Re: Request for Comment on a Charcoal (Terra petra) Use Question

["A.D. Karve" <adkarve@pn2.vsnl.net.in>]

Dear Ron,
I remember having myself suggested the idea sometime ago of making charcoal
by using a charcoal making stove and dumping it back into mine shafts of old
exhausted mines. Terra petra was news to me, but there are references in
literature that show that soil fertility is increased by charcoal.  Since we
have geared ourselves up to making  charcoal, on a large scale, from
sugarcane trash, it would not be difficult for me to conduct a few
experiments to actually compare crops grown in soil with and without added
char. Very interesting work was done by some agricultural scientists in
India.  Rice is first planted on nursery beds and after the seedlings have
grown for about a month on the nursery beds, they are transplanted into the
field. These scientists got hold of a Vietnamese stove called Lo-trau, which
used rice husk as fuel.  When the ash from this stove was spread on rice
seedling beds, the resulting seedlings not only grew better, but they
resisted many diseases and pests.  The concerned scientists attributed the
better performance of the rice seedlings to the extra silica that they
received from the ash.  There is also a lot of anecdotal evidence from
people living in the mountains west of Pune. Here, the deforested slopes of
the mountains support growth of a grass species that grows breast high.
Because its seeds are extremely spiny, one can't even walk in this region
after the rainy season, because seeds penetrate your clothes and make your
life miserable by working their way through to your skin. Even cattle does
not eat this grass after it has set seed. We have been making propaganda to
convert this grass into char by using our kilns. The residents of this
region claim that new grass grew better if the old dry clumps were burned
in a bush fire, rather than if the old grass was allowed to rot in situ.
A.D.Karve
-----Original Message-----
From: Ron Larson <ronallarson@qwest.net>
To: stoves <stoves@crest.org>
Cc: morey_wolfson@nrel.gov <morey_wolfson@nrel.gov>; Tom Reed
<tombreed@attbi.com>; Tom Milne <tom_milne@nrel.gov>; Ralph Overend
<ralph_overend@nrel.gov>
Date: Sunday, September 29, 2002 2:07 AM
Subject: Request for Comment on a Charcoal (Terra petra) Use Question


>
>Stovers (apologies in advance for a too-long message):
>
> 1.  As most of you know, I am quite morbidly fixated on charcoal as a part
>of the stoves options.  But I do other things; as a member of its Board of
>Directors,  I am helping the American Solar Energy Society (ASES) in
>fighting our US Department of Energy on its apparent decision to move
>emphasis on hydrogen away from renewables towards coal and nuclear
>production approaches. In the mention this past week by list-member Tom
Reed
>of list-member Tom Milne's April submission to us on the relationship
>between Hydrogen and Biomass (his report for the IEA) - I reread that Milne
>report and had the following (inspiration, dumb idea, wild thought,...?).
>The idea is that maybe there is a relationship also with the world of
global
>warming (GW) and climate change.  I hadn't earlier seen much connection to
>"stoves", except through our (very important!) work to improve efficiency
>and reduce emissions.  Our best stoves work on these GW topics has come
from
>people like Kirk Smith, Dan Kammen, Tami Bond,.....
>
> 2.  So this most recent idea is that maybe we should be thinking of stoves
>as a way to assist even more on GW (and maybe hydrogen - see below) through
>not just having a GW-neutral stove - but one that actually pumps CO2 out of
>the atmosphere.
>
> 3.  The only two (Stovers - is this true?) ways I know to do this are
> a): to put the CO2 back deep into the ground or oceans as is being studied
>by the coal and natural gas folks.  I see no hope for this (at least at the
>level of stoves) - but ask if anyone on our list sees this (CO2, not C,
>removal) as a realistic possibility.
> b):  sequester the charcoal itself (from stoves or any other biomass
>operation) - do not consume it at or near the place of charcoal
manufacture.
>This is virtually impossible for the coal and natural gas people to argue
>for at the stoves level, I believe - so we have this field to ourselves.
>[added note for John Davies and others working on coal-fired cooking and
>heating stoves - this following idea might also apply to you - after you
>obtain coke.  I can conceive of that being considered sequestration as
>well.)
>
> 4.  Now one obvious choice for the charcoal to stay out of circulation is
>as a carbon filament - useful for its nice (except for cost) properties
>(weight, strength, etc).  My friend Morey Wolfson today supplied me with
>this reference for those who might want to pursue this nice option further:
>http://www.byu.edu/news/releases/archive02/May/pyramatrix.htm
>
> 5.  The other option only became obsessive to me when I spoke on Thursday
>with list member Ralph Overend (I think  the most knowledgeable biomass
>person I have ever met).  Ralph pointed me to the August 9 Issue of Science
>magazine (pp 920-923)- which is on the subject of "terra petra".  A little
>time on "google" got me this web site for one of two Thomas Mann news
>stories on this topic:
>http://www.uvm.edu/~uvmpr/uvmclips/Augustclips/SciencePetersonDirt.html
>It is also available for a fee from the Science Magazine website - and
>probably with the photos.  As this is maybe the most popular science
>magazine - you may find it at your local library, which was my first
>approach.
>
> 6.  To whet your appetite, let me say that I found this article to be very
>fascinating on many other levels than any so far mentioned by me.  To not
>keep you in suspense, the article reports that there are big parts (10%?)
of
>Brazil with a highly productive soil - much different from the typical soil
>that we hear is in such danger from the felling of the Amazonian forests.
>The difference is that terra petra is a man-made soil - with the main
>ingredient (I think and I think they think) being charcoal.  It was
man-made
>starting maybe 1500 years ago with 1/2 to 2 meter depth.  Terra petra's
>significance was only discovered in the past decade or two.  This August
>"Science" article reports on the first-ever conference in July on the Terra
>petra (dark earth in Portuguese) topic.  The big questions raised are:  Why
>does it work?,  How was the charcoal produced?  Why are there so many pot
>shards in the soil along with the charcoal?  Is there some other magic
>ingredient in this soil besides the charcoal? Was the reason for man-made
>soil (with same-site agricultural longevity measured in millennia) that it
>was too difficult to practice slash-and-burn agriculture when your best
tool
>for cutting big trees was a stone axe?  I expect our botanists on this list
>like A.D Karve, Harmon Seaver, and Dan Dimiduk to give us these answers.  I
>personally am going to start putting some charcoal in my (meager)
background
>garden - just to see why Terra Petra (or charcoal?) works.  (There seems to
>be no doubt that it does work.)
>
> 7.  From my limited reading so far, I think that this July meeting was
>mainly attended by anthropologists, archaeologists, and soil scientists.
>But there may have been some people present thinking sequestration or even
>charcoal making - (I intend to ask those there).  The idea should certainly
>have come up if any Terra Preta Conference attendee had ever been involved
>with GW or stoves - as we are talking huge increases in soil productivity
>and apparently a long life for the charcoal when placed in the soil.  Five
>hundred years of dormancy and these terra petra soils are still fantastic
>(is the way I interpret the news story).
>
> 8.  The hydrogen side of this is that some on our list (especially Mike
>Antal and Tom Milne) have been involved in the conversion of biomass to
>hydrogen - and they (do or could) end up with charcoal as a "waste"
material
>I believe.  There are plenty of others on this list (not me) who know how
to
>produce hydrogen from biomass - and so I hope they will chime in on how
hard
>or easy it is to produce mainly H2 and C (with maybe some left over CO2 and
>waste heat to do some cooking). I can't think of a better fuel for cooking
>than hydrogen (forgetting the issue of cost) - as the only possible (NOX?)
>effluent is water.  So this alone is a good reason for this list to think
>hydrogen once in a while.
>
> 9.  So I am admitting to have come full circle.  I first began developing
a
>charcoal-making stove in late 1994 and reported first on the "bioenergy"
>list in December 1995 (see
>http://www.crest.org/discussion/bioenergy/199512/msg00069.html .  My
highest
>value was being then placed on a charcoal-making stove's ability to
decrease
>the desertification caused by rural charcoal-makers (generated by having
>lived in Sudan in 1982 and 1983). Efficiency and emissions reductions were
>foreign to me then.  In my first message to the Tom-Miles-led-"bioenergy",
I
>was responding to a Dec. 21 question from Sven Erik-Tiburg (set@mt.luth.se
>at that time - haven't heard from Sven in a long time).  The stoves list
>began a few weeks later because of all this strange talk on charcoal-making
>stoves (see http://www.crest.org/discussion/stoves/199602/msg00000.html for
>the first issue of "stoves" - as we were kicked out of "bioenergy" by Tom -
>who I ask if there were any earlier stoves discussions on Bioenergy" before
>Sven's?).    So now almost 7 years later, I am talking about the
>advisability of throwing into the ground that which I was striving
initially
>to obtain.  Part of this rationale is my concurrence with the wisdom of
what
>Tom Reed said in his first message to "stoves" (two later than my first
>"stoves" message given above) - that it was better to not burn the charcoal
>in a natural draft version of an "inverted down draft" stove.  I of course
>concur - little useful energy is available after the biomass has been
>pyrolyzed - unless the charcoal is moved to a device like a "jiko".  What I
>have been getting more convinced of over time is that it is the pyrolysis
>gases that are most useful for cooking - not the charcoal.
>
> 10.  Now one last paragraph about this list after seven years. I cannot
>think of a better group to approach with this issue.  We are unlike most
>discussion groups because so few of us think there is any money to be made
>in stoves - we are either pyromaniacs or just trying to solve one of the
>world's toughest problems.  Stoves problems are affecting more people (3
>billion?) adversely than any other energy (and health) problem I know of.
>We all know that we can contribute to developing better devices - that have
>to cost less than $10-$20.  We are also very diverse in interest and
>background.  So with this buttering up - the question for you all is -
>should we mention this idea of stoves (and many other pyrolyzers [not
>gasifiers]) removing CO2 from the atmosphere out loud?  Where does the idea
>go wrong?  Could the use only of pyrolysis gases for cooking be sufficient
>motivation for putting the resulting charcoal back in the ground?
>(sufficient because of promised future higher agro-forestry yields)  Do we
>need to be promoting dollar incentive transfers from the "North" to the
>"South" as is being proposed by most sequestration analysts? (and which I
am
>sure we would need without the apparent advantages of terra petra.)  Would
>this solve the obstinacy of our President Bush to the Kyoto treaty - if the
>South (G-77) was "suddenly" the only group not only reducing their inputs
to
>GW, but actually taking out our (meaning developed country, for most of us)
>own CO2 contributions out for free (or low cost?)?  Or will transfer
>payments be taken by poor Southern farmers and the charcoal still be burned
>anyway?  Or can we develop fool-proof methods for ensuring that the
charcoal
>is indeed sequestered?  How does one perform a convincing (to George Bush)
>economic argument?  How much biomass could be harvested/converted that is
>now being digested into unwanted methane (20 times worse than CO2 for GW)
by
>us (mainly the Southern part of the human race)?  How much should those in
>the north be willing to pay per consumed Joule to avoid having to cut back
>our own wasteful and GW lifestyle?  What have I left out?
>
> 11. The only people who are doing something outside of what I am
suggesting
>here are maybe Elsen and Matthew in Nairobi - and A.D and Priya in India -
>with their flaring of pyrolysis gases.  To them I am saying that perhaps
the
>charcoal they are preparing is (perhaps - not yet for sure) better (in a
>societal sense) put into the ground (maybe with a subidy) to improvev local
>growing conditions.  To those like Richard Stanley making briquettes out of
>ag wastes - I say that is great.    (Same for Priya and others with sawdust
>stoves.)  If this pans out, we just stop the consumption of the briquette
>after its pyrolysis phase.   To Ray W. in Sri Lanka - this should make your
>coppiced tress grow two or there times faster.  (I fear that A.D. will tell
>me I am wrong - but hope he will first read and analyze the Science article
>on which all this is based.)
>
>
> 12. I go into this with this much (but still very sparse) detail so I can
>sit back and let others have some sleepless nights.   Any sequestration web
>sites I should be looking at?  (I have found a few that look helpful - and
>will pass them on to anyone interested, as this note is already long
enough.
>I now recognize that the idea of sequestering charcoal is not new - but
>maybe using stoves and terra petra is.)  Your thoughts?  Thanks in advance.
>
>Ron
>
>
>
>-
>Stoves List Archives and Website:
>http://www.crest.org/discussion/stoves/200209/
>http://crest.org/discussiongroups/resources/stoves/
>>
>Stoves List Moderators:
>Ron Larson, ronallarson@qwest.net
>Elsen L. Karstad, elk@wananchi.com www.chardust.com
>
>Other Biomass Stoves Events and Information:
>http://www.crest.org/articles/static/1/1010424940_7.html Bioenergy
>http://www.crest.org/articles/static/1/1011975339_7.html Gasification
>http://www.crest.org/articles/static/1/1011975672_7.html Carbon
>
>List-Post: <mailto:stoves@crest.org>
>List-Help: <mailto:stoves-help@crest.org>
>List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:stoves-unsubscribe@crest.org>
>List-Subscribe: <mailto:stoves-subscribe@crest.org>
>>
>For information about CHAMBERS STOVES
>>http://www.repp.org/discussiongroups/resources/stoves/Chambers/Chambers.ht
m
>
>


-
Stoves List Archives and Website:
http://www.crest.org/discussion/stoves/200209/
http://crest.org/discussiongroups/resources/stoves/
>
Stoves List Moderators:
Ron Larson, ronallarson@qwest.net
Elsen L. Karstad, elk@wananchi.com www.chardust.com

Other Biomass Stoves Events and Information:
http://www.crest.org/articles/static/1/1010424940_7.html Bioenergy
http://www.crest.org/articles/static/1/1011975339_7.html Gasification
http://www.crest.org/articles/static/1/1011975672_7.html Carbon

List-Post: <mailto:stoves@crest.org>
List-Help: <mailto:stoves-help@crest.org>
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:stoves-unsubscribe@crest.org>
List-Subscribe: <mailto:stoves-subscribe@crest.org>
>
For information about CHAMBERS STOVES
>http://www.repp.org/discussiongroups/resources/stoves/Chambers/Chambers.htm