India: Dr Reddy Bio-char on CNN

Coal is metamorphic (antracite) or aged sedimentary (bituminous) rock, and much of the original porosity, retained in biochar, has been collapsed in coal.  Also absent from coal is the short term effect of acid neutralizing potential (ANP). Julie Major has indicated that biochar ANP is important:

Although it is not a fertilizer itself, applying biochar to soil has been shown to improve crop yields and soil fertility, mostly through increasing soil pH and thus nutrient availability.

Porosity, structure, and surface area are assumed by many of us in the "soil reef" school of biochar enthusiasm to be key to longer term biochar function.  Permaculturist Albert Bates, and IBI board member, touches on the nature of that porosity when he writes about the soil reef concept:

One gram of biochar has a surface area of 1000 square meters. The way it accomplishes this is through micropores, the crystalline-like surfaces formed, randomly and chaotically, during pyrolysis. ... In the soil, biochar’s cavities fill up with nutrient foodstocks for microbes, much like a kitchen pantry. The microbes move in, and pretty soon hyphae of fungi appear. The hyphae are a fast road for nutrients and moisture – a trade exchange route to plant and tree roots. Examination of biochar-amended soils a few months after treatment found that vigorous fungal colonization was common.

Not all char is char, as the saying in the biochar community goes. Imperfectly pyrolyzed, the char contains “activated” [clarification: by "activated", Albert clearly means reactive, as in torrified wood, or what we colliers refer to as "brands"] charcoal, that steals oxygen from the soil and releases carbon to fungi, microbes and plant roots and eventually back to the atmosphere, either as carbon dioxide, monoxide or as methane. With more careful pyrolysis, the carbon is locked tight and never leaves the soil. Biochar making, therefore, is not the same as charcoal making, and part of the concern is that if done poorly, the biochar revolution could actually add to our climate crisis.

Done well, the carbon becomes soil structure. The compost in its pantry becomes worm and insect castings, to be taken up by the tertiary decomposers that convert it into plant food. The whole process is supercharged by the fractal geometry, resulting in the observed gains unexplainable by any other means.

Many soil scientists working with biochar are saying basically the same as to porosity.  A smaller contingent of soil scientists, myself included, share Albert's excitement about biochar effects on soil fungi.  However these concepts have not been validated.  The importance to beneficial fungi and the "supercharging" effect of a nutrient filled porous and geometrically complex charcoal "pantry" may well be less influential than we have worked out in these early days of exploring soil charcoal effects. Characteristics shared between charcoal and fine coal may be more important than we know. We await the research.

Hi
Did you ever manage to get a plan/drawing of the Adam Retort? I am trying to build one for our village community in Lusaka, Zambia.

Thanks