BioEnergy Lists: BioChar (or Terra Preta)

See A Furture for Biochar in Vermont (pdf) announcement for detail

The ʻBiochar Vermont Initiativeʼ has asked Professor Lehmann to focus his comments on this question:

Jock Gill, Summer 2010!!

See the attached pdf file for printable Char-B-Que Instructions in Gorgeous Full Color Detail!

Basic Elements -- these are the elements required to convert a Weber unit to a carbon
negative Char-B-Que.
The B stands for Biochar. Total cost: $0.00
two cans -- these will be turned into iCan TLUD stove units
For more pictures of other experiments: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jockgill/

Hint: Measure the circumference of the can. Divide that by the number of holes you
want to have in your design. Use that result as the distance between hole centers.
Mark the hole centers as per the above and then make your holes.

Hint: Always make small pilot hole first and then work your way up to bigger and bigger
holes made with larger and larger tools. A set of graduated nails and spikes works
great. When in doubt, start with fewer and smaller holes. In general, primary air holes
will be smaller and secondary air holes will be much larger. The number of holes you
use and their sizes, and locations, has to be tuned for draft conditions, fuel type, fuel
form factor, and fuel size.

Perfect Char-B-Que Chicken. Juicy. Tender. No smokey taste. And no burned bits at all.Skin was also very crispy.
Cooking time: about 45 minutes. The right iCan had more primary air holes, 21, and burned out at 40 minutes.
The left iCan was complete at 48 minutes. It had only 15 holes for primary air. Tuning is important.

Biochar from the wood pellets in the iCan TLUDs at the end of the Char-B-Que. The biochar, which will be mixed with compost and then added to gardens as a soil amendment is how carbon that was in the wood pellets is sequestered. The long term sequestering of the carbon from the biomass is what makes the Char-B-Que "Carbon Negative".

Josiah Hunt, Landscape Ecology July, 2010

Biochar Trials

In 2009 Landscape Ecology was awarded a grant to produce biochar amended compost and observe plant growth responses.  Instead of conducting the growth trials ourselves we donated the material to a series of local Ag businesses to conduct in their systems.  Fertilizer use and such vary with the different systems.  There are still more results coming in and a few we have yet to follow up on being that many of the recipients were late to apply the material and are just now getting results.  We will have several more in coming weeks including palms in nursery, wetland (flooded field) taro, and more of the tomato/cucumber series.

See the attached pdf for more detail.

½” minus hardwood biochar

All biochar used in these photos was produced by Landscape Ecology in an open pit method explained in greater detail at Biochar Hawaii’s website: http://groups.google.com/group/biochar-hawaii?hl=en
The feedstock is mixed tropical hardwoods gathered as scrap from local sawmills.
Some analysis are shown in the attached pdf

Biochar Compost

Composted with coconut and guava chips and horse manure. Allowed 4 months to mature. Maintained a temperature of 135oF on average. Approximately 40% biochar by volume when applied. Biochar was never mechanically ground. Too wide a C:N was found in compost as seen in initial trials. C:N ratio was corrected for later other trials.
Bioassay done by Professor Jonathan Awaya of UHH shown in next slides.
Nutrient analysis of biochar compost available by request.

Hugh McLaughlin, July 2010

This is a nice series on growing your food "close to home" which also features Hugh Mclaughlin giving a nice presentation about making biochar and incorporating it into your garden.

Grow More Closer to Home, produced by Barry Hollister

Introduction:

Making a "Better Burn Barrel" a straightforward Biochar Kiln

Incorporating the Biochar into your garden

Josiah Hunt, July, 2010

Josiah has a background in Agroecology and Ecology, and he has been working both in landscaping, and in making Biochar. See his web site for more details http://www.landscapeecology-hawaii.com/

His work is also noted in the July-August 2010 Audubon Magazine Field Notes: Please Smoke

Erich J. Knight, March 2010, updated July 2010

Biochar 2010:U.S. Biochar Initiative Conference,


Conference Proceedings are now Available Online

hosted by Iowa State University on June 27–30.

More info: http://www.biorenew.iastate.edu/events/biochar2010.html

Ben Discoe, July, 2010

I have now done tests with a pit, and contrasted with the retort.

For information on the retort see: http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/content/small-kilnretort-my-farm-ahualoa-hawaii and http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/biochar/message/11011

Since the retort had issues, i looked for a way to get larger capacity and fewer parts to wear out. The idea: a pit lined with concrete blocks, which can be covered with a piece of sheet metal and soil.

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/EvSIQ36xHXUHXEOCR25lMA?feat=directlink
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/81X5Ru49kaupg3ZTI10m7g?feat=directlink
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/pJk62bETLpcn1fkRt17Igg?feat=directlink

The blocks make a hard flat surface that's easy to unload, and cleanly separate the char from the soil. It works surprisingly well. As with jaywfitz's method (http://sensiblesimplicity.lefora.com/2010/04/28/biocharterra-pretta/#post13), wood is added gradually, the pile builds up and the bottom is oxygen-starved so it pyrolyses. When the pit is full, it is covered and left for a day to cool down. The next day, there is some incompletely-charred wood at the top of the pile, but this is not a problem, it's simply put aside and added to the next burn.

No water is needed to control or put out the fire.
Because temperature never gets that high at the walls, the blocks don't crack.
It's less picky about the size and shape of the wood, because an open fire is simpler than packing a retort.

It's difficult to judge how much ash is present (and hence the level of efficiency due to consumed feedstock), but it doesn't look like much ash at all. In fact it's possibly, even likely, more efficient than the retort, in which ~50% of the wood (which is outside the retort) is burned to ash.

A small pit of 16 x 24 x 32" (7.11 ft3, 53.2 gallons) yields around 16-17 gallons (loose chunks and fines) of char. It takes 33 CMU blocks to build. It took 40 minutes to load, fire and cover. The next day, it took 55 minutes to uncover, unload, and sift/sort the result using screen frames into 1/4"-, 1/4-1/2", and 1/2"+. These times, especially the unload/sorting, could definitely be improved by streamlining the process.

It should be possible to scale up significantly - e.g. a 24 x 32 x 48" pit (48 CMU blocks) should produce ~50 gallons per burn. I'll be trying that next.

-Ben
http://ahualoa.net/ag/notes_biochar.html

Larry Kershner/Farm News news editor, July, 2010

When David Laird, standing in a corn test plot, said Tuesday evening that biochar not only repaired damaged soils for crop production, but was also a key component in long term crop sustainability in fertile soils, a murmur rolled through the listeners.

He pressed on.

"The idea of the biochar is to maintain soil quality, while maintaining yield."
(emphasis added)

...

He said biochar is applicable for redemption of sandy, depleted, eroded or damaged soils. He said there is also application for urban areas where bulldozers have compacted the topsoil.

"We anticipated seeing benefits (of biochar) in depleted soils," Laird said, "But we're seeing that in better quality soils, biochar becomes a component in maintaining a sustainable system."

To be used, biochar should be incorporated into the soil of a garden or farm field. It should be mixed in gently so as to prevent killing worms. Biochar could make-up five percent to 10 percent of the soil when the job is done, but it should not all be mixed in at once. Two or three years of adding smaller amounts seem to work better.

Read the Full story here: http://www.farm-news.com/page/content.detail/id/501355/The-next-crop-revolution-.html?nav=5005

USBI, June 2010

US Focused Biochar Report: Assessment of Biochar's Benefit's for the USA

From the Forward
Biochar is a charcoal carbon product derived from biomass that can enhance soils, sequester or store carbon, and provide useable energy. Lessons learned from Terra Preta (an ancient human-created soil type in Brazil) suggest that biochar will have carbon storage permanence in the soil for many hundreds and possibly thousands of years.2 Biochar is produced by subjecting biomass to elevated temperature, extracting energy in the form of heat, gases, and/or oils while retaining a large portion of the original biomass carbon in a solid form (charcoal or char). The relative percentage of solid carbon retained vs. the amount and form of energy produced is a function of the process conditions. The resultant solid carbon becomes biochar when it is returned to soils with the potential to enhance mineral and nutrient availability and water holding capacity, while sequestering carbon for on the order of a thousand years...

Well designed renewable energy (RE) technologies such as energy efficiency, solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, and biomass driven projects are needed to ensure a diverse portfolio of sustainable solutions to meet our energy demands. These RE technologies offer opportunities to produce energy that is carbon neutral, whereas biochar offers the potentialto be carbon negative. Biochar as a method of carbon management is also widely scalable in size and flexible across soil type and usage making biochar deployable worldwide. ...
The following report addresses six critical topics:

1. Agroforestry
2. Energy Co-Products
3. Reclamation
4. Sustainability
5. Green House Gas Accounting
6. Green House Gas Markets

Each of these areas will continue to develop over time with research and application but the information presented in this report serves as a resource for those becoming involved or continuing to be involved in the exciting development of biochar. USBI encourages readers to consider how they might add to this body of biochar knowledge and contact us for suggestions and contributions

Hugh McLaughlin, June, 2010

When: Mon, Aug 8th to Friday, Aug 13th, 2010

•   plus Welcome BBQ, Sun, Aug 7th @ 5 PM
•   plus “CHAB Demo Day”, Fri, Aug 13th

Note: NOFA (Northeast Organic Farmers Association) Summer Conf starts 2 PM, 8/13

Where: NESFI (New England Small Farm Institute)
  Belchertown (western Massachusetts, 10 miles SE of Amherst)
Visit http://www.smallfarm.org for further information and updates.

Lead by: Drs. Paul Anderson, Tom Reed & Hugh McLaughlin

Focus: Understand and make devices that produce BOTH Heat and Biochar. These are “participatory activities” for serious study of retorts, TLUD gasifier stoves, etc. to solve real world problems.