With Pyrolysis & Biochar

What would happen if the 100s of thousands of American backyard gardeners cooked their produce on grills that made biochar which they then returned to their gardens?

What would happen if the 100s of thousands of American backyard cookers worked with grills that made biochar which was then returned their gardens?

By simply changing our cooking technique, could we break down the silos that today too often keep Growing and Cooking separate and disconnected?

For starters, the food cooked this way is so good that it would be incentive enough.  Just ask Marshal Webb.  I do know this:  This backyard cooker’s Weber grills and Big Green Egg will never see conventional charcoal again.  From now on, they will be biochar makers, no longer charcoal burners.  Carbon negative gardening in healthier soils creating produce with improved nutrient density and carbon negative cooking that helps reduce the CO2 levels in the atmosphere are benefits that simply become the icing on the cake.

From the perspective of biochar, the choice is clear:

1. Invent and grow a market that does not exist today;

or

2. Work with and grow two vibrant and existing markets.

Consider that over 1 million tons of conventional charcoal are made every year for backyard cooking.  Thank you Henry Ford!  By comparison, the amount of biochar made and sold is an insignificant rounding error.  Consider that the number of backyard gardeners is great enough to create a robust supporting market place.  In comparison, the number of biochar makers/users is next to zero.  More particularly, what percent of backyard gardeners are members of NOFA?  So, taking a page from a certain bank robber, the promoters of biochar might do a great deal better by going to where the market and customers already are.

The question now is simply how do we bring this opportunity for integration and market expansion to the attention of the legions of backyard gardeners and cookers, as well as their supporting markets?  By a trivial change in our cooking technique these two can now become one.  This is low hanging fruit and a great opportunity –  if ever there was one: good for you and me as well as the environment.

I look forward to your comments.

Author: Jock Gill

The Bar-B-Q Re-invented for the 21st Century

Turning a recycled tuna fish can into a natural draft, carbon negative, backyard stove.

Ever since Henry Ford turned his waste wood into charcoal, and gave away bar-b-que sets with his cars, we have been enjoying “cookouts”. Over 1 million tons of charcoal are made every year in a process that throws away all of the heat released by the pyrolysis of the wood.  This is a huge amount of energy from biomass that is simply discarded.  As there is no longer any place for “waste” energy, perhaps it would be better to change our approach to the All American Cookout.  What if we used the heat produced by pyrolysis to cook with?  What if the resulting charcoal, biochar, had many environmental benefits?

Below, I illustrate a simple way you can do this yourself.  Today.  No need to wait for a big grant or a magic silver bullet.  Besides, it is fun, gives great tasting results, and is, incidentally, quite educational.



Once the 4lbs of tuna fish had been removed by the buyer, the can was “retrieved” from the recycle bin at Marty’s First Stop in Danville. VT.  Thank you  Marty!

Cost: $0.00

The outer ring of smaller holes was added latter, after the first test burn indicated I did not  have quite enough primary air coming into the iCan. I did not want to add 50% more air, so I used a 3/32 inch bit to make smaller holes.  These could have been made with a nail 2 inches long, but these would have been slightly larger then 3/32.  So I might have used fewer holes, or I might let their size offset the smaller holes made by the other nail — assuming I am using no  power tools.

The second step is to make the holes for the secondary air supply.  Here I have measured down about 1/3 of the height of the can, as is my practice when making iCan stoves.  I took the circumference and divided by 19, as I wanted lots of secondary air.  After putting dots around the can every 1/19th of the way around – I use a fiberglass quilters tape that has Centimeters marked on one side – I made pilot holes, then enlarged them in two steps to get to this final size.  The last tool used was a 6 inch spike. This yielded holes slightly smaller than a #2 pencil.

Note:  These are only departure points.  You can vary the number and size of holes as your experience suggests.  Try more, fewer, smaller, larger and various combinations of all of these.  You will son learn that you adjust the number and size of the holes to tune the system for best results.  For the Char-B-Que,  I want longer cooking times and a good biochar yield, but clean biochar with as little residual tar as possible. Too long a burn leaves dirty biochar.  Too short a burn is nice and hot, but burns up more of the biochar than I want to lose.   Like Goldilocks, I do not want it too hot and fast, nor too slow and dirty, but “just” right.

“Just right” in a simple iCan TLUD stove will yield about 18% of the weight of the input fuel as biochar.  This will be about 1/2 the volume of the original fuel.  Further, the biochar will absorb water and sink, and, when ground between your fingers, will simply rinse off without any need for soap.

Step three is to load your stove with fuel.  I use one quart of softwood pellets.  In any case, leave some space between the top fo the fuel and the secondary air holes.  This allows the wood gas to create a barrier that keeps oxygen away from the fuel so that you have pyrolysis of the fuel, NOT full combustion, which would reduce the fuel to its elemental ash.

The aluminum drip pan will catch the grease from meat items you cook.  You will notice that the grease does not burn as it will not get above 300 degrees.  But it will flow out of the meat as it cooks, so you will want to use a drip pan.

Note: The iCan stove and the drip pan are placed on the bottom, or charcoal, grate of the Weber grill.  The Weber’s bottom vents are open all the way.

The cooking grate has now been placed over the iCan and the drip pan.  I have found that I get much better results if I use a 4″ tall can as a draft enhancer.  I set this topless and bottomless can over the center of the iCan.  In its previous life, this four inch tall can has held tomato sections, or the like.  Maybe baked beans.

Cost: $0.00

Detail of the draft enhancer.

Once the pyrolysis has a good start — about 4-6 minutes –with  the wood gas burning where the secondary air is coming in and the flames are coming well up into the draft enhancing can, then I put the lid of the Weber on.  This picture shows a second draft enhancing can. It formerly held tomato juice or pineapple juice or some other juice.  If the exit draft is not strong enough, the gases from the burning wood gas will smother the fire.  You can experiment with taking this can off and watching the state of the wood gas flames change.  Put it back on and watch how the pyrolysis changes.  If it goes out and starts to emit a white smoke, simply remove the lid, re-light the wood gas, and wait a bit before replacing the lid AND the the outer draft enhancer.

If everything is going well with the pyrolysis, the exhaust gases will be HOT.  They are plenty hot enough to cook marshmallows slowly with great results.

This is about what your Char-B-Que should look like for its 45 – 50 minute run time.

No apparent smoke!

If you get smoke, you will get lots of it.  This is telling you that not all is well with the system.

At the very end of the session, you will get a darker smoke that indicates that the wood gases are exhausted and the pyrolysis of the fuel is complete.  This is your signal to carefully take apart the Char-B-Que — wear gloves as the handle of the lid gets VERY hot.  When you have removed the food, draft enhancer, and the cooking grate, use long handled pliers to gently lift up the iCan stove, now with a load of very hot charcoal, and slowly dump the charcoal into a bucket of water — just enough to cover the charcoal.

The Fire is just started. The corn and the potatoes are in position.  Now to wait for the pyrolysis to get firmly started and for the fire starting gel to burn completely off.

Note:  To start the pyrolysis of the fuel, you can also take a handful of fuel and soak it in 91% rubbing alcohol for 2 minutes.  Drain very well.  Then sprinkle it over the top of the fuel in the iCan TLUD.  TL stand for Top Lit.  We want the pyrolysis to start only on the top of the fuel and then evenly work its way down through the fuel until it reaches the bottom of the iCan and self-extingusishes.

As I know this will “burn” for about 45 minutes, at about the 20 minute mark I will sear the steak over the iCan for about 90seconds per side and then place the it over the drip pan. I will turn the steak once, such that each side gets about 8 – 10 minutes of exposure to the highest indirect heat.

From time to time, but not very often,  I will also rotate the corn and the potatoes.  When I add the steak, last night it was a nice, thick, 16 ounze Delmenico, I will also add the yellow summer squash off to one side in a strainer basket.

The proof was in the pudding.  Simply outstanding results. Slow cooking over indirect heat has a lot to recommend it.

This non-cook now wants to cook this meal for his foodie wife.  But his vegetarianb daughteres will only want the veggies.

I see some dots that might just connect:

Slow Money

Local & Slow Food

Carbon Negative Slow Cooking with the biochar circling back to the local food producers.

For some very interesting commercial developments in the world of pyrolysis, look into the work being done by ZeroPoint Clean Tech.

Posted by: Jock Gill

I must now turn to address the theme that I have selected for conveying my thoughts to you which is: The Sanctity of Life: Faith as the Underpinning of the Family.

The significance of “life” itself, which is regarded as the universal sine qua non of anything meaningful or even desirable in Platonic terms of our worldly existence, is manifestly regarded as the pivot around which all that is beneficial to the human race revolves. Religion or faith based evaluations of this phenomenon are most educative to us today. Faith as such is the harbinger of many good tidings for Mankind; yet it is trite knowledge that it is purportedly considered by some as the basis used by even well meaning people to advocate criticism, even ridicule of other faiths.

In the world in which we find ourselves in 2010, there as such much acrimony and mistrust by followers of races and of adherents of diverse faiths against those who are just “different”.2 I am privileged to be the author and presenter of the new contemporary right which was presented to the world in the Mexico Conference of 1980 which examined and upheld the availability of this new human third generation human right actually called, the “right to be different”.3

The whole presentation is in the PDF in the link below:

The Sanctity of Life and basis of Family.pdf

Posted by: JPG

I first heard that phrasing by Glenn Beck. Then I noticed it several times in several different Fox sNooze segments. Then in some of the tea-party speeches. (I sometimes like to get ALL perspectives, first-hand.

Sooo … whatever happened to the phrase that USED to be the mainstay of American political advocacy – demanding “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, as it IS stated in the Declaration of Independence?

Why are so many on the Raght systematically abandoning that long-standing declaration, subtly replacing it with this new formulation with its property preoccupation?

Hmmmm??? [Spread the word - or the question!]

–jim; Jim Warren, open-govt & tech-civlib advocate & sometime columnist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Warren

justjim36 on twitter | Jim Warren on Facebook

This is a first-draft proposal for a ballot initiative, stated for my home-state, but equally applicable to other states:

In the State of Washington, corporations are not people,
and a corporation is not a person, and corporations have
no rights other than those enacted by legislation,
explicitly stating that they are rights for corporations.

It’s brief, easy for anyone to read and understand, and would seem to be “obvious”. Please let me know if you’re interested in pursuing such a ballot measure in ANY state.

[Note: There are numerous organizations and websites already concerned with fighting judicially-invented corporate personhood, but I don't know of any efforts in any state to address this problem via statewide ballot initiative.]

–jim; Jim Warren, open-govt & tech-civlib advocate & sometime columnist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Warren

justjim36 on twitter | Jim Warren on Facebook

Here is the Biochar section in its entirety:

Biochar Production.

Like other biosequestration strategies, biochar technology captures CO2 through plant photosynthesis. The captured carbon is then converted into a stable charcoal-like substance called ‘‘biochar,’’ with estimates of characteristic storage time varying from hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands of years (61). The process is pyrolysis, that is, high temperature decomposition in an oxygen-deprived environment (61). In addition to its potential to replenish long-term carbon sinks, biochar can be a beneficial soil amendment, as noted by a recent review of published literature by Sohi et al. (61). These authors report that although biochar is increasingly being promoted by climate policy makers, relatively few studies provide a quantitative assessment of biochar soil management scenarios, and some of the fundamental mechanisms of the interaction of biochar with the soil require further research (61).

Pyrolysis also produces bio-gas and bio-oil that can displace fossil fuel use (62, 63), making it a potential ‘‘carbon negative’’ source of energy (64). Feedstocks for biochar production are widely available (61, 62), and the technology exists for rapid biochar deployment, including mobile or stationary units for use at local or regional levels (64). At household level, fuel-efficient cookstoves can produce biochar and reduce emissions of BC (65).

The International Biochar Initiative estimates that biochar production has the potential to provide 1 Gt carbon per year in climate mitigation by 2040, or 3.67 Gt CO2 per year, using only waste biomass (66). Hansen et al. (5) estimate that if slash-and-char agriculture replaced slash-and-burn practices, and if agricultural and forestry wastes were used for biochar production, it would be possible to drawdown CO2 concentrations by approximately 8 ppm or more within half a century, or 62.5 Gt CO2.

According to Sohi et al. (61), the global potential for annual sequestration of CO2 may be ‘‘at the billion-ton scale’’ within 30 years, although they note that the published evidence is largely from small-scale studies and cannot be generalized to all locations and types of biochar. Under an aggressive scenario, where all projected demand for renewable biomass fuel is met through pyrolysis, Lehmann et al. (62) estimate that biochar may be able to sequester 5.5–9.5 Gt C per year, or 20–35 Gt CO2, per year by 2100. Lenton and Vaughan (67) suggest that the capture of atmospheric CO2 by plants to provide bio-energy followed by carbon capture and storage, combined with afforestation and biochar production, may have the potential to remove 100 ppm of CO2 from the atmosphere under the most optimistic scenarios and reduce radiative forcing by 1.3 Wm2. However, this may conflict with food production and ecosystem protection (67).

Biosequestration through biochar production may be able to be deployed rapidly and relatively cheaply on a decadal time scale (68) using both regulatory and market-based approaches at national, regional, and global levels. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification has proposed including biochar in the UNFCCC climate negotiations (69). The island countries include biosequestration as a fast-action strategy in the work program proposed in the UNFCCC negotiations (70).

Forests are being discussed in the negotiations for the post-2012 climate treaty (71). Given the size and relative speed of the potential mitigation available from the forestry sector, protecting and expanding forests appears to be an important fast-action climate mitigation strategy for reducing DAI, although the absence of a robust international or regional governance structure makes this challenging.

References 61-71 are:

61. Sohi S, Lopez-Capel E, Krull E, Bol R (2009) Biochar’s roles in soil and climate change: A review of research needs (CSIRO, Clayton, Australia).

62. Lehmann J, Gaunt J, Rondon M (2006) Bio-char sequestration in terrestrial ecosystems — a review. Mitigation Adaptation Strategies Global Change 11:403-427.

63. Scherr SJ, Sthapit S (2009) Farming and Land Use to Cool the Planet, in State of the World 2009: Into a Warming World, ed Starke L (Worldwatch Institute, Washington, DC), pp 30–49.

64. The International Biochar Initiative (2008) Biochar: A soil amendment that combats global warming and improves agricultural sustainability and environmental impacts. Available at http://www.carbon-negative.us/docs/IBI_BiocharWhitePaper.pdf.

65. Flanagan R, Joseph S (2008) Mobilising rural households to store carbon, reduce harmful emissions and improve soil fertility: Introduction of third generation stoves. Available at http://www.unccd.int/publicinfo/poznanclimatetalks/docs/Natural%20Draft%20Stove.pdf.

66. International Biochar Initiative (2008) How much carbon can biochar systems offset – and when? Available at http://www.biochar-international.org/images/final
carbon
wpver2.0.pdf.

67. Lenton TM, Vaughan NE (2009) The radiative forcing potential of different climate geoengineering options. Atmos Chem Phys Disc 9:2559–2608.

68. Caldeira K, et al. (2004) A portfolio of carbon management options, in The Global Carbon Cycle. Integrating Humans, Climate, and the Natural World, eds Field CB, Raupach MR (Island Press, Washington, DC), pp 103–129.

69. UN Convention to Combat Desertification (2008) Submission containing ideas and proposals on Paragraph 1 of the Bali Action Plan (UNFCCC, Bonn, Germany).

70. The Federated States of Micronesia (2009) Decision on a Programme of Work on Opportunities for Rapid Climate Mitigation to Complement Long-Term Climate Mitigation and Stabilization (UNFCCC, Bonn, Germany), FCCC/AWGLCA/2009/MISC. 4 (Pt II).

71. Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice, UNFCCC (2008) Reducing Emissions from Deforestation in Developing Countries: Approaches to Stimulate Action (UNFCCC, Bonn, Germany).

Every private health-insurance policy has page after page of
limits and rationing.  Every for-profit “health” insurance conglomerate
absolutely DOES have what are, operationally, too-often “death
panels” (and panel-specified policies that guarantee bankruptcy for too many of their
policy-holders).

Internal administrative panels composed of cost-control managers,
actuaries and even some non-practicing physicians, unilaterally
decide which treatments will remain unfunded, which pharmaceuticals
will remain unapproved, which pre-existing conditions will be
prohibited from having any coverage at all, which continuing
illnesses will have their coverage denied after their first occurrence,
which claims will be denied based on intentionally-vague fine-print,
etc.

Politicians and advocates who favor redressing these major threats to
life, health and family security, should be emphasizing these
current, profit-driven threats, aggressively pursued by these massive,
all-powerful conglomerates.

Has America become too cowardly to defend its citizens against aggressors?

This is a “war” against illness!  American citizens are far more
threatened by invading bacteria, illness attacks, etc., than by any
threat from terrorists (much less unreliable enemies like “Communist”
bogeymen).

–jim; tech-civlib & open-govt advocate & sometime columnist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Warren

justjim36 on twitter  |  Jim Warren on Facebook