Terra Preta

[helwen]

I've been reading a bit on Terra Preta here and there, over the past week or so. It was a technique of creating charcoal without burning (much) oxygen, the net result being that the majority of the CO2 in the bio material burned is contained within the charcoal. People interested in doing searches on Terra Preta may also wish to try the terms Agri-char and Bio-char. Ancient peoples in the Amazon discovered that creating Terra Preta and turning it into the soil greatly increased the fertility of the soil. Some of these soils still exist today, even though it was created hundreds of years ago.

It is essentially a way to improve soil fertility and a way to sequester carbon at the same time.

There're some discussions in Australia, Canada, and the U.S., from research into how it works to ways to produce it commercially. A couple of articles are here: http://www.energybulletin.net/29782.html

The initial info I found was targeted toward warmer climes than North America, but I'd expect it would be useful stuff most anywhere. Most agricultural soils world-wide are suffering a depletion of nutrients, and in general our food today is not as full of nutrition per bite as it was a hundred years ago. Commercial fertilizers need to be applied regularly, and most of them are petroleum-derived, although I still don't understand that part... Because of the depletion of the soil (quality, biomatter, etc.), the soil is less able to retain nutrients from year to year.

I don't know much about charcoal, to be able to tell if it is made by burning with or without oxygen, but I'd love to be able to try using some of the right stuff to improve local gardens, not just the big combine farms in the Midwest.

EDIT: Methane (among a few other things) is produced during the charcoal-making. I read somewhere that it's possible to capture methane (possibly for use as a fuel elsewhere?). Important since methane's also a greenhouse gas, aside from being just plain nasty stuff.

Talking with fitzw, we figured you could use most any charcoal for improving your soil, but briquettes often have stuff added to them (like lime, so that when the briquette turns white you know it's ready to cook). Lump wood charcoal seems to be safer that way. But I'm wondering how easy it would be to break it up into small pieces, for use in a garden? Hm...

Comments

[ellid.livejournal.com]

How fascinating! And I can well imagine that it would be great fertilizer, since charcoal in the old days was often made from wood....

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Yup! And still is. Although the briquette type often has other stuff added to it. But the lump type usually doesn't. I looked it up today after posting the original post, and there are a number of companies that pride themselves on their lump charcoal being 100% natural.