Friend Veronica, Long time player at IBI (check with Tom) and biochar activist in Ghana, has just been offered the opportunity to demonstrate her organization's viability to the leaders at Global Givi

Only too true. Trainings are necessarily small - 50 to 60 farmers. Small organizations such as Warm Heart might train a few thousand annually in Africa and Asia, but until someone big with money, cred

Wayne, Congratulations on the chicken bedding and feed. What a great use for all that manure. Our tests in Africa and Thailand show really promising results with chickens, cows and goats - better heal

Stephen, Like Paul, I am puzzled by the reference to torrification and wood vinegar. Our neighbors make charcoal in beehive type ovens and distill large quantities of wood vinegar, but the final produ

Wayne, Don't know about you, but finding a windless day where we are is pretty hard, which has discouraging consequences for efficiency! Regards "quenching," Kelpie suggests pouring out the char on th

Wayne, I would not complain about 15%. If I am not mistaken, the theoretical max is not much over 30% and both trench and trough pyrolysis are pretty inefficient. I think that the key thing about Kevi

Thanks, Stephen, For those of you without access to volcanic or any other kind of useful rock dust, you might try the following that has worked well for us at Warm Heart. We work largely with dried co

Hi, Laurent, I am not actually there to direct or suggest and the actual leaders have never suggested using human 'night soil." It is, however, commonly used in Vietnam. There biochar is emptied into

Stephen, In Guatemala right now and seeing a lot of coffee hull composting followed by worms followed by worm juice. Really interesting. Tests show excellent nutritional profile and our tests in Thail

Mike, Thanks for the lead. At Warm Heart, I have been experimenting with using the hot, black water out of the bottom of TLUDs and it works great. Following Kevin's work, we are also recommending the

Tom, Many thanks for highlighting the work of these two remarkable women. Anyone who would like to see photos and videos of their trainers at work or watch farmers' testimonials from the field, please

With all due respect for the great work that Kevin is doing, Paul, pushing "good enough " biochar to the limit, Mercy and Sister work for Warm Heart. M

Paul, I think that this is a very good and important suggestion. One of the kiln's key advantages is its mobility, but it is also a design that can be scaled. In locations where there are large quanti

Paul, Couldn't listen because I was in truck and then out. Slide looked interesting, if dense. Is there a link to follow to listen now? M PS Big celebration today. Team Malawi just surpassed 3,000 sma

A paper presented on the Green Webinar a few months ago suggested that very small "dust" sized particles are actually hydro phobic. M

Bravo, Rick, Thank you so much for this critical observation. I am all for verification, certification and so on. But one size does not fit all. In most uses, biochar is and can be truly basic stuff.

Kim, thank you for making this available to all of us. I would just note that recent research suggests that the Amazonian forests of Brazil have now been degraded to the point that they are actually g

Thank you, Norm. If you are still having trouble getting the full article, just ask and I will send it. Have been a bit shy about publicizing too much. M Michael Shafer www.warmheartworldwide.org www.

Great hope, Tom, despite my having big issues with the "experts" cited. Personally, I have never considered making biochar in a feedstock rich area like a forest to be a costly operation nor have I ev

Dear Geoff, I know nothing whatsoever about metal detectors for anything, but the story about the Romans is fantastic. It starts with my own version of the "law of large numbers" which (with apologies