[Terrapreta] Char sorption of water.

[Peter Read]

Some few years ago I asked a research student to put some chacoal in water
It floated for a while [several days maybe a week or so] but eventually sank
I was after the intrinsic density of the C in the charcoal, but maybe there was still some air in it even after it sank.
I think I concluded that the C density was not a very helpfull concept
Peter
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Michael Bailes 
  To: bhans at earthmimic.com ; Terra Preta 
  Sent: Friday, March 07, 2008 9:55 PM
  Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Char sorption of water.


  This is a really important aspect of TP
  Does it hold water in the soil?
  I have a number of research papers on polymers that show that they don't work in real life. 
  (Happy to send them to you on request)
  The local hardware store is full of these, expensive, "Water Savers"
  But if charcoal holds water in the soil, that, in itself is enough to adopt TP in Australia.
  MA



  On 07/03/2008, Brian Hans <bhans at earthmimic.com> wrote:
    Im looking for a bit of help.

    Some of you with access to char, could you run a simple experiment and offer some results?

    Putting a fixed amount of charcoal in a vessel, add water until it doesnt pour out of the vessel anymore and record that sorption #. 

    An example is that I put in 10g of material into a glass and started adding water until it couldnt uptake it anymore. I then poured out the excess water from the glass and recorded the amount of uptake. In this case, I got ~225% weight uptake. 

    Im looking for some others results to compare my material with...

    FYI perlite = 200-600%

    Thanks for the inputs!
    Brian





  -- 
  Michael the Archangel

  "You can fix all the world's problems in a garden. . . . 
  Most people don't know that"
  FROM
  http://www.blog.thesietch.org/wp-content/permaculture.swf 


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