BIOCHAR

 

 

PRESS RELEASE 12-08

 

It is with great delight I can announce that we have received
significant funding towards our small-scale/village biochar kiln
project.

Many thanks to the clear-sighted folks at APE-UK, Artists for Planet
Earth, http://www.apeuk.org/funding.html who recognise a winning idea
when they see it. From sales of world music CDs, with tracks donated
by musicians, they have selected our project from many hundreds of
applications, and awarded us £5,000. As all rates will continue
varying wildly, I will not convert this to A$ or $US, etc, rather
leave that up to you.

The grant is for: Project 540 - Low-cost Low-emission Biochar Kiln for
small farms.
It is awarded to the village-scale biochar work group, who are
volunteers at The Rainforest Information Centre, Lismore, NSW,
Australia. http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/projects/biochar.htm The
project overseer is RIC founder John Seed, and the research, design
and production team co-ordinator is Geoff Moxham, BSc Industrial Arts,
Technology, UNSW. Other participants currently include research
physicist ex-Harvard and Smithsonian, Dr. Paul Taylor (UNSW), Greg
Hall, Patrick Anderson and blacksmith Adam Jung.

The project is to run for 8 months, and will produce Public Domain /
Creative Commons working designs, and support material, including a
low cost biochar kiln wiki in 2009. Contemporaneously it will
construct, and extensively test and refine at least one full-size
~1m^3 prototype best-practice kiln, including monitoring and control
systems. The constraints will be construction at the village-tech
level of skills, in light steel, firebrick and concrete.

It is proposed that we economize by using second hand and donated
materials, and voluntary labour. We have been given the enthusiastic
support of one of the first intentional communities, and the use of
land for a kiln site, farmland adjacent to the site, and farm
machinery. This way the grant money can be used to maximise the
quality of kiln materials, buy the local test gear, and pay for
organic and other test and certification costs that we cannot cover
from our local community.
A connection exists already to the Wollongbar Department of Primary
Industries Biochar research facility, and Lukas Van Swieten has
offered the use of their 'pyrograms' for establishing and cataloguing
char signatures.

The resulting kiln will then be an ongoing test site, open for the
community to access and copy. It is proposed that as far as possible,
all work will be rewarded outside the failing world economies. We will
use the local LETS, and their connection to the international CES, if
necessary. http://communityexchange.ning.com/notes/index/show?noteKey=What_is_the_CES%3F
In addition we will use the process of "payment in kind", direct
barter, and the use of the local LETS folding currency notes.
http://www.bmt-lets.com/papercurrency.htm

This will conveniently mimic both less developed countries' current
conditions, and the near certainty of collapse during the "long
emergency", that develops as the oil economies attempt to address
climate chaos, change the entire vehicle fleet, use less energy,
antidote the poisonous depression, shore up business-as-usual, and all
without any more easy oil, and with decaying oil infrastructure.

The Project 540 vehicle fleet includes a "fry-brid" 100% chip-oil
powered tow-car, which has already been used to collect and transport
stainless steel pyrolysis vessels, and transport displays. Not a
solution, just a stop-gap alternative for now.

As a secondary aim the project will inevitably look at the uses of the
waste process heat. Primarily this will be for drying feed-stock. Some
suggestions for community uses are for drying clothes in the wet
season, hot water for laundry, hot-tub and sauna.
Time allowing, there is the possibility of extending the kiln design
to be a "breeder kiln", by co-firing green kiln bricks, saggars and
furniture. Using local clay, this would allow self-replication and
repair indefinitely, and provide shards or even terracotta night-soil
vessels for terrapreta experiments.
Details of the design elements that will constrain the project can be
read as a 4500 word outline. This is available online at
http://www.bodgershovel.com/Charcoal_Kiln.html or downloaded at
http://www.bodgershovel.com/downloads/Charcoal_Kiln.doc

Kidest regards
Geoff Moxham