[Stoves] [Gasification] formation of coal in carboniferous era

[Cookswell Jikos]

This is quite something to think about given the scale of time....thank you
both for sending these two emails and photos. Doug, you should visit some
of the flower, pig and poultry farms in Kenya, many would love to meet a
good Boilermaker.

Do you have some more information about this? Specifically, since that wood
is torrefied, does it become fully insect and bacteria proof? Could one
adapt the heat given off during torrefaction to produce wood-gas (for a
genset) and wood treatment? For small sawmills, perhaps this could have
some potential.

Now given the nature of fluctuating gas levels in our atmosphere - when I
came across this article (
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/the_surprising_role_of_co2_in_changes_on_the_african_savanna/2663/),
I was quite surprised as it would seem that due to an increase of carbon in
the air, tree's in some African savannah woodlands are growing too many too
fast....which perhaps could somehow partially explain why the 'bush'
charcoal industry has still not collapsed.

What do you think?

Regards,

Teddy



*Cookswell Jikos*
www.cookswell.co.ke
www.facebook.com/CookswellJikos
www.kenyacharcoal.blogspot.com
Mobile: +254 700 380 009
Mobile: +254 700 905 913
P.O. Box 1433, Nairobi 00606, Kenya

Save trees - think twice before printing.






On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 10:16 PM, Doug <Doug.Williams at orcon.net.nz> wrote:

> On Mon, 22 Sep 2014 14:21:08 +0530
> Anand Karve <adkarve at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Dr Karve,
>
> Thank you for this interesting comment, as I come from a family of coal
> merchants. I also had to learn all about coals and biomass fuel during
> my training as a Boilermaker, even though they were being junked
> (1950's)in favour of oil and gas fuels. It's ironic that knowledge is
> often more valuable to you at the wrong end of your life, and wished at
> times I had paid more attention to lectures.
>
> >I claim that the organisms that decompose
> > lignin had not evolved at that time and therefore the lignocellulosic
> > debris just piled up everywhere, just as discarded plastic does today.
> > I need a time machine to verify this.
> > Yours
> > A.D.Karve
>
> As we can only theorize about that distant time, my own interest in
> coal formation has indicated that our World today no longer has the
> violent tectonic plate movements and volcanic disturbances. These of
> course would account for how these swamps full of peat ended up at huge
> depths in the hottest zones to then form the better quality hard coals.
> As time passed and displacement saw the lands lift out of the water,
> biomass lost the cycle of becoming coal, leaving the huge fields of
> brown soft coal lignites.
>
> Here in New Zealand, we have several areas where you can see the seams
> of coal formed from forests blown down and cooked by the volcanic
> incandescent pyro-plasmic gas clouds that accompany these events.
> Without the pressure of depth, they are formed in sandstone and in the
> upper levels still remain to be seen as torrified wood, dated to have
> formed around 45-50,000 years ago. On my last visit to that area (2012), I
> used the saw on my Swiss Army knife and cut a piece out, and the
> attached photos shows a few details of how the wood was left torrified.
> Logs are still harvested from the swamps in some places of the same age
> but not charred, which are very valued for furniture making.
>
> Hope this is of interest.
> Doug Williams,
> Fluidyne Gasification.
>
>
>
>
>
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