[Terrapreta] TP is a solution to GW by working at grass roots level

[Richard Haard]

>

Sean

Glad to see you are making progress on your pyrolyser. I was hoping  
you would receive funding, however grant programs I have looked at  
give higher priority to coops, community orgs and tribes. Bootstrap  
proposals are difficult at this level. Off the shelf equipment with  
known performance and engineering specs are more likely to attract a  
turnkey demonstration program.

Larry and I are promoting locally a demonstration pyrolyser at the  
green recycling center inside our urban district. It needs a system  
that either predries or dries chipped biomass as part of the process  
and passing most stringent air quality standards. I  think of such a  
system is the best way to get charcoal into the hands of urban  
gardeners, giving them something tangible, some charcoal powder they  
can learn about collecting urine, pretreating charcoal to put into  
their gardens, tree planting holes and potted plants.  They can see  
they are sequestering carbon.

Toyota Prius drivers are not spending $20,000 to reduce carbon  
emissions as a primary purpose, at $5 per gallon for fuel they are  
using such a car for their commuting and the SUV for saturday shopping  
and projects. We need to make this separation in this movement. Rather  
than focus on the big picture stuff and running a full time chautauqua  
***, drop it and work on actions that will nurture a grass roots kind  
of 'product development ' that has a side effect of solving the big  
picture issue. It gets tiring to need to deal with this absolutist  
view of our 'ultimate fate' and we need to spend our time and  
creativity to roll up our sleeves and and do something. Even if this  
needs to be corrected because this is how we learn.

Urban green recycling is a large source of biomass and in our  
community we have a centralized place where residential garden debris  
from lawn clippings to woody plant debris. There is also at our  
sanitary waste disposal center that attracts residential and  
commercial woody waste. If there is a demonstration program in either  
place with a mission of getting use of charcoal started at small  
consumer level this would be a way to attract attention, teach people  
and get a movement started.

Our idea has not really proceeded much further than coffee  
discussions. We have contacted a few friendly public planners. In July  
our local environmental watchdog newspaper is republishing my article,  
Charcoal, Agriculture and Climate Change, we are making inquiries to  
equipment suppliers that might have a , semiautomated at least, device  
and after we receive initial publicity from our article we will invite  
any interested parties to a charcoal workshop/social gathering later  
this summer and also to participate in the discussion list that Larry  
manages.

I think once and if we can form a grass roots committee then we can  
begin to explore how we might attract public/private funding for such  
a project.

  Rich Haard

*** Definition: Chautauqua is an adult education movement in the  
United States, highly popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries

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