Zai Holes

Zai holes are used in arid country to wring a crop out of the land. It is obvious that past cropping has destroyed the soil’s integrity and has made this extreme step necessary.

However the effort produces a successful planting, however much it looks like a pot.

It also shows that these are potential seed hills and that water retention is also possible. Adding a good supply of biochar should make these beds sustainable and long lived allowing the investment to be maintained and recovered many times.

Constantly adding biochar over many seasons should also expand the soil base over an increasing area and slowly loosen up the clays.

This also gives us an appreciation of the labor necessary to convert a mere hectare into usable farm land from badly damaged soils. Obviously the rainy season provides ample water, but left to itself in theses soils, it would all escape in runoff.

Farmers know how to use manures including composts, but have never before understood how to prevent their reduction in the soil and loss. Biochar is able to manage that issue.

Do read the letter from bakery who has hands of experience and is improving his operation is Ghana.

http://www.howtopedia.org/en/How_to_Start_Culture_in_Zai_Holes%3F

Mali and Burkina Faso's Farmers apply the Zaï technique to recover crusted land in semi-arid regions.

Zaï is a hole, a planting pit with a diameter of 20-40 cm and a depth of 10-20 cm - the dimensions vary according to the type of soil. Pits are dug during the dry season from November until May and the number of Zaï pits per hectare varies from 12,000 to 25,000.(The number of zaï per hectare and their dimensions determine how much water they harvest. The bigger the number and the smaller their size, the less water they harvest.)The excavated earth is ridged around the demi-circle to improve the water retention capacity of the pit.

After digging the pits, composted organic matter is added at an average, recommended rate of 0.6 kg/pit and, after the first rainfall, the matter is covered with a thin layer of soil and the seeds placed in the middle of the pit.

Zaï fulfils three functions: soil and water conservation and erosion control for encrusted soils. The advantages of Zaï are that it :

captures rain and surface/ run-off water;
protects seeds and organic matter against being washed away;
concentrates nutrient and water availability at the beginning of the rainy season;
increases yields; and
Reactivates biological activities in the soil and eventually leads to an improvement in soil structure.

The manure applied to the pits contains seeds of trees or bushes. This helps the regeneration of the vegetation on fields treated with pits.

The application of the Zaï technique can reportedly increase production by up to 500% if properly executed.

Difficulties

High labour to dig the zai holes ( between 300 and 450 hours/hectare)
High maintenance labour (in soils with a high clay or gravel portion, pits require less maintenance than pits dug in sandier soils.)
No mechanization possible.
The pits should be dug during the dry season.
Size and position are important.
Composted organic material should be used, not raw organic material.

And this report from Bakary Jatta helps put this in perspective and updates developing practice.

Dear TP enthusiasts,

After finding out about the Zai hole practice, I immediately adopted the practice in combination with using biochar. It solved the problem of having to produce the large quantities of char required to cover the entire area. Increased crop production and restoring soil fertility are priorities in our society in my opinion. Sequestering CO2 is not an immediate survival issue for the average person here even when aware of the climate issue.

With the resulting increased biomass, the process will accelerate in time. I am combining several soil improvement methods at the same time. I like to point out that stopping soil erosion using low contour bunds fortified with Vetiver grass is probably sequestering CO2 faster than biochar or tree planting. The Vetiver roots penetrate soil up to three meters within a year depending on soil and wheather conditions.

Than inter cropping with selected tree species will increase and extend the process into the future. It amounts to a modified form of Permaculture, I think.

The labor intensity is spread over a longer time as the dry season does not prevent one from digging holes altogether, depending on one’s will and/or stamina. Leaving the soil covered with crop residue slows down the hardening of the soil considerably. I am looking forward to the soil structure becoming easier to work as time goes on. The previous biochar applications have shown that effect to a notable degree.

I am very pleased to find out I did not waste my energy.

Kind regards to all,

Bakary Jatta

Food Futures

Whenever I see reports making this slant on the future of agriculture and the apparent difficulties, I become very impatient. In my lifetime, both India and China has doubled their populations and also hugely improved the living standards of their citizens, without having to import a lot of anything.

Yet the same silly arguments were made back then. Agricultural growth is all about access to capital. The truth is that we have only begun to optimize agriculture across the globe.

For starters, let us go to the tropics. All the soils are unable to hold nutrients unless you are in former swamp turned into a rice paddy. Now we know that biochar will grab those nutrients and hold them for us. Therefore five acres of that same infertile soil can begin with hand tools and back work from a family, to produce the three sisters crop. This consists of corn on hills, beans and squash. After the corn and beans and squash is harvested, the stalks are reduced to biochar and used to rebuild the seed hills. This is done over and over again until you have a competent layer of terra preta. Add capital, and you have a thriving community.

In the meantime you have had bumper crops of dried corn, dried beans and dried squash to provide a complete diet. We are describing tons of food. This method was used in North America as far north as Montreal and Huronia on contact.

Suddenly you have a rapidly emerging successful body of former subsistence farmers everywhere. The secret is all in the biochar.

I actually cannot make this point any stronger. I was stymied for years in figuring out how to manufacture viable soils. Biochar solves it in one fell swoop and does it in a few short years if you have a crop like corn to naturally provide dried biomass. The icing on the cake came a couple of weeks ago when a researcher ran a test with rice in a pot filled solely with round charcoal and produced an optimal result. The pot was filled with roots. No one believed that this would actually work in such an extreme case.

It is not an instant solution for all soils but I expect it to be proven a quick solution for all soils. Adding carbon to the soil matrix produces a ready framework for a robust expanded root system that is a dream come true for agriculture.

I lean on corn culture because it will easily produce a ton of char each year it is applied. Once applied in the form of either rows or hills for that matter, each successive application builds up the soil inventory of carbon. In the early stages eighty percent of the soil may be left untreated until the seed hills or rows have been fully optimized. This obviously lends itself to low tillage methods besides, since turning over the soil diverts the carbon into the remaining unused soils.

However all dried bio waste is a candidate for the making of biochar if it is available in satisfactory quantities.

Projected food, energy demands seen to outpace production

Friday, June 26, 2009

By Terry Devitt

http://greenbio.checkbiotech.org/news/projected_food_energy_demands_seen_outpace_production


With the caloric needs of the planet expected to soar by 50 percent in the next 40 years, planning and investment in global agriculture will become critically important, according a new report released today (June 25).

The report, produced by Deutsche Bank, one of the world's leading global investment banks, in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, provides a framework for investing in sustainable agriculture against a backdrop of massive population growth and escalating demands for food, fiber and fuel.

"We are at a crossroads in terms of our investments in agriculture and what we will need to do to feed the world population by 2050," says David Zaks, a co-author of the report and a researcher at the Nelson Institute's Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment.

By 2050, world population is expected to exceed 9 billion people, up from 6.5 billion today. Already, according to the report, a gap is emerging between agricultural production and demand, and the disconnect is expected to be amplified by climate change, increasing demand for biofuels, and a growing scarcity of water.

"There will come a point in time when we will have difficulties feeding world population," says Zaks, a graduate student whose research focuses on the patterns, trends and processes of global agriculture.


Although unchecked population growth will put severe strains on global agriculture, demand can be met by a combination of expanding agriculture to now marginal or unused land, substituting new types of crops, and technology, the report's authors conclude. "The solution is only going to come about by changing the way we use land, changing the things that we grow and changing the way that we grow them," Zaks explains.

The report notes that agricultural research and technological development in the United States and Europe have increased notably in the last decade, but those advances have not translated into increased production on a global scale. Subsistence farmers in developing nations, in particular, have benefited little from such developments and investments in those agricultural sectors have been marginal, at best.
The Deutsche Bank report, however, identifies a number of strategies to increase global agricultural productions in sustainable ways, including:

* Improvements in irrigation, fertilization and agricultural equipment using technologies ranging from geographic information systems and global analytical maps to the development of precision, high performance equipment.

* Applying sophisticated management and technologies on a global scale, essentially extending research and investment into developing regions of the world.

* Investing in "farmer competence" to take full advantage of new technologies through education and extension services, including investing private capital in better training farmers.* Intensifying yield using new technologies, including genetically modified crops.

* Increasing the amount of land under cultivation without expanding to forested lands through the use of multiple cropping, improving degraded crop and pasturelands, and converting productive pastures to biofuel production.

"First we have to improve yield," notes Zaks. "Next, we have to bring in more land in agriculture while considering the environmental implications, and then we have to look at technology."Bruce Kahn, Deutsche Bank senior investment analyst, echoed Zaks observations: "What is required to meet the challenge of feeding a growing population in a warming world is to boost yield through highly sophisticated land management with precision irrigation and fertilization methods," said Kahn, a graduate of the Nelson Institute. "Farmers, markets and governments will have to look at a host of options including increased irrigation, mechanization, fertilization and the potential benefits of biotech crops."

The Deutsche Bank report depended in part on an array of global agricultural analytical tools, maps, models and databases developed by researchers at UW-Madison's Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment. Those tools, including global maps of land supply for crops and pasture, were developed primarily for academic research, says Zaks. The Deutsche Bank report, he continues, is evidence that such tools will have increasing applications in plotting a course for sustainable global agriculture.

© 2009 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

Climate Pact Thoughts

Those that have followed my blog for some time know that I hold two positions in regards to global warming.

The first is that linking CO2 emissions directly to climate change is not supported by any science that is not at best cooked. This is a little stronger than my first posts, but the science has proven to be increasingly spurious. I consider it a mistake in any case and have been proven correct inasmuch as the case is weakened daily by every weather shift that fails to conform to the apparent hoped for trend line. If I erred it was in underestimating how quickly Mother Nature would repudiate this misbegotten stepchild of climate science.

The second is that CO2 emissions are hugely important as they are produced by human activities and clearly need to be diverted. In fact they are proof that our technology is not sustainable in the face of rising populations. I further recognized that the solution had to come with the globe’s farmers, not our engineers.

This led to the discovery of the scant literature on biochar or as then known, terra preta. I immediately recognized the importance of this technology and proposed a method that subsistence farmers could use to implement the method. My immediate recognition came about because of prior research on solid crystalline acids that also led directly to the conjecture that activated carbon would be beneficial to horticulture a decade or more earlier. At the time I understood that formal introduction of such methods would be both uneconomic and difficult because of the long product development cycle in agriculture. I was startled and pleased to discover that the Amazonian Indios had been conducting field trials for thousands of years. This made the methodology battle ready with only trivial naysayers to slow it down. In the past two years it has been advancing five steps at a time as more and more pot tests and field tests are been conducted everywhere.

This conference brings biochar up front and center for the first time and it will now weigh heavily in all further discussions.

If all parties agree to advance the acceptance of biochar as a carbon sequestration option on a global basis, then the battle is over but for the details. The rest is shouting in the wind.

Canada and the USA can meet all their obligations by converting their agricultural subsidy programs into sequestration credit programs, and so can Europe. In those cases they restore the soils to their natural fertility as a bonus. China and India both also benefit hugely by following this protocol. The moment they do that they can demand the same standards from their importers. Sooner or later it will all work itself out.

Climate pact: What kind of deal can emerge in Copenhagen?

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Climate_pact_What_kind_of_deal_can_emerge_in_Copenhagen_999.html

Paris (AFP) June 14, 2009

Official smiles and breezy confidence were firmly on display after the latest round of UN talks that aim to build a landmark treaty on climate change.

But only six months are left for completing a deal as fiendish in its complexity as it is unprecedented in ambition. Can it be done?

In the corridors of Bonn's Maritim Hotel, where the 12-day round unfolded under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), many delegates seemed to have quietly acknowledged the impossibility of sewing everything up in December in Copenhagan.

That goal is enshrined in the "Bali Road Map," laid down at a global gathering in December 2007.

The vision is to set curbs on emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases beyond 2012, with intermediate targets for 2020 that would be ratcheted up all the way to 2050.

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer insisted on Friday a "comprehensive" agreement could be reached in Copenhagen, and one "that can give a strong and definite answer to the (...) climate alarm that has been ringing loudly over the past few years."

European Union negotiator Artur Runge-Metzger said "a ratifiable treaty" was still in sight, and Jonathan Pershing, for the United States, likewise reiterated his endorsement of this aim.

If so, a mountain of work lies ahead.

A 50-page draft negotiation blueprint has exploded to more than 200 pages after countries stuffed it with rival proposals, and may expand even further in informal talks in August.

There has been no progress on the biggest question, of how to share the burden of future emissions cuts -- and scientists say the proposals that are on the table fall dismally short of what is needed.

No agreement is in sight over helping poor countries to cope with the impacts of climate change and procure clean technology to avoid becoming the carbon culprits of the future.

"I don't see anyone coming forward with anything that could prepare the ground for a breakthrough," said Kim Carstensen of green group WWF. "What I see is the reverse, I see ground being prepared for a battle."

Just as worryingly, ideas are only now starting to be aired about an existential question -- the legal status of the future agreement -- which could revive friction between the United States and supporters of the Kyoto Protocol.

Nor has anyone broached the explosive problems of what teeth to build into the treaty for non-compliance, and how to punish Australia, Canada, Japan and other countries that are likely to overshoot their 2012 emissions targets under Kyoto.

Michael Zammit Cutajar, in charge of one of the two big negotiation groups, said he was unfazed that his draft text had ballooned, arguing breakthroughs traditionally come in the very final days or hours of haggling.

"This is like the evolutionary process in reverse. The Big Bang comes at the end," he quipped.

If past experience of climate negotiations is any guide, a breakthrough depends on movement at the very top.

There are some good opportunities to provide this before Copenhagen, with the G8 summit in Italy in July, which will also be attended by the heads of emerging giant economies, followed by an expected UN climate summit in September in New York.

Rumours abound, too, of preparations for accommodating President Barack Obama in Copenhagen, although whether this is in the role of deal-maker or deal-blesser is unclear.

And past experience of climate negotiations also says that breakthroughs never dot 'i's or cross 't's.

The Kyoto Protocol, for instance, was born as a framework agreement in 1997 after exhausting talks.

But another four years were needed to complete its rulebook. Then footdragging by Russia over ratification meant the treaty eventually took effect in February 2005.

Karstensen and others said a likely scenario at Copenhagen would be a deal on core issues, followed by further negotiations to fill in the details.

Slippage from the "Bali Road Map" deadline would be acceptable, provided the core deal was strong and the follow-on talks wrapped up quickly, said Karstensen.

One major worry, though, is a gap between the end of 2012 and when the treaty would take effect, which could wreck the carbon markets created under Kyoto.

"A full and ratifiable treaty would have to emerge by the end of 2010. Later than that, I don't see it working," said Karstensen.

Dr Francis Ng on Horticultural Carbon

This is a surprising article that fills in some of the blanks in our knowledge of terra preta. It makes it clear that minimal practices establish the viability of carbon based gardening. That it devolved into something much bigger in the Amazon was surely initiated by an awareness of their backyard gardens and the obvious importance of carbon.

More delightful is the description of a carbon only media for growing rice in a pot. That should eliminate any residual doubts anywhere. The association with tropical clays is also very encouraging. A lot of questions just got well answered in a positive.

Field carbon application needs to go on for years to create ideal conditions, as a single year is able to add a percentage point as per my corn culture approach. My suggestion to focus on seed hill methodology appears sound because of this. Seed hills and low tillage will provide a large amount of usable carbon in just a few years.

It is noteworthy that this work has been done with wood charcoal, likely in the form of roasted sawdust. This option is unavailable in the normal course of events and the argument here suggests a mixed process in back yard garden plots. Certainly. The back yard garden plot was the back bone of Amazonian terra preta. This conforms the process.

It is noteworthy though that the practice was extended into large fields in the Amazon at a far less intense level and likely associated with the use of corn culture which gave the bio mass volume.

More startling here is that it is feasible to use a straight carbon as a growing media by itself. Lousy for holding water, but that is no drawback in a very wet environment were rot becomes a major control problem.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Horticultural carbon, terra preta and high performance horticulture in the humid tropics
http://tropicalhorticulture.blogspot.com/2009/05/horticultural-carbon-terra-preta-and.html


I have received many enquiries about the horticultural carbon that I use to create the rooftop 'Secret Garden of 1 Utama'. To make it easier to deal with queries, I have prepared the following account, to be published in a journal. Please bear with the stiff format and language, which is a journal requirement.
Introduction

Soils in the humid tropics tend to be highly clayey. Clay particles stick together to impede passage of water and air, and this is detrimental to root growth. Without sustained effort keep clay soils open and porous, tropical soils rapidly become unproductive. Growers resort to many different methods of farming on clayey soils. For example, vegetable growers till the soil after each harvest and pile up the loosened soil to form raised beds. During each watering session, water soaks in and drains out easily, thereby simultaneously renewing the supply of water and air in the soil. A good soil is analogous to lung tissue in that both have large internal surfaces to hold moisture and air. Unfortunately the effect of tilling lasts only for a few months.

Clay soil may be burnt over a hot fire, in the process of which it becomes crumbly (Holttum 1953). Burnt soil maintains its crumbly structure for up to one year, and such soil is often used for container gardening.

However, the most favoured soil for horticulture is garden black soil, which goes by the Malay name of tanah hitam (black soil). Black soil originated in household backyards where domestic waste was dumped and periodically burnt. The black colour was due to the accumulation of charcoal and soot in the soil over time.

Tanah hitam in Malaysia seems to be very similar the soil in the Amazon known in Portuguese as terra preta (black earth). Terra preta soils are very fertile and contain a high content of carbon (about 10%). They occur on sites that appear to have been permanent native settlements for centuries before their populations were wiped out by diseases brought in by the Europeans. It would have taken centuries of firewood burning on the same sites to have produced black soil in the vast quantities, to 2 m deep in some sites. The discovery of terra preta sites has created a lot of discussion in the Internet about its origin.The development of horticultural carbon

Open burning has been prohibited for many years in Malaysia, hence black soil is no longer available. Needing a large volume of good soil to establish a rain forest in the ‘1 Utama’ shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur, I decided to make such a soil by mixing charcoal particles with soil. We made this soil by mixing normal clayey soil (mostly subsoil) with charcoal and coconut fibre in equal proportions by volume. The charcoal was conventional charcoal produced by the kilning of mangrove wood. This came in large hard pieces that had to be broken up mechanically. The resulting particles were irregular in size and difficult to mix with the clay and fibre. I then found a much better source of charcoal in the factory of a charcoal briquette manufacturer. Charcoal briquettes are made by compressing sawdust into standard-size briquettes for kilning. The briquettes, meant for the barbecue market, can be easily broken into particles, sieved to remove dust and graded into the desired sizes. We refer to the product as horticultural carbon (Ng, 2006). We use two sizes: 1 – 4 mm particles for potting mixtures and 5 – 12 mm for garden beds.

We have found that a mixture of equal parts horticultural carbon and clay soil is good for general purpose horticulture. A mixture of three parts carbon to one part soil is better for cacti and succulents that need exceptionally well-drained soil.

Horticultural carbon is half the weight of soil, so the mixtures we make are lighter and more porous than ordinary garden soil. The reduction in weight was an important factor in my next project, a garden on the roof of the same shopping mall, seven floors above the ground. This garden, known as the Secret Garden of 1 Utama is now open to the public at weekends.

The porosity of soil mixed with horticultural carbon greatly reduces the labour of weeding because the weeds can be pulled out easily. However horticultural carbon only holds half the amount of water that an equivalent mass of clay soil will hold. Its lower water-holding capacity, together with its porosity, means that horticultural carbon dries out much faster than clay soils. The drying of the soil medium can be very damaging to the roots of plants, hence we find it necessary to keep our medium kept moist all the time. This can be arranged in various ways, for example, by watering twice a day. In pots, we would recommend placing the pots on shallow trays to hold water.

Horticultural carbon does not contain nutrients, hence fertilizers have to be applied regularly. Initially the carbon and clay particles remain separate though mixed. Gradually the carbon wears down and becomes integrated with the clay, with consequent settling of the soil mixture. The soil level drops and is topped up with pure carbon.

The performance of plants on horticultural carbon

Our most extreme experiment was to grow rice on 100% horticultural carbon in plastic basins. The basins, about 20 cm deep, were three-quarters filled with carbon particles and topped up with water. Rice seeds were sown direct on the surface. Our Indonesian workers, rice-growers in their former lives, all had a good laugh because “everybody knows that rice only grows on tanah liat (sticky clay soil)”. Well, our rice grew and produced a heavy crop of grains. We have now grown three successive crops. The roots form very dense mats. After each crop, the roots have to be dried out before the carbon particles can be shaken out and recovered..

For cacti and succulents, we use a mix of 75% carbon to 25% burnt soil in elevated beds. Some species thrive, but some still find it too wet, and rot when it rains daily. Nevertheless ours is the only decent-looking cactus bed exposed to tropical rain in Kuala Lumpur.Begonias, calatheas, and aglaonemas grow well in 50:50 mixes on raised beds provided 50 - 75% of the sunlight is cut off using shade-nets.

Of temperate plants and montane plants, we have managed to grow apple, peach, plum, Magnolia grandiflora, Magnolia liliiflora, arabica coffee, azalea, camellia, day lilies and Platanus. It has been hypothesized that in the tropics, the high night-time temperatures raise the night-time respiration rate to a level that temperate plants cannot adapt to. We think a high carbon mix allows air (oxygen) to get to the roots more easily, making it easier for temperate plants to adapt. However the flowering patterns of temperate plants are disrupted by the lack of seasons. Some species do not flower at all (e.g. day lilies), some flower infrequently and sparingly (e.g. apple and plum), and some flower all through the year (e.g. Magnolia liliiflora and arabica coffee).

Where to see horticultural carbon in use

In Malaysia, the Secret Garden of 1 Utama in Petaling Jaya, occupying 0.25 ha of flat roof top 7 floors above the ground, is the largest display open to public view. Here are grown over 500 species of plants, including palms, orchids, temperate plants, flowers, spices, rice, cacti, climbers and grasses. Also in 1 Utama but on the lower ground floor, is a rainforest with some 50 species of timber trees growing on a horticultural carbon mixture. In Sarawak, the Laila Taib Ethno Garden of the Sarawak Biodiversity Centre at Semengok, Kuching, displays a good range of native herbs grown on horticultural carbon, most of them larger and healthier than in their original rain forest habitats.

Horticultural carbon in carbon sequestration

Since the Industrial Revolution, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased significantly, to bring about global warming. The increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is due partly to the extraction and burning of coal and petroleum and partly to the clearing of forests, which reduces the amount of organic carbon stored in forests. Proposed measures to control global warming include reduction in consumption of coal and petroleum and the planting of trees and forest to convert atmospheric carbon dioxide into organic carbon. However, reduction in consumption has proven to be difficult, and trees and forests fix carbon efficiently only when they are in active growth, i.e. during their juvenile phase. When trees die, organic carbon is converted back to carbon dioxide through the normal processes of decay.

The conversion of wood to charcoal fixes carbon more permanently and the use of such carbon as a horticultural medium kills two birds with one stone. Horticultural carbon acts as a carbon store but instead of being just a passive store, its use as a high performance horticultural medium helps to solve the other global problem, of increasing food production in the world. On our roof top garden the average use of horticultural carbon is 1 tonne (equivalent to a volume of 2 m3 ) to cover 6m2 of floor area. Our manufacturer of horticultural carbon is yoltan@tm.net.my

References

Holttum, R.E. 1053. Gardening in the Lowlands of Malaya. Staits Times Press, Singapore.

Ng, F.S.P. 2006. Tropical Horticulture and Gardening. Clearwater Publications, Kuala Lumpur.

Reclaiming the Garden of Eden

The myth or legend of the Garden of Eden tells us of a human dawn age in which humanity lived in and managed a well appointed garden, free of unfortunate interaction with a wilder world we know so well. The tale is particularly unique and is also likely our oldest single story. It is unique in the sense that it is not obviously created in those few unrelated cultures we have run into. Other mythic images have certainly recurred again and again. However, I am unaware of evidence that this one has at all. Besides, it does not sound like a tale from a barbarian campsite. Yet this tale is drawn from our oldest extant civilizations and clearly indicated that this tale was foundational to their own mythology.

It is the oldest cultural tale and closest to the events of the Pleistocene nonconformity that I have posted on extensively. Our thinking regarding that event has matured and we find ourselves accepting inferences that were unthinkable when we started out on this investigation.

The most important inference that we can draw is that mankind resided on the continental shelf and major lowlands throughout the tropics. He had the capacity to manage these lands and optimize their support for the human population. The remainder of the continental land situated above the three hundred to six hundred foot mark was largely inhospitable in the temperate to semi tropical zone. This was true because Ice Age temperatures ranged over several degrees making organized agriculture as we understand it rather difficult.

This was still a lot of land but also visibly a fraction of the possibility. We know from our own experience that agriculture is developing into husbandry conforming more and more with the concept of the managed garden. My blog has been discussing many aspects of that future putative model farm/garden. A big part of that model is the integration of the human lifetime and way of life into the model farm.

We have surmised that the following took place:

1 All humanity elected to remove themselves to space habitats by the expedient of bearing a whole generation of space adapted children. Space transport has been posted on and our ability today with stem cells and genetic manipulation is quickly reaching this level. Most of you will likely live to see this all been possible.

2 They then slammed a comet into the northern ice cap in such a way that the crust unstuck and momentum shifted the crust to the exact spot needed to activate the full thrust of the Gulf Stream. There was little room for error and its precision revealed the likelihood of human intervention.

3 Most fauna survived in most places and quickly readjusted to the new circumstances. Mankind was also reintroduced in every convenient locale and allowed to go forth and start terraforming the Earth. They did so but have been allowed to proceed without direct communication and in as much actual ignorance of this as possible.

This all sounds like a lot except that it needs only one decision point. The capabilities needed to exist, but they had more time than we had to create those. We have already reached all that capability quite recently and what is not mastered today is been actively pursued in the lab. It will not take us centuries to replicate space lift or anything else. If you haven’t yet, do read my post on reverse engineering the UFO.

Once that decision was made, the rest follows and is rest is details. The rise in sea level destroyed all sign of the preceding world and we can be sure that a clean up was conducted as necessary.

Our task on earth becomes rather clear and much of this blog is talking to those types of issues. With our ability to manufacture soil, however presently controversial, we can create healthy growing conditions everywhere on earth between tree lines and optimize those growing conditions, so long as we can also deliver water.

To deliver water, we have the Eden machine itself to strip moisture out of the atmosphere anywhere we like. Again read my posts on the Eden machine.

With these two tools, it becomes possible to look at every hectare as a potential garden. Separate out the rocks and debris and you have the beginnings of a seedbed. Start by creating seed hills using a biochar blend and apply an appropriate seed blend and ample water and let nature take its course. Of course it is supposed to be more difficult but I am far from been convinced to that. I suspect a couple of years with the right plants and you will be startled at how securely the new soil has been established. Right now experimenters are playing with plants they know and it is early days.

I know that corn is great for producing biomass for biochar. It is lousy for producing an actual soil. There I like alfalfa but suspect that grass blends with deep root systems will get the job done fastest. Remember, we may be starting with barren sand. The roots need to fill the soil matrix with organic material. We may end up liking couch grass for a few years of soil building.

Reclaiming the Earth one garden at a time will reclaim the Garden of Eden for humanity and it will be many times larger than the original and as rich and productive. I cannot begin to imagine just how many people could live on Earth as this comes to pass and they would all have their place as direct contributors to their private gardens. All the deserts, and all the jungles and all the grasslands and even throughout the mountains and even the boreal forests can be reasonably managed and optimized. And yes, that does mean managing the wild wood to create open cathedral woodlands uncovered by massive debris.

It can be the population density of India applied everywhere the land is flat. It would be necessary if space man plans to transition back into Earth man.

Senegal Green Charcoal

Green charcoal is been made from cattails, also known as typha. This is great news and it appears that a whole lot of production issues have been solved to make it available as a cooking fuel.

I hope that they are also grabbing the starch for food from the roots. However, converting the available stalks into biochar that is packed as fuel cubes is a good way to make it all economic. If some of the produced biochar also finds itself onto the land, so much the better.

The compression tool likely squeezes out most of the moisture and if in cubes, a very efficient carbonization cycle can be set up. This obviously lends itself to low cost mass production with a secure feedstock in the typha reeds. In fact it sounds superior to wood charcoal manufacture because the step of crushing and sorting is omitted,

Until electrical heating is available, charcoal will be the available fuel. Production from plant waste other than woods is preferred because of the jump in efficiency. It is certainly possible to expand this sector hugely once farmers see a profit.

SENEGAL: Can "green charcoal" help save the trees?

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=84015

ROSS-BETHIO, 20 April 2009 (IRIN) - An environmental NGO in northern Senegal is about to go to market with “green charcoal” – a household fuel produced from agricultural waste materials to replace wood and charcoal in cooking stoves.

Given that Senegal’s trees are disappearing, finding viable alternatives is a must, a Ministry of Energy official says. At least half of Senegal’s 13 million people rely on wood and charcoal for household fuel, while 40 percent relying on petrol products like butane gas, the ministry says.

“You need to cut down 5kg of wood to produce only 1kg of [conventional] charcoal,” said Ibrahima Niang, alternative household energies specialist at the Energy Ministry.

“Less than 30 years ago, charcoal consumed in [the capital] Dakar came from 70km away, from the Thiès region. Now you have to go 400km from Dakar to find forests.”

According to Senegal’s Department of Water and Forestry, 40,000 hectares of forest are cut every year for fuel and other commercial uses.

Deforestation is said to exacerbate soil erosion – already a considerable problem in parts of Senegal. The country is part of the Sahel, a region where erratic rainfall, land degradation and desertification are constant challenges for a population largely dependent on agriculture and livestock.

The “green charcoal” is produced by compressing agricultural waste, like the invasive typha weed, into briquets and then carbonising them using a machine. The product has the look and feel of traditional charcoal and burns similarly.

“The technology is efficient, effective and economical because we can produce a substitute for charcoal at half the price,” Guy Reinaud, director of Pro Natura International, the French NGO that has partnered with the Senegalese government on the green charcoal project. The project is based in Ross-Bethio, a town 300km north of Dakar in the Saint-Louis region.

Environmental firms and governments have long been working to transform plants and natural waste materials into energy, such as water lilies in the Philippines.

Tough sell?

Despite the apparent advantages marketing the green charcoal in Senegal is a challenge, according to Mireille Ehemba, specialist in alternative household fuels at PERACOD, a Senegalese-German renewable energy initiative that is also a partner in the green charcoal project.

“We have not been able to penetrate the charcoal market in urban areas. People are very attached to charcoal,” Ehemba told IRIN. “Much more [education] is needed, including cooking demonstrations that explain how this new fuel works, if we want people to make the switch.”

Not only buyers need to be convinced. Identifying distribution networks and responding to the needs of charcoal vendors are also major challenges, Ehemba said. For 1kg of green charcoal, a vendor receives 5 US cents, whereas conventional charcoal brings in almost 20 cents per kilogram.

“We must talk to producers to get them to increase the scale of their operation in order to increase the profit for vendors if this is to work.”

Affordable

Senegalese consumers may be tempted to switch to the new product because it is cheaper than charcoal and butane gas. One kilogram of green charcoal sells for just 20 cents, whereas traditional charcoal currently costs three times that. A 6-kg bottle of butane gas costs about $5.

Fatou Camara, 40, from Ross-Bethio, has tested the new fuel when cooking for her family of 10. “I can use 1kg of green charcoal and that will cook the dinner. It is cheaper than normal charcoal.”

Camara told IRIN she used to use butane gas for cooking, but recurrent gas shortages pushed her to switch to green charcoal.

In the past, butane gas was heavily subsidised and promoted by the government as an alternative to charcoal. But such measures are no longer sustainable, according to the Energy Ministry’s Niang. The government plans to phase out butane subsidies in July.

PERACOD’s Ehemba is concerned the move will put more pressure on Senegal's forests as poorer households return to traditional fuels like charcoal. “It is now very important that we propose alternatives like improved stoves and bio-charcoal so that people have affordable ways to cook cleanly,” she said.

ProNatura and the Senegalese government plan to turn the project into a profit-making venture called “Green Charcoal Senegal” that will produce up to 800 tons of the green fuel a year for sale in the Saint-Louis region.

ProNatura will soon start a project in Mali, transforming cotton stems into green charcoal, and plans similar projects in Niger, Madagascar, China, India and Brazil.

“It has global potential in terms of its adaptability to different local environments, and it uses local waste materials,” said Reinaud.

The Energy Ministry’s Niang said: “It is not possible to completely replace charcoal [in Senegal]. But even if we can replace 10 or 15 percent [of it] that is good. It will preserve the forests.”

Al Gore on Civil Rights Movement

There comes a time when the unrelenting propaganda is so over the top that one becomes offended.

Tying in the civil rights movement as a comparable is saddening. That was the ending in the USA of an imposed human condition that lasted for thousands of years in which one tribe enslaved those of another tribe as a matter of course. That behavior is still extant around the globe but modern economic development is slowly eroding it away. Most ethnic victims will have a far easier time to escape the trap because of the US achievement.

In the end it was all made possible by the modern economy and nothing else. The political war was the necessary effort needed to remove the last holdouts. Billions today have already escaped informal slavery systems such as peonage. The rest will escape in the next two generations. That is how important the civil rights movement was as a global symbol. No one can do less and join the modern world.

The CO2 issue will be solved also by a few economic tweaks and the best tweak is to simply subsidize biochar in the third world of subsistence farming. It will solve more problems than ever created, and Mr. Gore needs to get on the solutions bandwagon rather than the turn off the economy bandwagon which will merely prolong the so called disease.

March 06, 2009

Al Gore: Global Warming Struggle Akin to Civil Rights

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/03/al_gore_global_warming_struggl.html
Deborah Hallberg

We've seen it before: Al Gore portraying global warming as a moral issue. Now he's gone one step further. He's compared the global warming crisis to the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and ‘60s.

The former vice president spoke at the recent Wall Street Journal's ECO:nomics summit, where he described his 10-year plan to get the country off carbon-based fuels as a "generational investment" and chastised the country for failing to take action.

But where he showed his desperation was where he compared global warming alarmists to civil rights activists, and global warming skeptics to southern segregationists.

"When Bull Connor turned those hoses on the demonstrators - peaceful, nonviolent demonstrators - a lot of kids asked their parents, hey, tell me again why that's not wrong? When their parents couldn't really give them good answers, that's when the tipping point came there. And I think we're close to a similar situation now, where enough people are saying, in all sincerity, tell me again why we shouldn't be solving this?"

He even made a reference to Bob Dylan's civil rights anthem, "Blowin' in the Wind," though he stumbles over the lyrics:

"How long will it take? Bob Dylan wrote the song, How many ... I can't remember the words, but you know, How many times will we have to go through this before people realize that civil rights are a birthright in this country, and shouldn't be denied on the basis on skin color?"

But Gore's effort to demonize the skeptics did completely escape scrutiny. Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish environmentalist and author of "Cool It: The skeptical Environmentalist's Guide ot Global Warming," was in the audience and challenged Gore to a debate on the issue.

"I want to be polite to you," Gore said, in turning him down. "The scientific community has gone through this chapter and verse. We have long since passed the time when we should pretend this is a ‘on the one hand, on the other hand' issue," he said. "It's not a matter of theory or conjecture, for goodness sake," he added.

Effect of Low Temperature Pyrolysis

The whole article is a bit of heavy reading but it is packed with data. This paper is a welcome addition to the literature that should now turn into a flood. We are beginning to replace educated guesses with hard facts.

The first hard fact that we can accept is that the best process temperature for agricultural biochar is unsurprisingly low as was certainly the case with classic terra preta. Most literature suggested that 350C degrees were about right. In fact the nature of an earthen kiln as certainly was used would suggest that a combustion front would pass through the bulk of the material and that the material would be hit with a peak temperature generated by the flame.

Remaining moisture would dampen the final temperature somewhat and perhaps provide a little measure of product control.

We also discover that the agricultural characteristics are markedly superior at the lower temperature. This is important because the tendency with metal kilns is to run to higher temperatures in order to speed the process. That earthen kiln methodology looks more foolproof by the day.

Certainly my intuition told me that an earthen kiln approach was likely the best method and that it was likely to remain a very good option. Once you are into metal, you are no longer losing surplus heat into the atmosphere and you really then need to draw off the volatiles some other way as the pyrolysis boys are trying to do.

The earthen kiln allows all the volatiles to be burned while using enough heat to char out the feedstock only. This is eminently practical for the agricultural industry from the subsistence farmer up. Corn culture makes it practical for the subsistence farmer as does elephant grass in Africa. The simple creation of shallow trench by removing top soil with a blade should allow any other form of farm waste to be packed and enclosed in dirt to form a similar kiln. And bales can be set on end, wrapped in a metal sheet and covered with a layer of dirt before set afire.

The importance of the dirt is that it will smother the red hot char as it loses structural integrity. You want it burning to that point at which you need to stop the process as fast as possible.

EFFECT OF LOW TEMPERATURE PYROLYSIS CONDITIONS
ON BIOCHAR FOR AGRICULTURAL USE

http://westinstenv.org/wp-content/Gaskin%20et%20al%202008.pdf

J. W. Gaskin, C. Steiner, K. Harris, K. C. Das, B. Bibens

ABSTRACT. The removal of crop residues for bio‐energy production reduces the formation of soil organic carbon (SOC) and therefore can have negative impacts on soil fertility. Pyrolysis (thermoconversion of biomass under anaerobic conditions) generates liquid or gaseous fuels and a char (biochar) recalcitrant against decomposition. Biochar can be used to increase SOC and cycle nutrients back into agricultural fields. In this case, crop residues can be used as a potential energy source as well as to sequester carbon (C) and improve soil quality. To evaluate the agronomic potential of biochar, we analyzed biochar produced from poultry litter, peanut hulls, and pine chips produced at 400°C and 500°C with or without steam activation. The C content of the biochar ranged from 40% in the poultry litter (PL) biochar to 78% in the pine chip (PC) biochar. The total and Mehlich I extractable nutrient concentrations in the biochar were strongly influenced by feedstock. Feedstock nutrients (P, K, Ca, Mg) were concentrated in the biochar and were significantly higher in the biochars produced at 500°C. A large proportion of N was conserved in the biochar, ranging from 27.4% in the PL biochar to 89.6% in the PC biochar. The amount of N conserved was inversely proportional to the feedstock N concentration. The cation exchange capacity was significantly higher in biochar produced at lower temperature. The results indicate that, depending on feedstock, some biochars have potential to serve as nutrient sources as well as sequester C. Keywords. Agricultural residues, Biochar, Bioenergy, Black carbon, Carbon sequestration, Charcoal, Plant nutrition, Pyrolysis, Soil fertility, Soil organic carbon.

Batibe in Cameroon

I have here a report from West Africa in which indigenous peoples produce biochar from elephant grass which is an ample source of biomass. This is another example of indigenous ingenuity that has produced productive soils comparable to the terra preta soils of the Amazon. It is easy to see corn stover been fitted into this method for the same reason.

I have recently been able to discount the use of pottery as an important active factor in the Amazon. It simply does not show up in terra mulato. That made the simple earthen kiln as the best possible explanation. Here in the Cameroon we have a field length earthen kiln produced and then lit. It is a good bet that the earth collapses behind the burn front helping smother the produced char.

Corn is obviously much more bulky but the same method could well apply. I still think that building a vertical stack with the root balls forming the outer shell is likely to be much more effective for corn.

The important point though is that biochar is a living indigenous practice in this part of West Africa.

http://e-terrapreta.blogspot.com/2009/02/soils-near-batibo-cameroon.html

The Batibe technique was described to us as to work as follows: before the planting season, farmers collect big piles of elephant grass or any other type of savannah grass, which they spread out over their fields to dry it. After the grass has dried, they pile it so as to make long strips, on which they will grow their crops. Then they cover the big rows of grass with a layer of mud, which they leave to dry again. After the mud has dried and hardened, they open one part of the strip and set fire to the grass contained in this "container". The fire travels slowly through this "kiln", providing a low oxygen environment, and chars all the biomass. After this operation, they crush the mud layer, and the char beneath it. They repeat the effort several times to create layers of char and crushed mud. This then becomes their soil bed, on which they start planting crops when they rains arrive. The rains turn this soil layer into an apparently fertile soil. To our own amazement, the farmers of our workshop in Kendem immediately understood the biochar concept, because of their knowledge of this Batibe technique.

Laurens Rademakers

Louis Sheehan on Early Terra Preta

A quick review here on the subject of terra preta and we are sort of due. New information is this tale about confederate soldiers who took up farming on such soils and discovered their value and obviously told the story to a research group.

They pass over the making of the biochar as if it were a simple matter of smoldering wood and brush. If only that were true, everyone would be doing this for thousands of years worldwide.

And no, the microorganisms do not turn organic matter into dark earth. It that were true we all would be living on miles of dark earth. They turn it into food which they consume. In fact, the problem with tropical soils is that it is rapidly degraded by the biology leaving depleted nutrient poor soils. Terra preta intercepts that process and holds the nutrients.

We associate slash and burn with primitive agriculture. That is quit true as far as it goes. What is not understood is that a primitive lifestyle is the result of slash and burn. Slash and burn was not very easy until it was possible to buy a steel axe and a machete.

Thus earlier cultures were static and mastered their soils while building up huge communities.

By Louis Sheehan esquire

Shortly after the U.S. Civil War, a research expedition encountered a group of Confederate expatriates living in Brazil. The refugees had quickly taken to growing sugarcane on plots of earth that were darker and more fertile than the surrounding soil, Cornell University’s Charles Hartt noted in the 1870s.

The same dark earth, terra preta in Portuguese, is now attracting renewed scientific attention for its high productivity, mysterious past, and capacity to store carbon. Researchers on Feb. 18 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in St. Louis presented evidence that new production of the fertile soil could aid agriculture and limit global greenhouse-gas emissions.

Prehistoric farmers created dark earth, perhaps intentionally, when they worked charcoal and nutrient-rich debris into Amazonian soils, which are naturally poor at holding nutrients. The amendments produced “better nutrient retention and soil fertility,” says soil scientist Johannes Lehmann of Cornell.

Charcoal forms when organic matter smolders, or burns at low temperatures and with limited oxygen. Nutrients such as phosphorus and potassium readily adhere to charcoal, and the combination creates a good habitat for microorganisms. The soil microbes transform the materials into dark earth, says geographer William I. Woods of the University of Kansas in Lawrence.

If some of today’s Amazonian farmers were to use smoldering fires to produce dark earth rather than clear fields with common slash-and-burn methods, they “would not only dramatically improve soil and increase crop production but also could provide a long-term sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide,” says Lehmann.

Slash-and-burn land clearing releases about 97 percent of the carbon that’s in vegetation. Smoldering the same fuel to form charcoal releases only about 50 percent of the original carbon, Lehmann previously reported. The rest of that carbon remains in dark earth for centuries. http://Louis1J1Sheehan.us

However, dark earth requires extra nutrients, such as those in compost. International agreements on greenhouse gases don’t provide financial incentives for farmers to make the effort to create dark earth, Woods says.

Nevertheless, ongoing field experiments in Brazil suggest that the fertility associated with terra preta could provide its own incentive, reports Beáta Madari of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation in Rio de Janeiro.

Brazil contains a wide range of dark earths with varying compositions. The scientists found differences between the soils used for ancient backyard gardens, which received more nutrients, and soils from distant fields.

Farmers of the time “certainly would have immediately learned about the properties of that soil, however [it] formed,” says anthropologist Michael J. Heckenberger of the University of Florida in Gainesville. But the knowledge about how to make dark earth disappeared after contact with Europeans decimated the indigenous population.

Biofuel Buzz

There has been a persistent increase in the number of stories on the development of so called bio fuel derived as a byproduct of the pyrolysis of bio waste. I posted extensively on this subject in the early days of this blog. Regrettably, it is tracking the same way as the enthusiasm for corn based ethanol. Lots of folks are piling onto the apparent governmental gravy train rolling up to the station and this is a technology that everyone can jump onto. It is easy to present and the real thing that makes it all appear creditable is the simple fact that a fluid is produced that appears to look like crude oil. Except that it is not.

It is a brew of complex organics, principally acids with poor energy output characteristics.

The production process gives us two product streams. One is char, whether charcoal or biochar and the so called biofuel. The most energetic components, the volatiles are typically burned in the actual production process. Advanced processes can apply pressure and additional heat to improve the output by reforming the complex organics into better grade fuels like hopefully methane. All this consumes a lot of the available energy.
It all likely ends up as slightly superior to coal gasification but that is faint praise. It remains an option that is used because you have no choice and someone is prepared to subsidize it.

What it has going for it is that there is little patent protection possible, so you and I can waltz into a funding source and ask for gobs of money to build a plant. There will be a lot of such folks, just as in the ethanol boom, who will round up the necessary funds on this tale of joy and build away. They will all lose money, just as ethanol is doing today.

The point that I need to make is that even if it can be made to operate profitably, which is not totally unreasonable, the capital is unlikely to ever be recovered. Otherwise, there would already be thousands around the country long since paid of.

My real regret is that this is a diversion of capital from projects that deserve every penny of support.

I would far rather see a drive on creating cattail paddies that produce massive amounts of starch as ethanol feedstock. It would also employ thousands and not interfere with food production.

More importantly, the electric car is now imminent. We need a massive increase in base grid power on top of the rapidly expanding solar and wind sources.

We need to hugely expand geothermal energy production in the state of Nevada. Power plants can be built there readily and as often as necessary. What is most important, there is nothing to invent. Of course, we can expect some meathead to redo Icelandic history by using cheap steel inappropriately. The rest will not.

Very shortly someone will be asking why nothing was done for the past several years to prepare for the looming energy crunch.

Industrial Biochar fuels the farm

What is promising is that the knowledge of the agricultural utility of biochar is slowly creeping into major development programs such as those described below. Recognition that residual biochar has a better place as a soil building agent than as a fuel is changing researcher’s approach to the waste management problem.

This bodes well for the future. One can see that this is a welcome solution to the major problem facing industrial scale animal husbandry of the effective disposal of manures. These can no longer be simply spread on the surrounding soil because of damage to the environment. So running the material through a wet thermochemical process with a top temperature of 350C is very appealing now that we know that the solid portion is highly suitable as a soil additive.

We are seeing an industry shift over to a superior and truly unexpected economic model. We can soon expect the resultant biochar, and the reported temperature is producing reduced carbon, if not activated carbon, to be sold at the farm gate.

Once agribusiness itself begins to dispose of its waste streams as a 350 degree carbon product to other operators, the rest of the industry will quickly follow suit. Right now the hardware itself is been figured out.

I may be optimistic, but the acceptance of biochar protocols is inevitable and this work shows us that that is the emerging consensus. That five thousand year field test in Brazil has silenced all the usual naysayers who would surely slow the adoption. Recall that the vanadium battery is how twenty years old and it still attracts naysayers who lack any scientific support for their position.

Terra preta has only in the past year really begun to penetrate public consciousness. Prior to that, we had a few lonely articles by a few academic champions. Now field tests are springing up throughout the globe.

Within perhaps five years, every farmer will be clamoring for the stuff. And yes Virginia, there will be millions of new acres of agricultural land brought on stream because of this.


Fueling the FarmWaste for Energy and Independence

Imagine turning a noxious agricultural waste into a value-added bioenergy product for on-farm heating and power—or even into transportation fuels.

Agricultural engineer Keri Cantrell, environmental engineer Kyoung Ro, and research leader Patrick Hunt work at the ARS Coastal Plains Soil, Water, and Plant Research Center in Florence, South Carolina. They have teamed up to explore how thermochemical conversion technologies could be used to generate bioenergy from manure—a resource that the United States, with its intensive livestock production, has in abundance.

“Our goal is to develop new waste-treatment methods and strategies that small farms and concentrated animal-production facilities could use to meet their energy needs,” Cantrell says.

One approach—wet gasification—converts wet manure slurry into energy-rich gases and relatively clean water. The catalytic version of this technology is under development at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. This process is expected to destroy pathogens and has been found to destroy odor-generating volatile organic compounds at the processing conditions of 350˚C.

At this high temperature, wet gasification can destroy pharmaceutically active components like hormones. This process could theoretically convert the manure in as little as 15 minutes, far exceeding the days and months required by existing anaerobic and composting methods.

The Florence researchers developed a cost-benefit model of wet gasification to calculate estimated returns and concluded that liquid swine waste can have a net energy potential comparable to that of brown coal.

In addition, the ARS team is investigating pyrolysis technology, which uses heat and an atmosphere devoid of oxygen to convert the manure into a char, or “green coal.”

“Green coal can serve as an energy source for on-farm use, or it can be transported to coal power plants for feedstock,” Ro says. “It can also be transformed into activated charcoal. This charcoal can be applied to soil to improve soil quality, and it also reduces greenhouse gases by permanently sequestering carbon.”

The group is also working in collaboration with the Advanced Fuels Group at the DOE Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. They are evaluating different catalysts needed to facilitate conversion of “syngas”—the gas produced when animal wastes and other biomass are gasified—to liquid fuels.

“Computers used to take up the basement of the math building,” Hunt says. “We’d like to be able to shrink down a process to run the farm engine in the same way.” With this kind of system, farmers would be able to produce their own energy sources and eliminate the need to transport manure offsite. The trick is to make the system productive and affordable.

The Florence researchers know that the benefits of any biofuel must be weighed against its economic and environmental production costs. “The truly exciting reality is that numerous needs in energy, nutrient recycling, climate change, and biosecurity will foster synergistic development of technology for future agriculture,” Hunt says. “Our research is only one part of the answer as we look for new energy supplies.”—By Ann Perry, Agricultural Research Service Information Staff.

This research is part of Manure and Byproduct Utilization, an ARS national program (#206) described on the World Wide Web at www.nps.ars.usda.gov.

Keri B. Cantrell, Patrick G. Hunt, and Kyoung S. Ro are with the USDA-ARS Coastal Plains Soil, Water, and Plant Research Center, 2611 W. Lucas St., Florence, SC 29501-1242; phone (843) 669-5203, ext. 113 [Cantrell], ext. 101 [Hunt], ext. 107 [Ro], fax (843) 669-6970.

Garden Biochar Made Easy

We are entering that time of year in which a lot of garden plants waste needs to be disposed of. It may also be a great time to produce a little biochar to fold into the soil.

We have learned that there is a strong likelihood that biochar will turn out to be superior to simply compost as a soil additive although our expectation is quite the opposite. The difference is simply that elemental carbon will hold soluble nutrients in place that are far too mobile when released from decomposing compost. Thus turning a charge of compostable plant waste into biochar should ultimately be a far superior practice.

There has been some observation that the initial soil reaction to receiving biochar is not as vigorous as initially expected but after one season this is overcome. This merely suggests that it may take a growing season to fully integrate the carbon with the soil biota.

The trick is a start a practice that can be easily repeated every year without a lot of fuss.

There we have learned that an open bottom drum will work fine. First a layer of branches less than an inch in diameter is laid down such that the edges are greater that the diameter of the drum. This permits air flow under the edge of the drum. Throw plant waste into the drum. This can be even accumulated over the summer as grass clippings and the like.
A metal lid is on top of the drum to prevent rain getting into the mass and accelerating composting. It should be possible to produce a well packed but not tightly packed charge that will still permit airflow.

When the time comes to fire the charge, I would first throw a layer of soil on top of the charge while leaving a ten inch hole in the center. The soil likely does not need to be there even but I would still put in three inches. I would then put in a charge of barbeque briquettes, preferably already burning into the center hole. This can be done with any other fuel of course but this way we are sure that the coals themselves will last for some time and avoid a premature failure. It may even be integrated with the weekly barbeque.

What is important is that the fire is strong enough and hot enough to sustain a top down burn. The beauty of this is that the volatiles coming off the burn front under the fire are forced to pass through the flame and produce even more heat as they burn. Tuned properly, and this surely will take a little practice, the process could be fairly smokeless. This could be famous last words of course, but I think that it is very possible although the initial ignition is sure to be anything but.

The lid is put back on but is left with enough of a gap to allow combustion gasses to escape. One could also mount a chimney on the top also.

This system is simple and with a bit of experimentations can surely be made very clean burning and satisfactory. Most importantly, it is easy to maintain and operate in a back yard, burn after burn.

Once the burn front has reached the branch floor of the drum, a water hose quickly douses the fire ending the burn. It is then easy to gather the charcoal and spread it onto appropriate beds and fold it into the soil.

Undoubtedly there will be superior well engineered solutions available over time as we establish a carbon making garden culture and promote the merits of the methods. In the meantime we have this as a working method and it should be possible to run it without smoking up the neighborhood and convincing the fire department that there is a disaster in play.

Industrial Charcoal Breakthrough

Industrial Charcoal Breakthrough

I have copied this material from Renewable Resources Research Laboratory. It is very important, even though they are still in the post prototyping stage and certainly have a lot more fussing around to do.

We have explored traditional methods and so called conventional methods for producing char coal and biochar and have learned both their strengths and shortcomings. The challenge faced was to come up with a basic design that cou8ld be operated at the farm gate and also be scaled to handle any feedstock volume. We seem to have at least the first clear cut demonstration of this principal.

The Q&A part brings home that our economy needs to focus on maximizing charcoal production. The market is clearly unlimited when we accept non woody plant waste char as a soil re mediator.

This also means that forest management can now focus on harvesting waste wood as a matter of course. After all, we are sending a ten ton truck out into the forest every day with a chipper and taking the annual surplus out of the forest. Forest management demands this for best practice. The daily yield is then brought directly to the local flash carbonizer and either kept in inventory to dry or processed.

The carbonizer uses pressure to force a fast burn. This was a bit unexpected, but the ramifications are obvious. It takes perhaps thirty minutes for the heat to fully penetrate the feedstock. The process is not taken to the point of full reduction which leaves a substantial residue of gases and tars. I assume the light gases provide most of the heat. These gases and residues will become continuously available and can be immediately used to fire a boiler for power generation. Any more than that is likely to be swapping dollars.

The point of this is that we have a reliable productivity for the whole spectrum of feed stocks. The principal feedstock can be waste wood fiber. Seasonal sources of agricultural waste can then be folded into fuel stream. Even manure is a good potential feedstock although moisture content might be a problem.

What is very important is that a farmer can bring his load in, have it treated and then take the product back to the farm for soil remediation. I think that we will learn that carbonized cattle manure is a very excellent soil additive.

That sewage waste also makes an excellent product is no surprise and has the added benefit of eliminating the cultural objection to human waste been added to soils.

My earlier arguments for the development of a distributed two lung incinerator system all apply here.

Here we are using pressure but not trying to go to the high pressure methodology that has romanced so many.

I suspect that this is the enabling technology that will now allow industrial scale production of soil charcoal and also a major supply of charcoal suitable for metallurgy and perhaps occasional replacement of coal.

Can you imagine the boreal forests been properly managed for a sustainable crop of waste wood and also a sustainable crop of cattails? This technology makes those types of ideas actually work.

Renewable Resources Research Laboratory

The Renewable Resources Research Laboratory (R3Lab) is a test-bed for the development of innovative technologies and processes for the conversion of biomass into fuels, high-value chemicals, and other products. A consistent theme of the lab's research throughout its history has been the search for new uses for Hawaii's abundant agricultural crops and by-products.

Currently the R3Lab is perfecting the operation of the catalytic afterburner that cleans the effluent of the Flash Carbonization™ Demonstration Reactor. Also, we are producing Flash Carbonization™ charcoal for use in carbon fuel cell research, terra preta and carbon sequestration studies, and metallurgical process research. Finally, we are fabricating an aqueous carbonate/alkaline biocarbon fuel cell that we hope to begin testing soon.

Earlier in its life the R3Lab engaged in research on conversion of biomass into gaseous fuels (hydrogen), and liquid fuels (ethanol). Reprints of publications are available upon request to Prof. M.J. Antal.

Biocarbons (charcoal)

News Item: Recently we began Flash Carbonization™ studies of raw sewage sludge produced in Honolulu's Ewa sewage sludge treatment plant. We were surprised by the ease with which air-dry sewage sludge can be converted into charcoal. We obtained charcoal yields of about 30% (dry basis) from the sewage sludge. The charcoal contained 45-51% ash and 40% fixed-carbon. Studies of the use of sewage sludge charcoal as a soil amendment (i.e., terra preta application) with the side-benefit of carbon sequestration are now beginning at UH. Results of these studies will be reported at the forthcoming AIChE meeting in Philadelphia (November, 2008).

A recent article appeared in the Honolulu Advertiser newspaper about the Flash Carbonization™ process. The following is a question and answer explanation relative to that article.

Q1: You mention that the University has licensed the Flash Carbonization™ technology to several companies that plan to use it for the commercial production of charcoal. Can you tell us who these companies are?

A1: Our three current licensees are Carbon Diversion Corp., which has operations here in Hawaii; the Kingsford Products Company, which most people recognize as the largest manufacturer of BBQ charcoal in the world; and Pacific Carbon and Graphite. Licenses are also being discussed with other companies on the US mainland, in Canada, and elsewhere in the world.

Q2: Isn't charcoal merely a barbeque fuel?

A2: No! Charcoal is the sustainable fuel replacement for coal. Coal combustion is the most important contributor to climate change. Coal combustion adds about 220 lb of CO2 to the atmosphere for every million BTU of energy that it delivers; whereas crude oil adds 170 lb per million BTU, gasoline adds 161 lb per million BTU, and natural gas adds 130 lb of CO2 to the atmosphere per million BTU of delivered energy. On the other hand, the combustion of charcoal - sustainably produced from renewable biomass - adds no CO2 to the atmosphere! Thus, the replacement of coal by charcoal is among the most important steps we can take to ameliorate climate change.

Q3: Do we burn coal to generate electrical power here in Hawaii?

A3: Yes! In the year 2000 we operated a 180 MW coal fired power plant on Oahu, a 22 MW power plant on the Big Island, and a 12 MW coal and bagasse fired power plant on Maui. The HC&S Puunene power plant on Maui could be the perfect starting point for replacement of coal by charcoal. The highest priority for knowledgeable people who care about the environment is the replacement of coal by cleaner, renewable fuels.

Q4: Why doesn't the combustion of charcoal add to the CO2 burden of the atmosphere and thereby cause climate change?

A4: The combustion of charcoal does not add to the CO2 burden of the atmosphere because charcoal is produced from waste wood, crop residues, and other renewable biomass that would otherwise decompose (i.e. rot) in a landfill or in the ground and become CO2. Thus the combustion of charcoal is a small part of nature's great carbon cycle upon which life depends.

Q5: Does the replacement of coal by charcoal have other benefits?

A5: Yes! Coal is laden with mercury and sulfur. Mercury is a deadly toxin. Mercury from the combustion of coal in China has been found in fish taken from the Great Lakes in the USA. Thus mercury emissions can be windborne and carried across continents and oceans. New regulations concerning the release of mercury to the atmosphere may greatly increase the cost of electric power generation by coal combustion. Similarly, because coal is also laden with sulfur, the combustion of coal leads to the release of sulfur oxides into the atmosphere. Sulfur oxides are a principal cause of acid rain. In contrast, charcoal contains no mercury and virtually no sulfur. In fact, our drug stores sell charcoal tablets to eat as an aid for digestion! Moreover, on a pound per pound basis, charcoal contains much more energy than most coals.

Q6: Are you suggesting that charcoal would be a better choice than ethanol for the sustainable production of electric power here in Hawaii?

A6: Yes! From the standpoints of resource utilization, energy efficiency, and economics; charcoal is preferred over ethanol as a fuel for electric power generation.

Here in Hawaii we have an abundance of macadamia nut shells and husks, green wastes including tree trimmings, wood logs, coconut shells and husks, and increasing amounts of invasive species (e.g. gorse wood, strawberry guava) that should be contained or eradicated. These biomass feedstocks cannot be converted into ethanol in a practical process, but they are all ideal feedstocks for the production of charcoal.

Likewise, as a result of seed corn production, we also have significant amounts of corn stover including cobs. If this stover is converted into charcoal, the charcoal retains 59% of the energy content of the stover. This energy conversion efficiency (i.e. 660 lb charcoal per ton of dry stover) has been proven in the commercial scale Flash Carbonization™ reactor that is in operation on the UH campus. On the other hand, if the corn stover is converted into ethanol, the conversion efficiency is projected to be only 43% (i.e. 85 gal of ethanol per ton of stover). We emphasize that this efficiency is an optimistic projection, since the conversion of corn stover into ethanol is unproven on a commercial scale. Thus a ton of corn stover will deliver 37% more energy if it is converted into charcoal instead of ethanol. That's 37% more energy available for the generation of electric power!

Furthermore, because of tax incentives ethanol does not appear to be an expensive fuel. But appearances can be deceptive, especially in light of the relatively low energy content of a gallon of ethanol. The current rack price nationwide of a gallon of ethanol is $2.40. Reflecting the low energy content of ethanol this price is $3.66 per gallon of gasoline equivalent (i.e. $31.75 per million BTU). Note that this price includes no taxes. The comparable price of imported charcoal is $279/ton, or $0.79 per gallon of gasoline equivalent (i.e. $10.48 per million BTU). Thus the price of ethanol is 3 times more expensive than charcoal! Also, note that the production of charcoal enjoys no Federal tax credits; nevertheless, on an energy basis charcoal is about 87% the price of crude oil at $70 per bbl ($12 per million BTU). Given the high price of ethanol, Hawaiian consumers of electric power should contemplate the very large increase in their energy cost adjustment that will appear if ethanol begins to be used as a boiler fuel to generate electricity!

Q7: What about HECO's plan to use biodiesel produced from imported palm oil to fuel a 110 MW power plant in the Campbell Industrial Park?

A7: Biodiesel fuel (B100) is manufactured from vegetable oils. Anyone who purchases vegetable oils for salads or cooking knows that these oils are expensive. Thus, common sense leads us to expect that B100 - manufactured from soy, canola, rapeseed, or palm oil - will be expensive. The Union of Concerned Scientists predicts that the price of B100 will be double that of diesel fuel. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates the price of B100 from soy oil will exceed $2.40 per gallon, and from canola oil will exceed $3.00 per gallon. In Seattle the recent price of B100 was $3.29 per gallon.

If we make the optimistic assumption that B100 will cost $3.00 per gallon, HECO will be paying about $25 per million BTU (or $2.89 per gallon of gasoline equivalent without taxes) for its boiler fuel. On an energy basis, this is 2.4 times the comparable price of charcoal. As with ethanol, Hawaiian electric power consumers will be shocked by the energy cost adjustment that will be added to their bill when B100 is burned to generate electric power.

Q8: Is charcoal being used for the commercial production of electric power anywhere?

A8: Yes! The largest charcoal producer in Europe, the Carbo Group BV, has sold substantial quantities of wood charcoal to ESSENT for co-firing in their Borselle coal fired station.

Q9: If charcoal is so inexpensive, can a business make a profit producing charcoal?

A9: Yes! The cost of producing a ton of charcoal in the USA is usually much less than $200, depending upon the local cost of biomass and labor. The wholesale price of charcoal imports during 2006 was $279 per ton. Obviously, the production of charcoal is a very profitable enterprise.

Q10: Does charcoal have any uses besides fuel for barbeque and electric power generation?

A10: Yes! Iron, steel, and ferrosilicon alloys are all produced using a carbon reductant. Almost one pound of carbon is consumed to produce a pound of steel. In the USA coal ("coke") is used as the carbon reductant and this use of coal adds substantial amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere and is an important contributor to climate change. Brazil and Norway use charcoal instead of coal to produce iron, steel, and ferrosilicon alloys. As the steel industry moves to reduce its carbon footprint, the demand for charcoal as a substitute for reductant coal will explode.

Also, here in Hawaii charcoal is an important ingredient in potting soils, and is the preferred rooting medium for orchids. Moreover, the addition of charcoal to soil has been shown to greatly enhance the growth of corn and other cash crops. This use of charcoal to enrich the soil is attracting much attention around the world as a practical means for permanently sequestering carbon from the atmosphere.

Q11: Will Kingsford manufacture charcoal here in Hawaii?

A11: No. A local company, Carbon Diversion Corp., has exclusive rights to manufacture charcoal using the UH Flash Carbonization™ process here in Hawaii and in parts of the Pacific basin. Carbon Diversion is headed by Michael Lurvey; a prize winning MBA graduate of the UH Business School, and a Vietnam veteran.

Q12: What does this all mean for Carbon Diversion?

A12: The markets for charcoal as a boiler fuel for the sustainable production of electricity, a reductant for the sustainable production of metals, and a soil amendment for sustainable agriculture and carbon sequestration are enormous. We believe that Carbon Diversion is destined to become one of the Exxons of the 21st century.

Flash Carbonization™ process

Research at the University of Hawaii (UH) has led to the discovery of a new Flash Carbonization™ process that quickly and efficiently produces biocarbon (i.e., charcoal) from biomass. This process involves the ignition of a flash fire at elevated pressure in a packed bed of biomass. Because of the elevated pressure, the fire quickly spreads through the bed, triggering the transformation of biomass to biocarbon. Fixed-carbon yields of up to 100% of the theoretical limit can be achieved in as little as 20 or 30 minutes. (By contrast, conventional charcoal-making technologies typically produce charcoal with carbon yields of much less than 80% of the theoretical limit and take from 8 hours to several days.) Feedstocks have included woods (e.g., leucaena, eucalyptus, and oak), agricultural byproducts (e.g., macadamia nutshells, corncobs, and pineapple chop), wet green wastes (e.g., wood sawdust and Christmas tree chips), various invasive species (e.g., strawberry guava), and synthetic materials (e.g., shredded automobile tires). Results of many of these tests are described in a series of technical, peer-reviewed, archival journals paper that can be obtained by request to Prof. M.J. Antal.

We are now testing a commercial-scale, stand-alone (off-the-grid) Flash Carbonization™ Demonstration Reactor ("Demo Reactor") on campus (see photos below). The first successful test occurred on 24 November 2006. A canister full of corn cobs was carbonized in less than 30 min. This test proved that the Flash Carbonization™ process can be scaled-up to commercial size.

Recently HNEI received a two-year $215,000 research grant from the Consortium on Plant Biotechnology Research (CPBR) for "Flash Carbonization™ Catalytic Afterburner Development." The CPBR funding will enable us to make progress towards the elimination of smoke and tar from the reactor's effluent.

After we satisfy all emissions regulations, the University will team with its licensee for the State of Hawaii (Carbon Diversion Corporation) and use the equipment to convert green wastes into charcoal. Large, dense, green waste feedstocks (e.g., tree logs, coconut shells) will be marketed as barbeque charcoal. Lighter material (e.g., tree trimmings and macshells) will be marketed as orchid potting soil (see below). Some charcoal may also be marketed as an ultra-clean coal. Synthetic materials (e.g., shredded automobile tires and other shredded synthetics) may also be carbonized. When it is fully operational, the Demo Reactor will have the capacity to produce about 10 tons of charcoal per 24 hr day and provide employment to two or three workers. The capital cost of the Flash Carbonization™ Demonstration Reactor (pictured above), gantry, and two canisters was about $200,000 (including delivery to Honolulu).

The Flash Carbonization™ technology is protected by U.S. Patent No. 6,790,317. The UH has applied for patents on the Flash Carbonization™ process in many other countries, and these patents are pending. The first license for charcoal production was signed in 2003. Since then Carbon Diversion Corp. has acquired an exclusive license for the State of Hawaii and various islands in the Pacific region, and the Kingsford Products Co. has acquired a license. Inquiries from other firms, in the US and around the world, are welcome. The University's licensing approach has been to grant territorial exclusivity with regard to production of Flash Carbonization™ charcoal and non-exclusive rights to sell such charcoal worldwide. All licensing activity is handled by the Office of Technology Transfer and Economic Development (OTTED).

Based on this prior experience, we recommend that a potential licensee take the following steps to determine if the Flash Carbonization™ process represents an attractive technology for adding value to locally available biomass feedstocks.

Contact Professor Michael J. Antal, Jr. and provide information on the proposed region for practice of the technology, the feedstock characteristics, etc. The potential licensee should have the ambition and the ability to produce and market at least 10,000 tons per year of charcoal.

Visit Professor Antal and Richard Cox (OTTED) to discuss license terms. The potential licensee should have significant engineering expertise.

Test the proposed feedstock's carbonization behavior in the Lab Reactor. This test costs $1000 and typically requires about 1 month to complete (including the shipping time of the biomass sample to Hawaii).

If you plan to use the FC process to produce charcoal in a region where the UH holds patents (ie., the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, and most of the EU), or if you plan to sell FC charcoal in a region where the UH has patent protection, then you must negotiate a license with OTTED. You should begin with a term sheet that summarizes the key elements of the license. These elements will include the territory for practice of the technology, the charcoal markets, the license fee, the running royalty rate, and milestones. Thereafter, you should negotiate a license with OTTED.

HNEI will assist licensees of its Flash Carbonization™ technology by offering apprenticeship training that includes a parts list, drawings, an operator's manual, and intensive training in the operation of Flash Carbonization™ reactors that are now being operated and tested on campus. The apprenticeship program can accommodate more than one apprentice from a single licensee; it is scheduled at the mutual convenience of the licensee and HNEI, and it has a typical duration of 3 weeks. Note that the apprenticeship program is only offered to licensees of the technology.

Biocarbon Fuel Cells

HNEI researchers have fabricated and tested a moderate-temperature, aqueous-alkaline "direct" carbon fuel cell that "burns" charcoal as its fuel and directly generates electricity. The exciting results of this research are described in a technical paper that has just been published. The abstract of the paper appears below. Reprints of this paper are available upon request to Prof. M. J. Antal. Currently Prof. Antal and his team are fabricating an aqueous carbonate/alkaline biocarbon fuel cell that has been designed to achieve higher voltages and power densities. We hope to begin testing this new carbon fuel cell later this year.

Abstract

Because the carbon fuel cell has the potential to convert the chemical energy of carbon into electric power with an efficiency approaching 100%, there has been a keen interest in its development for over a century. A practical carbon fuel cell requires a carbon feed that conducts electricity and is highly reactive. Biocarbon (carbonized charcoal) satisfies both these criteria, and its combustion does not contribute to climate change. In this paper we describe the performance of an aqueous-alkaline biocarbon fuel cell that generates power at temperatures near 500 K. Thermochemical equilibrium favors the reduction of oxygen on the cathode at temperatures below 500 K; whereas the chemical kinetics of the oxidation of carbon by hydroxyl anions in the electrolyte demands temperatures above 500 K. Nevertheless, an aqueous-alkaline cell operating at 518 K and 35.8 bar was able to realize an open-circuit voltage of 0.57 V, a short-circuit current density of 43.6 mA/cm², and a maximum power of 19 mW by use of a 6 M KOH/1M LiOH mixed electrolyte with a catalytic Ag screen/Pt foil cathode and an anode composed of 0.5 g of compacted corncob charcoal previously carbonized at 950 °C. A comparison of Temperature Programmed Desorption (TPD) data for the oxidized biocarbon anode material with prior work suggests that the temperature of the anode was too low: carbon oxides accumulated on the biocarbon without the steady release of CO2 and active sites needed to sustain combustion; consequently the open-circuit voltage of the cell was less than the expected value (1 V). Carbonate ions, formed in the electrolyte as a product of the reaction of CO2 with hydroxyl ions, can halt the operation of the cell. We show that the carbonate ion is not stable in hydrothermal solutions at 523 K and above; it decomposes by the release of CO2 and the formation of hydroxyl anion. Consequently it should be possible to regenerate the electrolyte by use of reaction conditions similar to those employed in the fuel cell. We believe that substantial improvements in performance can be realized from an aqueous-alkaline cell whose cathode is designed to operate at temperatures significantly below 500 K, and whose biocarbon anode operates at temperatures significantly above 500 K.

High-Yield Activated Carbons from Biomass

Activated carbons made from biomass (i.e., coconut shells) charcoal are used to purify water and air. The R3Lab has developed an air oxidation process that produces high-yield activated carbons from biomass charcoal. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation.

Hydrogen Production from Biomass

A conventional method for hydrogen production from fossil fuels involves the reaction of water with methane (steam reforming of methane) at high temperatures in a catalytic reactor. Research sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy led to the development of a process by the R3Lab for hydrogen production by the catalytic gasification of biomass in supercritical water (water at high temperature and pressure). This "steam reforming" process produces a gas at high pressure (>22 MPa) that is unusually rich in hydrogen. Researchers at the Institut fur Technische Chemie CPV, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe in Karlsruhe, Germany are commercializing a biomass gasification process that employs the conditions identified by the R3Lab in its pioneering work. However, research on this topic within HNEI halted after a U.S. Department of Energy economic study projected dismal economics for the process

Biomass Pretreatments for the Production of Ethanol and Cellulose

The R3Lab has been a leader in the development of a pretreatment process that employs hot liquid water to render lignocellulosic biomass susceptible to simultaneous saccharification and fermentation for the production of ethanol. This process can also be used to produce microcrystalline cellulose from biomass. The research was supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Consortium for Plant Biotechnology Research.

Contact: Michael J. Antal, Jr.

Renewable Resources Research Laboratory