[Terrapreta] What is TP all about?

[Greg and April]

Interspaced between the ***************.


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Sean K. Barry 
  To: terrapreta at bioenergylists.org ; Tom Miles 
  Sent: Monday, May 19, 2008 9:09
  Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] What is TP all about?


  Hi TP readers,


  1.       the intentional use of charcoal in soil

  This includes all discussions about experimentation with growing plants in soil that has been amended with charcoal, how to put charcoal into soil, what makes good agricultural use charcoal?, how charcoal can improve: water-holding capacity, nutrient-holding capacity, CEC, soil structure, and etc.  Many in the TP group, I think, tend to believe that this is the only topic (#1) on which to comment within this 'terrpretalist' forum.  I do believe this is important, but at times, it can be frustrating to be dismissed, because one would choose not to discuss only these issues.

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  This is the area where most people can agree - char does improve the soil.


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  2.       sequestration of carbon using charcoal, and

  Now here is the most clearly stated "tie-in" between formation of Terra Preta soils and Anthropogenic Global Warming.  We only have one good reason to SEQUESTER CARBON in the form of charcoal-in-soil.  The reason is recognition of the fact that humans are the ones who are pumping CO2 into the atmosphere and this IS changing the climate.  We don't desire most of the climate changes occurring as a result and therefore what we need to do is STOP putting CO2 into the atmosphere.  If you accept this as topical to Terra Preta, then you implicitly accept AGW and remediation efforts by humans to combat it.  It seems to me that many in group advocating topic #1 don't care much about topic #2.

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  Unless a farmer is being paid to sequester carbon, he really isn't going to care about sequestering carbon, unless he is an hard core environmentalist.    Unfortunately the carbon credit system isn't set up for individuals to buy or sell carbon credits - at least without a lot of middle man things that eats up the value of the credit.


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  3.       production of charcoal

  There is a great deal of complaining by the group interested in #1, too, that charcoal can't be too expensive to use.  When one considers production of charcoal via pyrolysis of biomass (in a reactor or a kiln or a retort), then one necessarily comes to the realization that along with the charcoal will come things like; lots of heat, lots of gases (some energy containing fuel gases), and potentially many other forms of liquid chemicals.  The heat coming from pyrolysis reactions is called "sensible heat", if it is at a temperature significantly hotter than the environment it is released into.  "Sensible heat" is usable heat.  It can be converted into work (e.g. via production of steam and driving of steam powered machinery) or used simply to raise the ambient temperatures of things like green houses in winter.  The energy in fuel gases emitted from pyrolysis can also be converted into work or electricity (e.g. producer gas can fuel an internal combustion engine that can turn a pump, a compressor, or an electric generator).  The gas and liquid fractions from pyrolysis reactions are potential feedstock for many hundreds or thousands of other chemical processes (things like gas-to-liquid biofuels, insecticides, herbicides, fabrics, etc, .... ask Dow, I don't know what they all are).  These are all VALUE ADDED co-products with charcoal.  Making charcoal production economically viable will, I think, include producing these value added co-products.

  In my opinion, Tom has tied together the most important and salient issues regarding Terra Preta (#1, #2, and #3).  Any discussion of any of these topics is pertinent.

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  Steam engines take quite of bit of man hours to make sure that they are going to run correctly.

  Value added products are nice, if you have the equipment to properly make use of them - and that equipment cost plenty of money, and takes man hours to operate.    A farmer has plenty else to do, and most of the time is short handed.    He is not going to want to "tend the fire" so to speak when he has hog to feed a field to plow ( and / or plant ), cow's to milk, ect., ect., ect.   

  When someone comes up with a retort that "run's" it self, condensing the volatiles into fuel to run his equipment, so all he has to do is load the wood ( or corn cobs or whatever ), start the thing, then walk away to do some other chore that needs to be done, then come back the next day and unload the char and reload the thing --- then you will capture the farmers attention and he will jump at the chance at  participating, but until then he's going to look at it and say I have other things to do with my time.
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