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Hi Ron,<br>
<br>
I'm not aware of a different weight unit (the traditional Chinese
weight units that are still in use today don't go up that large),
but the Chinese number system itself can easily give rise to
confusion in conversion to English numbers, due to the mismatch
between basic units. <br>
<br>
In English we have units, tens, hundreds, thousands, millions,
billions and up (with historically different definitions of the
billions and up in different countries). <br>
<br>
Chinese has units, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten-thousands (wan),
hundred-millions (yi), trillions (zhao, i.e. 10 to the power of 12)
and up (with historically different definitions of yi, zhao and up).<br>
<br>
See <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_numerals">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_numerals</a><br>
<br>
So a million in English is 100 wan in Chinese, and an (American)
billion is 10 yi.<br>
<br>
A similar problem to lakhs, crores etc. in Indian numbers.<br>
<br>
Robert Taylor<br>
Taiwan<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2017-09-19 16:40, Ronal W. Larson
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:DF8C553B-674D-493A-95C2-54BF430FF1DB@comcast.net">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<div class="">Tom and stove list (and adding the biochar list).
Note thread title change.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I
have reviewed the IBI “8858” message below and suggest these are
the two key sentences:</div>
<div class=""><i class=""><br class="">
</i></div>
<div class=""><span style="font-variant-ligatures: normal;
orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"
class=""><i class=""><font class="" face="Arial, Helvetica,
sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 12px;" class="">“The
ambitious plan of the cooperative enterprises on straw
biomass and biochar technology is to upscale up to 5M
tones of straw recycled per year and 100 enterprises
converting biomass to biochars, reaching a total market
value of 10 billion CNY (Chinese yuan) by 2020. </span></font></i></span></div>
<div class=""><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica,
sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-variant-ligatures: normal;
orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"
class=""><i class="">With this mode so far, up to 100,000 tons
straws were carbonized while some twenty thousand tons straw
biomass biochar fertilizer produced with additional 20
thousands tons biochar sold, giving a reduction of GHGs over
0.6 Tg CO2 equivalent.”</i></span></div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>These
numbers don’t hang together! </div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I
am now inclined to believe the total annual 2020 market value
(10 billion Yuan per year) and the .6 Tg CO2 equivalent
reduction to date. Only if I increase the quantity scales by a
factor of 10 (both “to date” (meaning 2015) and in 2020) can I
get a future char price to be $150/tonne char and a 3:1 weight
ratio of CO2 to biochar. As the weights are now stated, we
would get $1500/tonne char (seems way too high for China in
2020) and a (ridiculous) 30:1 ratio. </div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I
can get their factor of 50 increase (1 million t char/yr) /
(20,000 t char) [or my preference that is ten times larger in
both numerator and denominator] if I assume a five year period
(all of 2016-2020) AND I assume that all of the stated past
values were from only 2015. Then I need an annual growth rate
of about 119% for five years. So we might be able to justify an
annual bit-more-than-doubling of output - that is six annual <u
class=""><b class="">relative </b></u>numbers for 2015 - 2020
like 1, 2.2, 4.6,10, 22, 50. Their computations were probably
more like an annual doubling of output at each site when we
factor in growing from about 50 sites to 100.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>This
annual growth factor is still huge (but probably well less than
that seen for hand-held phones).</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Is
it possible that the Chinese have a weight unit that is 10 times
larger than a kg or tonne? (that got lost in the translation?)</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The
first key quantity to check could be whether the Chinese could
have produced 200,000 tonnes char in 2015 rather than 20,000?
With 50 companies this is 4000 tonnes per year per machine, so
a bit more than 1/2 tonne char per hour. This looks possible
with the machine shown at the IBI site given below by Tom. They
appear to be going from 50 such machines to 2500 such machines
over a 5 year period. To say that (looks big) machine can only
produce less than 1 kg char per minute doesn’t seem reasonable.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Anyone
else see a major opportunity here for pushing biochar? (via the
Chinese goals). Or maybe I have just made an error? I have
intentionally not shown all the computations, but they are quite
obvious, and better to have independent confirmation. Glad to
comment off line with anyone.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">
<div class=""> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>It
is exceedingly important in our world (of selling biochar) to
get this (double) factor of ten sorted out! </div>
</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Tom
- thanks for this important lead. I am sorry to report that I
see this factor-of-10 error.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Ron</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<br>
</blockquote>
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