SuperDirtt for Hawaii?

[JWFITZ]

On another note. . .

If you could purchase quality biochar at .10 cents a pound, would you?

[AlohaSteven]

Absolutely, yessir. If the question is not just rhetorical then please sign me up at the very top of your customer list; in my first purchase I will buy at least a couple thousand pounds of quality biochar at that price, with more purchases to follow.

I wonder about your notion that sustainable MUST mean small-scale. Maybe it is just a matter of where we draw the arbitrary invisible line marking the boundary of the system involved; I am accustomed to thinking of a practical unit being a watershed. If the east side of the island is the area we are talking about, then the scale of the charcoal burning effort (one or a few units operating highly efficiently and with maximum benefit to all, long-term) versus hundreds of short-lived, small, very messy and polluting, unsustainable (in terms of ongoing fuel supply) units perhaps comes into a different perspective.

If we do not bow to economies of scale and the merits of natural competitive advantage (e.g., someone with lots of wood growing on their acreage has a huge natural competitive advantage over someone who just has a whole lotta lava rock, period, on their spread) then it seems to me we doom ourselves to many people laboriously wasting much duplicated effort much less efficiently than need be the case. If we are all busting ass making charcoal (or whatever) every-man-for-himself style, replicated a thousand times over, instead of doing what we are naturally good at and well positioned to do, then when do we ever have the time for celebrating life instead of just surviving? Life should not be mere endless toil. If a division of labor can be feasibly accomplished along lines of economies of scale, specialized interests & expertise, and the merits of natural competitive advantage then I would much rather buy my charcoal from someone who is a wizard at making it and well-equipped to do so. This way, instead of spending all the time and resources I would have poured into charcoal-making, I can work on figuring out some epidemiological problem or doing something else I am good at and have specialized expertise toward. We are thus all mutually enriched, have more leisure time for the arts and higher things in life, and the system itself becomes more resilient and sustainable, yes?

But regarding the practicality of building a genuinely big charcoal unit (as via a large cooperative) you are absolutely right: I was speaking in the idealized theoretical abstract whereas in the Big Island real world what actually matters --for the time being, at least-- is a spider's web legal tangle of ordinances, permits, inspections, fees, and (as a reward, in the event one is enough of a masochist to endure running the gauntlet) taxes. It could be nightmarish getting a fairly large and efficient two-stage chacoalization unit approved, permitted, and running not because of technological issues, constraints of capital or resources, but because of the bureaucratic quagmire.


Edit: BTW, I am assuming a biochar purchase price of ten cents a pound ($0.10/lb), not a tenth of a cent a pound (0.10 cents/lb).


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"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

Pres. John Adams, Scholar and Statesman


"There's a scientific reason to be concerned and there's a scientific reason to push for action. But there's no scientific reason to despair."

NASA climate analyst Gavin Schmidt

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[MarkP]

We are talking about doing things that are very unconventional at present. I don't have any hope that sufficient numbers of people will have enough common vision and stick tooitiveness to make a system of communal charcoal burning work. At present, only technically skilled weirdos like JWFITZ will make it work for themselves. When the rest of the world figures out they aren't so weird biochar will become a commodity like anything else. The whole communal thing, particularly when talking about hard, dirty manual labor, smacks of communism which, although as a concept had some merits, in the application of it there were some insurmountable obstacles like human nature.

I still think that once the general public starts turning to wood as an everyday resource, we will see a line of deforestation moving up the mountains. The efforts of those who selectively cull the weed trees will be overwhelmed by those who reach for the closest thing, whatever and wherever it is.

[JWFITZ]

biochar at 10 cents a pound is a semi rhetorical question at the moment, in a couple of months may not be.

When I mean small I mean that on a personal basis, the core value of a "sustainability" should an attitude of non-consumptive frugality. There are certainly places for larger scale projects that collectively enhance personal lifestyles of non-consumptive frugality. Efficiency is certainly always constructive. As well, sustainability isn't a an attitude or a concept--its a measurable quantity. A lifestyle or a society either lives in a state that can be perpetuated or one that cannot and will collapse. One either consumes within ones means or one does not. While there is a place to attempt to create more efficient means--the easiest and surest way to sustainability is to simply consume less.

[JWFITZ]

Any thoughts on whether high density or low density char will be ultimately more effective? I'm beginning to expect the later.

[MarkP]

I have never read anything about the density of biochar. Do you perhaps mean temperature? If not, please steer me in the right direction.

[JWFITZ]

No, I mean density simply in terms of density. If you char albezia the char is very light weight almost like styrofoam or the acetate the green houses use. If you char guava the char is very heavy, almost like coal. Either at some point will mechanically degrade into the soil, but the lightweight char has an immediate effect in breaking up and lightening heavy soils like I have, and immediately and radically improves drainage. A 50 gallon barrel run will make about 10 to 15 gallons of light weight char, or 2 cubic feet, thereabouts, so on a garden scale there's a real impact pretty fast.

[MarkP]

Aha. What you say makes perfect sense. The thing that makes activated charcoal active is that it somehow has a huge amount of surface area. I don't know how they make it that way. Anyway, I would think that surface area would be important for terra preta as well, and I would think that low density would go hand in hand with porosity and surface area on a microscopic level.

Do you grind up the charcoal before mixing it into the soil? More surface area for it to do its thing with.

[MarkP]

Totally brainstorming here. I know that activated charcoal has hundreds or thousands of times as much surface area as regular charcoal. The activated stuff is what is used in aquarium filters. However, as they are chemically the same thing, regular charcoal would still catch some fish waste. Fish waste? In what other context have I heard fish waste discussed in gardening forums? I think it was FERTILIZER.

Any chance that, assuming you had an aquaculture operation going, you could saturate the biochar with fish fertilizer before mixing it into the soil? I have heard that if you put it in fresh from the kiln you will first notice a decrease in fertility as it soaks up the available nutrients. Is there a chance to eliminate this while you help your fish too?

[JWFITZ]

Only as much is as convenient. 1 -2 cm3 I expect is plenty good enough and the chickens and inevitable garden activity will take care of the rest. In this manner it seems one gets the immediate effect of lightening the soil, though the carbon load initially isn't high enough to constitute what one might call terra preta. Over the course of a couple of years of continual processing of garden waste, limbs, and other debris one will get there. Faster than one thinks, actually. One can process 2 drums a day with minimal attention, or about 40 lbs or 4 cubic feet. It is a good project to take one in the rain when nothing else is worth doing. I'm sure this was the process that was historically used.

A target rate of loading for the typical crappy heavy volcanic muddy soil out here would be about 1 pound a square foot, according to the data. A dedicated gardener with 1 or two 55 gallon drums will be there pretty fast.

The soil turns dang black, and when the sun comes out, warms right up. . .and stays that way.