[Terrapreta] Village or Household scale Charcoal/Wood gas production

[Sean K. Barry]

Hi Gary,

Welcome to http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org<about:blank>  Where do you live?   I have read and send e-mail postings to this list for at least 1 1/2 now.
I would suggest further reading of the archives and feel free to ask anybody any questions.

I live in Stillwater, Minnesota, USA and work as a contract engineer writing firmware and doing electrical engineering for a power inverter company in Minnesota.  I also do private research with my own company, Troposphere Energy, on pyrolysis reactor/gasifier devices that can make charcoal, usable heat, and provide some combustible gases.  I am attempting to target some of my designs to people you specifically mentioned, the people in the Subject: line.  And us.

I really have a grand plan to change energy harvesting from mining fossil fuels to conversion of biomass (which absorbs CO2 as it grows) into renewable bio-energy AND charcoal for amendment into soil to get improved agricultural performance in all kinds of degraded soils.  The original Terra Preta de Indio soils were discovered along and in the Amazon River basin.  These soils are highly leached, acidic, clays that are as a result nutrient poor and carbon deficient soils.  There are many soils and climes where desertification is occurring.  Charcoal + improve terrestrial flora could help retain water and provide more arable soils for food production, a desperately needed commodity in many impoverished soil areas all over the world.

CO2 removal from the atmosphere (via harvesting biomass) is turned immediately into carbon sequestration when the charcoal is put into soil.
No proven CO2 sequestration method is safer, simpler, less expensive, longer lasting, or more effective and beneficial than the several millennia half-life of charcoal-in-soil.  It really has win-win character all about it.  I think Terra Preta Nova (building Terra Preta soils anew) is the closest thing to "... they shall make deserts bloom"  that we could ever achieve.  It probably is also the only way we can put the brakes on further increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

Jim Hansen, the famous red flag waving NASA scientist, says we need to reduce CO2 emissions by immediately ceasing consumption of fossil carbon fuels especially coal (unless the CO2 emissions are sequestered) within the next 20 years.  All of the current energy uses will need to source their needs form other sources, even before they run out.  We also need to begin removing CO2 from the atmosphere, immediately, on a massive scale comparable to the amount of fossil carbon harvested and emitted annually now, and then sequester this out of the atmosphere for the foreseeable lifetimes of many generations to come.

Unless we can supply the energy from other sources, without fossil fuels, AND remove CO2 from the atmosphere now we have a fair chance of surpassing "climate tipping points" that will move the climate (a chaotic system) into a very different realm.  Food production and water resources are the first , most important commodities of the human race on this planet, us included.  These are at truly great risk for the vast majority of all of us.  Serious declines in living conditions on some land could force mass migrations and put many otherwise fruitful land areas under population stress.

I strongly believe that Terra Preta can address altogether many of these pressing problems simultaneously.  I think it has the potential to do this better than anything else I've seen.  The scale of the effort needed to accomplish the scale of this project can use help from everybody, including you.

Regards,

SKB

Sean K. Barry
Principal Engineer/Owner
Troposphere Energy, LLC
11170 142nd St. N.
Stillwater, MN 55082-4797
(651)-285-0904 (Work/Cell)
(651)-351-0711 (Home/Fax)
sean.barry at juno.com<about:blank>
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Gary Frase<mailto:GaryFrase at CommunityProducts.com> 
  To: Terrapreta at bioenergylists.org<mailto:Terrapreta at bioenergylists.org> 
  Sent: Saturday, May 10, 2008 8:17 AM
  Subject: [Terrapreta] Village or Household scale Charcoal/Wood gas production


  I have only just bumped into these ideas which I can see have immense potential for the poor farmers of the world who are actually most of us.  I get the impression that many around the world are working in this direction, and that likely many have come up with simple small scale apparatuses that can make this technology readily available to the people who need it desperately.  I'd like to hear what others are getting to.  Thanks, Gary Frase, USA

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