[Terrapreta] Interesting?

[MFH]

More later on last weekend's trials, but in addition to the dry wood in the
char drum I added 2 x 75mm/3" telephone books, and some tyre scraps
collected from the side of the road. I'm a little surprised about the phone
book result and maybe this has wider ramifications. 

 

The photo shows about half a book in the kiln, and about half a book that
fell out.

 

The telephone books reduced to complete char. Totally. If you've ever thrown
one on a BBQ or a backyard leaf burn you'll agree that the edges get singed
and then it locks up. But this was a complete char. Somewhat amazingly the
print on the pages was clear as crystal. And the pages were "tough", in the
sense that they could be reasonably handled and didn't collapse into dust
without a little effort.

 

However, a bunch of pages scrunched by hand produced quite fine char
particles. Whether these will be Biochar in the agricultural sense is not a
possible answer right now. Is char, char? 

 

So:

 

a)       were the toxins in the original bleached and otherwise treated
papers rendered 'harmless' because of the temp of the process, and

b)       similarly the inks?

 

And, is the conversion of this sort of waste paper product into char more
beneficial than re-cycling into another cardboard carton??? Is this a better
process? Squillions of tonnes of waste paper per day? 

 

Max H

 

PS

 

The tyre scraps reduced to lumps of collapsible char, which isn't altogether
surprising given the percentage of C in the average tyre. Again, is this a
possible solution to the disposal/recycling answer problem to several
squillion waste tyres/day, and if so, what are the negatives? The steel
fibres and other have to be considered

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /attachments/20080512/839d12bc/attachment-0001.html 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 12-05-08_1034.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 158226 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : /attachments/20080512/839d12bc/attachment-0001.jpg