rani wrote: DUDE! SAME! We are so in sync recently it's spooky!
I'm so in love with bio char I have just begun the journey to starting a biochar production company. I made a burner last weekend from scrap material and did my first burn yesterday...probably while you were posting about biochar! >_< The material was a bit wet, so it didn't burn great, but I'm going to keep trying.
When I get going, I'm going to make a kon tiki burner, as a friend is teaching me how to weld. With that, you can produce 5400 kg of char over 10 burns.
Biochar indeed has many many uses. Here are 55 of them!
http://www.ithaka-journal.net/55-anwendungen-von-pflanzenkohle?lang=en
Also noteworthy, in certain burners, the 'waste' natural gas coming off the burner can be used to heat/power other things!
Next step is to DIY a vortex compost tea brewer. Working out which pump I need (and can actually purchase in Australia) is proving to be complicated... It seems to be a shite one for 30 bucks or an overpowered one for 700 bucks and not much in between.
A bilge pump should do the trick and be readily available just about anywhere. An old computer power supply should have enough current to power it, verify the 12V rail amperage (typically listed on a sticker on any decent power supply) to be sure.
rani wrote: DUDE! SAME! We are so in sync recently it's spooky!
I'm so in love with bio char I have just begun the journey to starting a biochar production company. I made a burner last weekend from scrap material and did my first burn yesterday...probably while you were posting about biochar! >_< The material was a bit wet, so it didn't burn great, but I'm going to keep trying.
When I get going, I'm going to make a kon tiki burner, as a friend is teaching me how to weld. With that, you can produce 5400 kg of char over 10 burns.
Biochar indeed has many many uses. Here are 55 of them!
http://www.ithaka-journal.net/55-anwendungen-von-pflanzenkohle?lang=en
Also noteworthy, in certain burners, the 'waste' natural gas coming off the burner can be used to heat/power other things!
Next step is to DIY a vortex compost tea brewer. Working out which pump I need (and can actually purchase in Australia) is proving to be complicated... It seems to be a shite one for 30 bucks or an overpowered one for 700 bucks and not much in between.
Highly, highly recommend checking the last video I posted from Living Web Farms, even just the first half. Cause the two-barrel system is so incredibly smart, yet low-tech. Like you said, the smoke coming off (noxious gas) is fed back at the bottom and becomes fuel for the coals.
BTW: That's a whole rabbit hole I've only begun to uncover: That what burns is the gas coming off, not the material itself. But maybe for another time.. 🙂
My rhetorical question is, could you also use the heat to convert some of that energy back? Heat-exchanger..
But yeah, I'm definitely looking in this direction as well. It's low-tech enough, inputs waste and outputs (black) gold; serves communities, the environment, and hopefully, the bottom line as well. On my next reading list is this book by Kathleen Draper (she's incredible) called Burn: Using Fire to Cool the Earth (2019)
By the way, that dude in the video above is eating the f-ing coals and he's like "yeah, looks great"! it's hilarious!
Please keep us posted on your kiln, very exciting stuff! Good luck with it Rani!
PS:
Next step is to DIY a vortex compost tea brewer. Working out which pump I need (and can actually purchase in Australia) is proving to be complicated... It seems to be a shite one for 30 bucks or an overpowered one for 700 bucks and not much in between.
Would a solar-powered pump, such as this one, work for your vortexer? Assuming you're having a lot of sun where you're at.
PPS: I finished the video, and wow, getting energy from burning carbon materials. The output gas the guy is demonstrating is just non-smoke, heat coming out of the pipe (because all the gas is burnt in the barrel-top). Spoiler alert: The Q&A at towards the end is ripe for inspiration, with question regarding using waste; biochar production in disaster relief areas (makes the carbon filters to use to sanitize water), and by delivering energy and heat from burning the post-disaster waste; cooking using the heat produced (37min-mark).
Limitless. I personally like the garbage can that produces your cooking stove (or pizza oven) for you to eat.:rolleyes::D
rani wrote: THANK YOU!
Just remember the inrush current to a motor can be twice the normal current. If you are in the 5A range look for a 10A LED power supply and get a mating barrel connector for the pump. The 1000 gph pump is 16.7 gpm, it should probably be sized for a 2-3 min turnover of the reservoir volume for decent circulation and aeration. You can get a switch with male and female barrel to turn it on and off if you like or add a 12V speed control circuit. A speed control circuit will have it's own current draw. When in doubt, oversize your power supply.
enjoypolo wrote:
My rhetorical question is, could you also use the heat to convert some of that energy back? Heat-exchanger..Would a solar-powered pump, such as this one, work for your vortexer? Assuming you're having a lot of sun where you're at.
Some of the bigger commercial systems are also wood gasifiers, and capture the wood gas to use it directly. I think you could draw off the chimney for something... that's like stage 4 or 5 for me, still trying to get the basics down.
I do have a lot of sun down here for half of the year, but I wouldn't be able to do a burn during the summer as we have a fire ban in place for the summer months. It's just too dangerous to risk any sparks or embers. So, that leave me able to burn only during autumn and winter. We are low on sunlight as it's become overcast most days, so I'm limited to power supply as I'm off grid.
in terms of aeration of the compost tea, does the surface area of the container make a difference? My options are an old bath tub or another 44 gal drum. If I have a greater surface area, does it mean I can have a less powerful pump?
rani wrote: in terms of aeration of the compost tea, does the surface area of the container make a difference? My options are an old bath tub or another 44 gal drum. If I have a greater surface area, does it mean I can have a less powerful pump?
What they are doing is using the vortex on the surface of the water to break the surface tension to allow the gas exchange. The fall time of the droplets on the bottom side of the drain will have an effect as will their speed of impact in the reservoir as this will create secondary and tertiary gas exchange mechanisms. The surface area of the container with the hole in the bottom does not really factor into this although the hole size will determine the amount of water pressure requried above the drain before enough flow can be generated to match the pump. It sounds like with what you have you could either use the drum as the reservoir or the tub as the reservoir.
With a 44 gallon drum you would want to cut the top off and find a tapered tub that would fit in the hole, you would want some sort of stand-offs (like 2x4s cut with a slit to fit on the rim of the drum) to let the hose from the bilge pump back up to the tub and for power to be fed to the pump. The total batch size would be in the 20-30 gallon range.
With a bathtub you could double the batch size and use cinder blocks to raise the drum to act as the drain with the pump feeding in the bung-hole, using some copper or brass wire for positioning and having the bilge pump sitting in the tub. If you have the room and an extra tub, not a bad option and probably appropriately sized for the 1000gph pump. Assuming the drum is steel, protect the hole against corrosion with paint or some heated pine pitch to prevent corrosion and associated water degradation.
Since I finished reading the book: “Who Really Feeds The World? The failures of Agribusiness and the promise of AgriEcology” by Vandana Shiva, my mind’s been racing with insights and inspirations.
I wanted to share a few notable points she makes in the book, and hopefully it will inspire some to read it as well.
The second book I’ve read from her, after Biopiracy (2016), which is about the insanity of seed patenting by the Big Agribusinesses with the goal of limiting the sowing & sharing of seeds by farmers, to basically totally enslave humans, and the Earth, into in debt-based system.
However, it was in Albert Bates book, the Biochar Solution (2010), which had the foreword by V. Shiva, and she was praising the benefits of biochar, but also warning of the fallacy of thinking biochar alone will solve all the problems.
From there, I wanted to take a step back to get grounded to see the bigger picture.
In Who Really Feeds The World? I wanted to know more about what she calls Agroecology, an age old tradition of farming, and now re-emerging paradigm of agriculture focused on biodiversity of crops, and a real symbiosis of the alchemical elements: earth, fire, water, air and space (aether). I was sold.
Although 2/3 of the book is focusing on the problems and consequences of the industrial monoculture paradigm, there still were insights on agroecology itself.
So here are some notes from the boom:
The Law of Exploitation and Law of Domination as she calls it:
Describes the current industial-scale; corporate-owned paradigm based on:
- Monocultures of crops
- Food as a commodity (not as food!) traded by Wall St; exploitative and undermining sovereignty of countries (basically weaponized).
- Chemical-intensive external inputs, such as fertilizer (by product of weapons industry; MIC) and GMOs unable to reproduce seeds for next season; forced to buy every time (aka terminator seeds).
- Measured in yield per acre and ignoring inputs of resources required.
- Capital-intensive; artificially sustained through state subsidies that benefit only agribusinesses (not farmers).
- Global food system: food is grown in one country, shipped to another. Accumulating unsustainable food mileages;
Shifting into the paradigm of what she calls, The Law of Return:
- Based on biodiversity of crops
- Health per acre; Nutrition per acre as better measurement
- Ecological agriculture has no need for external inputs, for everything is repurposed/re-used, closing waste cycles (low-capital costs).
- Pests control is based on balancing crop diversity, as well as animals.
- Locally produced food by small-scale farmer communities.
- Based on cooperation and interconnectedness of Life with the Cosmos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbA3FwxiZ88
Ironically, she makes the case that this “new” paradigm, is in fact an old one, the way farming was practiced for millennia across the World.
A well-known example of this is called companion planting, the famous Three Sisters, aka Milpa agriculture from MesoAmerican traditions consists of planting Beans, Corn & Squash together. According to Shiva, this self-sustaining model complement each other:
Maize (corn) is a nutritious staple food in the region, “but lacks amino-acids lysine and tryptophan which the body needs to make proteins and niacin... Beans have both lysine and tryptophan (and they’re nitrogen-fixing crops, taking the N out of the air, and into the soil) Squash provides an array of Vitamins” (p.52)
Another way to look at it: Corn grows tall, providing structure for beans to climb on, beans that are nitrogen-fixing; and squash covers the soil from UV and avoid weeds from growing. Symbiosis.
This is not only nutritionally genius, but it’s also self-sustaining, no-input method. In fact, whole cultures in Americas were/are centred on Maize and Milpa tradition.
The biggest shock while reading this book, is really learning how monocultures turned food into a commodity to be exchanged on stock markets. According to her, only about 10% of wheat harvested becomes food. The rest is used as biofuels or fodder for industrial farms, making a cascading profit model for big agri-oligarchs. Not to mention, they can/are artifically manipulating food prices, making it very volatile and tied down to the financial system. In other words, it's destined to fail.
PS: The five largest corporate seed giants are: Monsanto (now Bayer), Syngenta, DuPont, Bayer, and DOW.
Five controlling grain supply: Cargill, ADM (Archer Daniels Midland), Bunge, Glencore International and Louis Dreyfus.
Five processing giants: PepsiCo, JBS, Tyson Foods, Danone and Nestle.
Five Retail giants: Walmart, Carrefour, Metro Group, Aeon and Tesco. (p.86)
From farm to table, these are the ones pocketing all the benefits.
Another thing they do, through the passing of free-trade laws (NAFTA; EU) is they flood the market with artificially cheapened-through-subsidies junk, GMO wheat at cheap prices, competing against locally produced wheat high with its market price. So local farmers, unable to compete soon are put out of work, chop down their trees with the only option being to grow not only the crops they’re told (aka cash crops), but also accommodate all the external burden that comes with it.
And this is crucial. Because farmers aren’t able to pay for all this, they get trapped into a debt-based system with interests that aren’t meant to be paid back.
And when farmers lose their lands to banks, that’s when they resort to drinking pesticides to end their lives. And the numbers are shocking: in fifteen years, more than 284,000 farmers have taken their own lives (that's 51 deaths per day, in India alone).
Another wtf moment, is that while more than 1Bn people are hungry and/or malnourished, half of them are food-growers, and most of them are women and girls. The author points out how industrial, mechanized agriculture not only pollutes the environment, it makes human-input replacable, and thus contributes to increasing rapes and human trafficking globally. That was a hard one to think about.
But as always, it's all connected.
This is genocide on a global-scale, systemically enforced by bureaucrats in suits in board rooms.
Unfortunately, we don’t hear about it too much. Not to mention, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO; part of the UN) assessed that over 1/3 of all the food made is wasted.
In fact I’ve come to think that the Food Industry conspiracy is without a doubt, the Biggest conspiracy there ever was.
Shiva talks of how the Monocultures of Land leads to Monocultures of Mind; in the same way, what they are doing to seeds, they will ultimately do to people.
But the inspiring parts are the Satyagraha movements (meaning Force of Truth), like the seed satyagraha that are emerging out of this crisis. These are akin to food politics, by boycotting the purchase/use of gmo-foods. It was Ghandi that sparked this concept, first by boycotting salt sold by the British Empire, and later even the yarn which was grown in India, exported to Britain, and sold back to Indians.
While the Food Conspiracy may be the biggest, most fundamental one, it’s also the one where we have the most say in it.
What you eat with your dollars, literally, makes an impact to the community and the environment for either the big corps or farmers. Another myth addressed is the myth of obesity caused by overeating, when really its about poor, weaponized nutrition especially junk food which feeds the poor class.
We live in a time where we don’t even think of seasonal foods anymore, and the actual costs of that food, in terms of ecological footprint. It’s the same thing when people buy a cheap $12 sweater at H&M thinking its cool and throw it away after single use. It might as well be dyed with Bangladeshi blood. But I digress.
Point is, we’re all guilty of this on some level. I’m guilty of enjoy having a junk burger occasionally, but every small step we take towards supporting locally grown food is a step forward.
One step back, two steps forward. When millions start doing this, thats how battles are won.
Highly recommend this book, even if you have to download it. The future is actually bright, and it’s an exciting opportunity to combine all the practices, from vortexing water, to mycelium in the soil grown from waste, biochar, biodiversity, composting, biogas, you name it.
Hope this isn’t too incoherent as I’m typing all this on a damn phone :p
PS: For more resources, I recommend people to check out Navdanya (Nine Seeds) an organization founded by Vandana Shiva for the purpose of seed banking, and spreading knowledge of agroecology.
Another similar book I've been wanting to read is called One Straw Revolution: Philosophy and Work of Masanobu Fukuoka (actually this one). It's all about organic, no-till, no external input farming. Been seeing it mentioned in quite a few places.
shamangineer wrote: What they are doing is using the vortex on the surface of the water to break the surface tension to allow the gas exchange. The fall time of the droplets on the bottom side of the drain will have an effect as will their speed of impact in the reservoir as this will create secondary and tertiary gas exchange mechanisms. The surface area of the container with the hole in the bottom does not really factor into this although the hole size will determine the amount of water pressure requried above the drain before enough flow can be generated to match the pump.
Thanks, that is a great explanation. I think that the drop might have an impact on the design as I think they said you don't really want any splash occuring (and when you are brewing microbes, I guess that makes sense). hte only reason that I thought the tub might be good is that I was chatting with a fish keeping friend, and he said that the greater surface area would help aeration while the pump is off. Since you have to brew for at least 24 hours, I guess the pump runs only part time.
I'm hoping to gravity feed the system so the rain water flows into the compost brewer, then the brew can be drained into the biochar kiln. It's going to take a bit of time to set up, but I'll try and get some photos of the process. Any input is appreciated!
rani wrote: Thanks, that is a great explanation. I think that the drop might have an impact on the design as I think they said you don't really want any splash occuring (and when you are brewing microbes, I guess that makes sense). hte only reason that I thought the tub might be good is that I was chatting with a fish keeping friend, and he said that the greater surface area would help aeration while the pump is off. Since you have to brew for at least 24 hours, I guess the pump runs only part time.
I'm hoping to gravity feed the system so the rain water flows into the compost brewer, then the brew can be drained into the biochar kiln. It's going to take a bit of time to set up, but I'll try and get some photos of the process. Any input is appreciated!
If it's like brewing, keeping out contamination trumps air exchange. I would hook the pump power supply up to one of those analog pull-tab relay timers to run it on and off over the 24hrs.
Yeah, it would drain my batteries to run it 24/7.
And I missing something, or does the bilge pump just pump straight up into the vortexing chamber? They didn't open up the brewer to show inside, so I'm going a bit blind here. I am hoping that, yes, it is that simple : )
rani wrote: Yeah, it would drain my batteries to run it 24/7.
And I missing something, or does the bilge pump just pump straight up into the vortexing chamber? They didn't open up the brewer to show inside, so I'm going a bit blind here. I am hoping that, yes, it is that simple : )
Yes, it's like draining a bathtub with the shower on enough to keep the level of the water from lowering.
Very delighted that WaPo has published an article about Black Soldier Flies (BSF) farms and their multiple, cascading benefits for dealing with food waste, as well as being a rich source of proteins for humans and/or animals.
In my last year at uni few years ago, I had the privilege of spending some time researching the benefits of entomophagy (eating insects) in the face of the food insecurity crisis. Actually, it was at that time that I had first heard of the circular economy.
There are slowly, but surely, many pioneering companies getting involved in this field, including one in my area called Enterra Feeds, which was the first BSF farm in North America to get federal approval for producing animal feeds.
These buggers grow on wasted kitchen scraps from the green bin sourced from restaurants and food warehouses, mature in a matter of weeks from eggs to adult, live for only a few weeks, and are packed in essential nutrients like minerals, vitamins, proteins, fatty oils.
It was also then that I had learned about the insanity of fish farms, many of them fed a diet of smaller fishes (tilapia for instance), contributing not only to high expenses, but also to depopulation/overfishing problem in the oceans. Instead, BSF larvaes make for great, natural, feeds.
Even their poop, called frass, makes for great fertilizer for soil (or compost). Their oils can even be used for the cosmetics industry, to mention one amongst several applications.
I've had them spring up naturally in my balcony compost pile, and like most, I was disgusted by their sight at first, but once you discover their magic, it's hard not to be enchanted by them.
They are voracious eaters for sure, not to mention, they seem to only like rotting roots or food scraps, leaving my plant:rolleyes::D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M6u9ZX5ecE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zOYokNw9fA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S54CFzB5CO4
I was taking some notes from this presentation Gunter Pauli did in 2016 at Cambridge, and came away with lots of valuable insights.
At around the 26min-mark, GP talks about a tea farm in Kaziringa, India which was able to increase its production by using pepper vines to cover/shade the soil and increase carbon content up to 30%. And because the amount of hardwoods cut from pruning tea bushes (for mushies) exceeds the weight of tea leaves harvested, they were able to get cash-flow not just from tea, but also from pepper and mushrooms production on the side.
Definitely gonna play around with vines to experiment with this, it's quite genius! Lately, I’ve been educating myself on cover crops, like clover.
It then dawned on me that this was precisely why my small garden wasn't Growing as I expected: although I have little bit of green mulch, the bare soil was being dried up by the Sun, and microbes die and roots can't grow properly.
Another one that merits to be repeated is the idea of 3D Sea Farming (51'min mark). Which involves growing kelp vertically, on buoys floating in the sea with different varieties including mussels, oysters & clams, scallop, etc.
The genius in this is that it's vertical (hence 3D) so you don't need that large of an area. It led me to several resources, such as Bren Smith and the Thimble Island Ocean Farm doing just this, and also mentoring others to start their own. It's like having a regenerative sea-garden, incredible!
More info here as well
https://www.greenwave.org/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GchLfXTgII
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi97si_Wueg
Last but not least, as I was searching for some of the notes/resources of GP's talk, I stumbled upon a project that involves giving away free baby diapers and then collecting them back and use them for making terra preta for soil enhancement. Brilliant!
Although I'm not sure yet, what materials are used in the compostable diapers. Cotton would certainly be a waste of resources.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ivAhhqMODU
Proof-of-concept in Berlin, Germany with Dycle, with Ayumi Matsuzaka (she’s the artist who did the terra preta projects cited in the previous post)
https://dycle.org/en
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4x5a8w/this-startup-wants-to-turn-diaper-waste-into-fruit-trees
I worked briefly last year for an organic grocery delivery company, their idea was good, but poor leadership and not ambitious really (profit-driven like many others). But I always thought we should not only deliver food, but also take back the waste free of charge and use it for mushies, or compost at least. This idea is along the same lines, very exciting!
https://vimeo.com/325529150
https://www.bfi.org/dymaxion-forum/2019/07/invisible-revolution
Wanted to share this powerful presentation introducing some of the work done by Buckminster Fuller, and based on his seminal book, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, in the context of creating a new world, based on his work in synergetics (science of co-operation).
I am always amazed to discover more on Buckminster Fuller, someone I have unfortunately never delved deep in the rabbit hole (yet), but who is undeniably a maverick on par with the greatests.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boJO2mMZ3to
Speaking of architecture, Fuller's Geodesic domes are one of my favourite structures to experience.
It's also my go-to template for designing any structure efficiently (a garden or building).
Apparently, it's the only structure that gets stronger as it gets bigger, isn't that incredible, and a testament to the virtue of his philosophy of cooperation? It's also super versatile, like this Geodesic Dome Kit manufactured by Hubs. I'm thinking Bamboo to make it light, yet strong and flexible.
Function and Form flowing straight from Heaven's blueprints. but I digress.
The presentation by McConville is just the drop of water to introduce the ocean that Fuller was. Here is a guy who apparently made the car of my dreams (or close), three-wheeled, egg-shaped car called the Dymaxion Car and a little unstable apparently, but quite fuel efficient (vortex!)
Here in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1yxFDvqALI
I could go on-and-on about this guy's genius work. One of my favourite is his Dymaxion map of the Earth. Unlike the common Mercator map which distorts many of the landscape (making Greeland look as large as Australia for instance), the Dyamxion is based on triangles that not only give an accurate projection of the globe, but also perhaps (and i'm going on a limb) give us clues to the Ley Lines systems of the Earth (an icosahedron (twenty-faces).
I saw those once at the SF MOMA Shop being sold, or you could print them as well I would guess. Looks neat!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBbyBtJJoiU
Last but not least, the BFI (Buckminster Fuller Institute) is an incredible resource pertaining to his work, but also to various community projects aligning with his philosophies, including things like the Fuller Challenge, an annual public design contest to solve challenges in many areas, like how to build sustainable toilets, or buildings, etc. Fuller is someone that should be talked about more, and maybe deserves a THC episode of his own someday.
Here in a CBC(Lifting the Curtain, Vancouver, 1975) interview with the man. Love his views on love/gravity and holo-fractal/russelian like views:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDY1Mak2i_o
An excellent video on underground houses:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B6xR3T37gI
