Bhaskar Reddy

1. GEO BIOCHAR URINAL - PVC and 2. GEO BIOCHAR URINAL - CLAY

Biochar / charcoal can be used for tapping the Nitrogen and other useful elements. Simple urinals are designed http://e-biocharurinals.blogspot.com/ for tapping the nitrogen and other useful elements for using as a soil amending material for improving the quality of the soils, increasing crop production, addressing the global warming by reducing the NOx emissions, avoiding artificial fertilizers, keeping the toilets clean and odor free, etc.

Two sets of prototype Urinals - PVC urinal and Clay pot urinal are designed and being used by GEO.

The production of fertilizers require lots of energy, in many countries Natural gas is used for producing urea in large quantities. This demand is ever growing and we dont have enough energy to meet the demands. The complex fertilizers are also contributing to alkalinity of the soils.

From the below information we can see that there is a great potential to tap nitrogen from Urine, as biochar has an affinity to tap nitrogen, using charcoal for tapping the Nitrogen and other elements is a great opportunity to find solutions for many problems. Urine is a great source of Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium

For more details please see this blog: http://e-biocharurinals.blogspot.com/

Also see the following links: http://e-opentoilets.blogspot.com/ 

http://e-terrapretarooftopexp.blogspot.com/

Munda tribals living in parts of Orissa, Jharkhand and West Bengal states, in India, use biochar for increasing the crop production. They mix charcoal with farm yard manure (pellets of small ruminants / cattle dung) and add to the red lateritic soils which are other wise less fertile. They cultivate vegetables and green salad in the well fenced plots of about 1 acre in size. The biochar is mostly a byproduct from the biomass cook stoves in use (most often three stone stoves / simple clay earth stoves). They have access to wood from the jungles, which is used as fuel.

For more details see the photos
http://picasaweb.google.com/saibhaskar.geo/TP_Sign_Keonjhor_Orissa#
http://picasaweb.google.com/saibhaskar.geo/TP_Sign_Keonjhor_Orissa?feat=...

and a small video film.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5144451319506748375
Latitude: 21.9722721074 Longitude : 85.2820737194

For more pictures see http://e-terrapreta.blogspot.com/

Regarding impact of Pottery shards in the soil there were several questions. I had been searching for pottery shards in the agricultural fields and most often and I got to see some pottery shards in the field. Where ever agriculture was the main livelihood, high densities of populations existence, civilization at the helm and space was a constraint, innovations were adopted by humans, and such practices are sustainable even now.
For more photographs and relevant links see
http://e-potteryshardssoil.blogspot.com/

The charcoal and pottery shards are the two most common by-products of human habitats. At least some charcoal / biochar along with ash was contributed by the people living in habitations in the past (see table in the above link). The availability of the quantity of such by-product, ingenious use, management and development are the aspects still to be discovered. If charcoal / pottery shards did not occur in certain areas in spite of human settlements existence, than there must be some reason yet to be discovered. But both charcoal and pottery existence as a result of human activities was beyond history, so there is no reason why these things are not seen.

The fired pottery made up of clay is most popular. Still the poor people in rural villages in parts of India cook in the clay pots. The pots used for drinking water collection is most common, even today millions of pots are produced and used all over India every year, the usage would be more especially during summers. The evaporation of the water from the fine pores of the pot cool the water inside the pot. The temperature would be at least 5 deg centigrade less than the surrounding air temp. The cooling effects would be very high under less relative humidity conditions. The roofs made up of clay tiles also provide cool shelter, and very much useful in the tropics where temperatures are very high during summers. For majority of the main festivals pots or pottery items are used. From Birth to death, for all important occasions pottery items are used.

Terra Preta and Ants - Rooftop Experiments
Dr. Sai Bhaskar Reddy, India, December 13, 2007

Dear All,
After the successful field trials in Alkaline soils http://e-alkalinesoilsterrapreta.blogspot.com/ , I have just started second season TP experiments on a small scale on our Roof top in small pots
http://e-terrapretarooftopexp.blogspot.com/. The charcoal is exclusively from use of Magh-1 woodgas or smoke burner stove
http://e-smokeburnerstove.blogspot.com/ designed by me. I would like to share some of my immediate observations.

One day after establishing pots and the seed with soil and charcoal and only soil. I have sowed brinjal seeds in the 6 with charcoal + soil and 6 only soil. To my surprise I saw that in the three control pots the seeds were eaten away by small red ants. The six pots with a mix of about 30% charcoal were untouched by ants. In TP practice the chances of germination of the seed with out any loss to creatures like ants is minimized. I thought this is the first direct benefit of using charcoal. On day two I saw that all the pots without charcoal are with small red ants. There is not a single ant in the pot with charcoal addition.

Although I love ants, to avoid ants eating away the seeds sown, we could always add some charcoal along with the seeds. Second important application is that in the Vermicompost pits some ants eat away the earthworms to avoid such problem and for value addition to the compost to create a habitat for microbes, we could as well add charcoal.

From web I learnt that those you want to avoid toxic chemicals are using charcoal and diatomous earth as a repellant for ants. For photographs please see the blog below.
http://e-terrapretarooftopexp.blogspot.com/

I would like to know from your experiences what could be the other impacts in using Charcoal to the living things existing in soil.

Dr. N. Sai Bhaskar Reddy

The fines of rice hull ash mixed in with stored seeds are very effective in controlling weevils. (Rice hulls have a very high silica content.) The sharp silica structures in the ash scratch the cutinous exoskelton of the first insects to emerge, leaving them to dessicate before they can breed and lay more eggs. (I was taught this in a weekend course by the Tropical Products Insitute, U.K.)

DE (diatomaceous earth) will do the same because of its silica edges, and is also used for pest control in storing grain. It is also recommended to add DE to compost for the same reason: it is not injurious to beneficials in the process like the digestive tract of worms, but will control certain pests that like to colonize compost
piles.

Could it be that the charcoal has similar cystalline structures which keeps the insects away...in fear of being scratched to death...?

Gerald Van Koeverden vnkvrdn at yahoo.ca

According to a old research study, the effect of charcoal fines on insects might have nothing to do with it as an abrasive or 'scratchy'medium. This article shows that certain dusts actually absorb the lipoid layer from the exoskelton of bees without any apparent abrasion, resulting in the dehydration of the insect. The results (Table 1) show that all the dusts effected an increase in the rate of water-loss of the dead bees; that the three most effective dusts were silica gel, Almicide and activated charcoal, the common physical property of these materials being their capacity to act as powerful absorbents; that Bentonite and activated charcoal, both soft materials, were more effective than carborundum, which is hard and highly abrasive. These facts again indicate that abrasion is not an important factor in the action of these dusts in disrupting the waterproofing layers, and suggest furthermore that they may act by adsorbing the lipoid material.
http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/reprint/32/1/95.pdf

Gerrit

Dear Gerrit
Thanx for this interesting paper.

TECHNICAL NOTICE:
Activated charcoal (from gas mask 300 mesh about 50 micron) is very much different than TP. Activated charcoal is an aggressive - powerful absorbent with specific surface area BET 650-1200 m2/g, while TP is mild with specific surface area BET 25-100 m2/g, As far as I know CALCON Carbon tried to put in activated carbon to soil since long time, but was not successful.

Sincerely yours: Edward Someus (environmental engineer)
Terra Humana Clean Tech Ltd. (ISO 9001/ISO 14001)
3R Environmental Technologies Ltd.
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Alkaline Soils - Terra Preta
N. Sai Bhaskar Reddy, e-alkalinesoilsterrapreta.blogspot.com Update June 26, 2007
Alkaline Soil, India

India: Making Charcoal from Prosopis Juliflora
N. Sai Bhaskar Reddy, India April 30, 2007
Prosopis Juliflora Stacked for Charcoal Making