able to produce
> powdered charcoal while consuming a lot of low grade pottery in the
> process. This is many tons of charcoal per acre. The manufactured
 soil
> retains fertility without significant assistance in an environment  
> were
> its only competitor is low productivity slash and burn. High density
> settlement resulted and was almost certainly responsible for the
> legends of El Dorado. The Spaniards were about a generation too late
> and the knowledge was lost.]
>
> Reconstructing the production protocol was tricky but is is really  
> very simple.
>
> It
> was and still is impossible to use wood economically to produce the
> powdered charcoal. I say impossible because the direct costs of
> harvesting wood is well known and the cost of producing charcoal is
> also well known. That implies that wood charcoal which also has to be
> fine ground must have a cost base approaching that of sawn wood. The
> sunk cost is far too high to ever use as a soil additive. This is  
> borne
> out even in Africa were we see charcoal been made to take advantage
 of
> its direct cash value as fuel.
>
> That leaves us with dry crop
> residue as a source material and a very productive one to boot. In
 the
> time and place, and this is almost still true today, the only crop  
> that
> fitted the volume need to make the process practical is and was corn.
> Today bagasse could also be used. The important factor is tonnage per
> acre. Corn is good for ten tons per acre. Most other crops simply
 fail
> to produce enough plant material. Additionally, corn waste or stover
> must be removed and burned regardless.
>
> Since it must be gathered
> and burned in any event, the question is how to convert this
 feedstock
> into a ton or two of powdered charcoal or more reasonably into
 biochar
> retaining both the charcoal content and some remaining plant
 material.
>
> Here,
> the nature of the corn root itself helps out hugely. It form a flat
> disc, not unlike the base of a floor lamp. This dirt ball can be
> treated almost like a brick. It permits the building of tightly
 packed
> stacks whose outer wall is formed be tightly packed root discs loaded
> with mud. It is no big trick to build a vertical wall of these root
> discs to act as the outer shell of what is a temporary earthen  
> kiln. It
> was actually a brilliant innovation by some Indian a couple of
> thousands of years ago.
>
> This earthen kiln is then fired by the
> process of dumping a charge of glowing wood coals on the top of the
> stack, directly into the packed dry corn stalks, and covering it
> immediately with the sun dried earthen platter that carried the
 coals.
> You would then cover the top with additional dirt to maintain the
> integrity of the earthen kiln and let the coals do their work.
>
> The coals will drive a chimney
> into the stack and all the combustion will take place inside the
> covered chimney. This nicely minimizes any unnecessary energy loss
 and
> maximizes combustion which goes into reducing the balance of the
> stover. The earthen wall even filters out any errant heavy gases as
> they try to escape. I suspect that it is only with the recycled gas
> systems of today that we can do better.
>
> This task would be done
> after the corn had fully ripened and dehydrated which occurs just  
> after
> harvest. The corn stalks dry out then and are still pretty impervious
> to wetting by rain.
>
> Once the burn is complete the next day, one
> would rake out any unburned roots to throw into the next kiln and
 then
> take baskets of the soil - charcoal mixture back into the field to
> produce the hills for the next crop. The only tool used would be the
> earthen ware pottery and a strong back. Today I would use a metal  
> garbage can lid.
>
> This
> process produces enough material to salvage the field in tropical
> conditions for an immediate crop during the next season. Once this
 was
> understood, it became practice and was intensively employed long past
> its actual necessity for many thousands of acres in the Amazon.
>
> When
> I first made this hypothesis on the likely protocol, I did a  
> literature
> search of the Archeological data on the Terra Preta soils looking for
> the pollen data. Remember that corn is not your first choice of a
 crop
> plant on a rain forest soil. I was gratified to discover that the two
> principal crops were corn and cassava which also produces a lot of
> biomass but no usable root ball. This confirmed that the protocol had
> legs.
>
> I am quite prepared to work with someone who wishes to run
> field tests at no charge since I personally think that this will
> revolutionize all subsistence farming generally as they can be the
> first adopters. Larger acreages will need kiln equipment at the least
> and this will be capital intensive.
>
> And it would be great to get
> this going where the crop cycle is currently multiple years through
> slash and burn. I think particularly of the Philippines were I have  
> had
> fifteen year fallow periods reported. The same must be true for a lot
> of land in Africa and elsewhere. The more interesting question is the
> fertility increases in soils now been exploited.
>
>
> Arclein
>
> http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com
>
>
>
>        
>
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