[Gasification] [biochar] Pine char gasification

Fri Dec 27 00:26:05 CST 2013

OK! OK! I state my sincere opinion, although opinions are very similar to as***les inasmuch as everyone supposedly has one. I think I have lurked and quasi-contributed on this site since...well I cannot really remember when, but it will come to me. Kevin reaches out and who cares if his thinking brings forth an opprobrium or two. It's preferable to just high-fiving every scatterbrained notion that emanates from, Alah!--some  PH.D. candidate's tangent of discovery. Hooray! This is a colloquium of shared ideas, superstitions and just silly stuff! Not an Academic Review Committee!

The early returns are just coming in. Earlier on there was abundant insipient conjecture about shards (were the Inca Lines a Spaceport for extra-terrestrials? Of course they were! What else could they be?) Shards! Omygawd!

Science is lucky when the obvious is even an abstraction of what we wish it to be, to create a cogent model that keeps our thinking clear. Kevin pushes for more and Tom pushes back with the weight of academia in this all, too-new, field of inquiry. Perhaps this is just the right balance. History has left no witnesses. Grandpa said: "Take everything with a grain of salt!"

Happy New year!!
Mark

-----Original Message-----
From: Gasification [mailto:gasification-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Kevin C
Sent: Thursday, December 26, 2013 9:25 PM
To: Tom Miles
Cc: 'Discussion of biomass pyrolysis and gasification'
Subject: Re: [Gasification] [biochar] Pine char gasification

Tom

Quoting Tom Miles <tmiles at trmiles.com>:

> Kevin,
>
> There were 50 of us from the International Biochar Initiative 
> following the IBI conference in Rio in 2010.

# The IBI has a slant against the possibility of Terra Preta being constituted from carbonaceous materials other than those formed by pyrolysis.

   There is a brief report
> on the IBI website. Our visit was organized and hosted by EMBRAPA, the 
> Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation. We were accompanied by 
> EMPRABA researchers who have studied terra preta at these and other 
> sites for many years. Researchers, like Newton Falcao, have shared 
> their research internationally in English and Portuguese.
> They have taught and hosted researchers from the many institutions in 
> the US, Germany and elsewhere, that we associate with terra preta. 
> Paul Anderson and I interpreted their explanations from Portuguese to 
> the group. Paul had visited the sites before. EMBRAPA had prepared 
> pits for us at three different types of TP sites so we were able to 
> climb down and inspect the soil in the pits and look, feel and smell 
> the soil that had been removed. We saw the crops that were 
> traditionally grown on the soils and the researchers extracted soil 
> samples for us around the modern crops so that we could see the depth 
> of the char at different distances from the river. When I compare 
> those experiences with the extensive data, mapping and documentation 
> that is available it builds the kind of picture that Schmidt 
> describes. It is clear that people live along the river today much 
> where they lived before. Commerce along the river is said to be 
> substantially reduced. It is a long hike from interior waters to the 
> river.

# I have not yet had the opportunity to read the very lengthy Schmidt paper. Does it exclude the possibility that the nutritious mucks and muds from the bottom of oxbow lakes, or other such aquaculture sites were NOT used in the preparation of all soils known as "Terra Preta?
>
> If you take the time to observe the work that has been done, and 
> continues to be done, on Terra Preta you'll find a wide, extensive and 
> very scientific body of work in many languages. Collaborative 
> international studies continue in many areas of the endless river and 
> its tributaries.  Schmidt's work is an example of how new scientific 
> tools are continually brought to bear on the topic.

# I have been following the advances in "terra preta knowledge" for a number of years now. In that short period of time, there have been many advances, and "Terra Preta" has gone from a state where those who were supposedly knowledgeable in the field advocated the simple addition of "the charcoal panacea " to soils to convert them to "Terra Preta." At least, the knowledge has advanced to the point where the added charcoal should be pre-charged with nutrients that the soil requires. "Terra Preta" is far from a "slam-dunk science", but rather, it is still a "work in progress."
>
> If muck in oxbow lakes exists in the Amazons they haven’t been calling 
> it terra preta. They undoubtedly have other names for it.

# Of course, the muck on the bottom of oxbow lakes is NOT "Terra Preta"!! The Amazonian Terrapretians were too smart to advocate growing land crops under water!! I would also suggest that they were smart enough to recognize that these mucks and "black goops" had nutrient qualities, and moisture retention qualities, that would benefit their crops if they spread it on their fields. One possible name they may have had for the "black goop" from oxbow lakes and aquaculture site,s that they may have spread on their croplands, may have been "Fish Manure."

Kevin
>
> Tom
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kevin C [mailto:kchisholm at ca.inter.net]
> Sent: Thursday, December 26, 2013 7:12 PM
> To: Discussion of biomass pyrolysis and gasification; Tom Miles
> Cc: 'Discussion of biomass pyrolysis and gasification'; 'Jeff Davis'
> Subject: Re: [Gasification] [biochar] Pine char gasification
>
> Dear Tom
>
> Quoting Tom Miles <tmiles at trmiles.com>:
>
>> Kevin,
>>
>> Creative. We didn’t see anything like what you are imagining at the 
>> sites that we visited. We hiked well back from the river to an area 
>> of seasonal flooding. We saw the usual dry and fine mud that would be 
>> muck if wet but it wasn’t very weathered and water flows back to the 
>> river leaving dry creeks.
>
> # As you know, oxbow lakes are a feature of a mature river system.
> See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxbow_lake. They would 
> be at river level, and would not dry out.
>>
>> The terra preta sites that we visited were all within about 300 feet 
>> from the river bank. The bank was 45 feet high at those sites.
>
> # Now you are in the right ball park. The Amazonians would naturally 
> tend to build above the normal flood plain, to avoid having to rebuild 
> every year. They would be close to the Oxbow Lake Sites, that would be 
> an excellent source of fish, and "black goop" for fertilizing their 
> gardens. Fish bones are an excellent source of calcium and phos.
>
>   The TP
>> sites were built on very heavy clay ferrosol benches that were 
>> relatively narrow. The distribution of the TP in those well 
>> documented sites was very much as described by Schmidt in his summary 
>> and other documents. We went into pits dug into three variations of 
>> tp.
>
> # I haven't yet read the excellent Schmidt Reference yet.
>>
>> No doubt there are oxbows on the thousands of miles up the many 
>> branches and tributaries of the Amazon.
>
> # You don't have to go thousands of miles up the many branches of the 
> Amazon to find oxbow, and other lakes suitable for the circumstances I 
> suggest. Manacapura is about 75 km upstream of Manaus, a noted Terra
> Preta region. Go to   3°23'27.50"S,  61° 7'47.95"W, near Caapiranga,
> and see all kinds of oxbow lake structure. This looks like a great 
> site for such 'black goop" to be formed.
>
>
> If you journey off in pursuit
>> of the black goop to satisfy your speculation no doubt your 
>> wanderings will be much like those described in "The Lost City of Z". 
>> Good luck.
>
> # This is interesting indeed! You have gone on a guided tour of Terra 
> Preta Sites, and you are obviously unaware of oxbow lakes, and the 
> potential for such "black goop" to act as a fertilizer and source of 
> black carbon. I would thus assume that others on your trip had not 
> considered such a possibility either. Possibly, Terra Preta would be 
> understood better if it was looked at by new eyes, rather than by 
> those with a pyrolysis fixation.
>
> Kevin
>>
>> Tom
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Gasification
>> [mailto:gasification-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of 
>> Kevin C
>> Sent: Thursday, December 26, 2013 4:39 PM
>> To: Discussion of biomass pyrolysis and gasification; Jeff Davis
>> Subject: Re: [Gasification] [biochar] Pine char gasification
>>
>> Dear Jeff
>>
>> Quoting Jeff Davis <jeffdavis0124 at gmail.com>:
>>
>>> Hi Kevin,
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12/26/2013 06:37 AM, Kevin C wrote:
>>>> # KC: The possibility of using the nutritious ``black goop`` from 
>>>> the bottom of the Òxbow Lakes that are very common along the Amazon 
>>>> River has been suggested as a source of fertilizing nutrients for 
>>>> Terra Preta on this list in the past, and the concept was received 
>>>> with extreme disinterest. I would suggest that the ``black 
>>>> goop``was made by the `LTAHTC Process``, ie, the ``Low Temperature 
>>>> Anaerobic HydroThermal Carbon Process``
>>>
>>> I could not find this term "LTAHTC", is this new?
>>
>> # This is a "Chisholm Original" that I just created. Basically, it is 
>> the kind of process that occurs when vegetative matter such as 
>> leaves, grasses and vegetative matter sink to the bottom of a pond 
>> and decompose, in an anaerobic process, liberating methane, and 
>> leaving behind a smelly "black goop."
>>
>> It kind of sounds
>>> like the "black goop" that I made from switch grass named Fuelage.
>>> Maybe I need to add the chopped grass into a pond and later scoop it 
>>> out?
>>
>> # Yes, indeed!! That is exactly it. Consider an oxbow lake, on the 
>> Amazon River. It would be an excellent place for a Community to raise 
>> Tilapia, that feed on algae. All the Amazonians would have to do is 
>> throw in manure, to cause algae blooms, and they would get a large 
>> growth of Tilapia fish, which they could easily harvest. The fish 
>> waste would be high in phosphate and nitrate content, and that would 
>> perpetuate algae blooms, that are great for growing Tilapia, in 
>> "Green Water Aquaculture." If they did not harvest enough fish, and 
>> if the weather got too hot, reducing the water oxygen content, the 
>> remaining fish would suffocate. However, the "black goop" on the 
>> bottom of the Oxbow Lake, would be highly nutritious as a 
>> "fertilizer". It could easily be "dredged" by buckets from a canoe, 
>> and be taken ashore, for spreading on their nearby fields. That would 
>> explain the presence of lots of fish bones.
>>>
>>> Or maybe your thinking of this:
>>> <http://www.ava-co2.com/web/pages/en/technology/hydrothermal-carboni
>>> za
>>> tion.php>
>>
>> # As I understand it, this process is somewhat different from the 
>> "LTAHTC" process, in that it seems to go further down the process 
>> road, stripping more H and O off the original biomass, to produce a 
>> product higher in Carbon, and lower in H, and O, than would be the 
>> "black goop" produced in a swamp situation.
>>
>> # It would be very interesting indeed to see comparative growth tests 
>> using the LTAHTC, AVA-CO2, and "Conventional Biochar" products.
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Kevin
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Jeff
>>>
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