New biochar documentary

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Tigercat carbonizer runs around $500k.  It would be interesting to see how fast it is compared to a tub grinder.  Helene left an incredible amount of woody debris in the area.  Much of which is being ground into mulch.

More detail on the trees w/biochar trial that showed no improvement would be interesting.  I think a lot of biochar trials are probably on the short side.  

So Gray, it appears the film left us with an uncertain message.  The last speaker definitely said that if the energy from the pyrolysis is captured, then it is a viable enhancer - but most farm/independent creators are NOT capturing the energy from pyrolysis - what is your take?  I know you're probably the number one biochar person I read on this site. Ta.

calbo collier wrote:So Gray, it appears the film left us with an uncertain message.  The last speaker definitely said that if the energy from the pyrolysis is captured, then it is a viable enhancer - but most farm/independent creators are NOT capturing the energy from pyrolysis - what is your take?  I know you're probably the number one biochar person I read on this site. Ta.

It certainly saddens me to watch what is probably a winter’s worth of home heating go up in smoke with every batch of biochar I make.  I have ideas for what is basically a mini retort woodstove to utilize the waste heat, but the volume of biochar produced would be low compared to my piles and add to my daily chore list.  

I have seen videos of small town scale biochar/biomass energy plants in Japan, but can’t find much info on them.

I would image that it would not be that difficult to add augers similar to the Tigercat carbonizer in the video to existing biomass energy plants, they probably already have them for ash.  There just has to be a good market for the biochar as they would be sacrificing some energy production.  Biomass plants may also burn things such as tires or railroad ties, which would obviously contaminate the biochar.

This is a great topic, Gray. I am not a farmer, but if we're going to make this society more sustainable, we've got to get farmers involved.

John S
PDX OR

I finally found time to watch the video. It was worth it.
Even though it focuses on large scale farms and is just the beginning of research into using biochar as a soil amendment, it has relevant information for much smaller growers and even the home garden. You would just need to create a system suited to the size of your operation.

A couple of points I noticed:
One of the farmers was mixing his biochar with composted material at a 90/10 ratio of compost to biochar. Another farmer was mixing it with non-composted organic matter at a 20/80 ratio of organic matter to biochar and letting the composting process continue. Very different ratios and very different methods. I think the only results we heard about at the end of the video were from the farmer who mixed at the 90/10 ratio.

I remember reading about the discovery of Amazonian soils and realizing that the ancients mixed charcoal with their soil. What strikes me is the apparent dichotomy between the expectations between what the Amazonians did vs. what we Westerners want. The Amazonians were looking at soil health from a generational perspective. They were aware that this process took years, if not centuries, to come to full fruition. We expect to see results after a year or two and that's probably not a reasonable expectation. I am willing to accept small, incremental changes, so I will continue to use charcoal/biochar as a soil amendment in my garden. As this is only my first season in a new climate zone, it's going to take some time.

I have already mixed biochar into my compost pile. Now I have a load of organic matter that is just starting the composting process. I think I will add some biochar to that compost bin and see what happens.

So what should the ideal ag system look like??

This is one I have been mildly thinking on for years.  We are missing a bunch of synergies and doing semi stupid things looking at this process.  So lets build a list of the dream things the system should do and then ask the question how many of these can we take advantage of in various situations.

A.  First off is heat recovery.  We basically have 5 levels of potential heat to look at here.  They will have some overlap between them.  And ideally we would like to apply multiple layers and reuse that heat multiple times as it degrades.

1.  Hot enough to actually char materials.  Primary use is obvious but preheating, drying might also be in this list.
2.  above boiling but not hot enough to char.  drying but might also be good for maple syrup, sorguhm etc.
3.  Low building heating right to just short of boiling.  Building heating, drying, sterilization(both seed and biological) of compost, manure.
4.  Greenhouse heating
5.  livestock heating

this ends with the thought of how might you store that heat and how might you move it thru the system?

B.  I would argue we are maybe making the wrong char in many cases.  Most ag people are not set up to handle large quantities of wood or to break up large quantities of char after the fact so is wood maybe not the best answer for material to char?  What are farmers set up to handle.  Hay, straw, cornstalks, slash piles from wood clean up.  And if we start with smaller materials to char breaking them up on the other end is no big deal.  So we solve a problem.  Now we add the problem that our char chamber density is lower.  Another mistake here is not building to use power equipment to to the jobs the whole way thru the process.  When it comes time to unload the retort that needs to be a low labor operation probably using the very same loaders that are moving bale, pushing manure, loading the feed truck etc.

C.  Another problem would be air pollution from the same system.  Can we maybe use are incoming fuel or char source as a low grade filter to reduce pollution while drying it and preheating it?  What about ability to recover moisture from this?

D.  Other potential synergistic gains?  Other ways to improve the process?  How to make it cost effective?  How to make it labor effective?  And apply all of these at various scale from home thru large scale ag?