@Dogyote, sorry for the slow reply. This is a tricky question. It depends on what sort of interest you have in biochar, to be honest. Are you making it at home? Are you buying it for a garden? Are you interested in commercial production? It is a very fast evolving area of interest and there is a lot of information that seems a bit questionable to me - but maybe just because I am not up-to-date.

NYT is spouting every headline they can imagine to shift votes toward Trump, and not just lately. Their entire editorial focus is to cast confusion on Democrats' prospects. They should be recognized as firmly partisan and no longer serving a journalistic purpose. Unfortunate, but that's the times in which we live.

I'd say no in general, but I hold the reins very loosely . . .

fwiw, this story is also covered here, imho a more credible source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/1/palestinians-demand-international-inquiry-after-mass-grave-found-in-gaza

https://toot.cat/@CadeJohnson/111799964374037323

We are going to need a lot more of this kind of work. I read on permaculture sites about the need to pre-load biochar with nutrients - planting seeded biochar without nutrients could be unproductive. Biochar loading also depends on soil type, how the biochar is made, and how it is applied (tilled in or top-dressed). Size probably matters - big chunks will eventually break apart, but moderate size reduction gives better distribution. Fine dust will not provide the same degree of soil aeration. So, the devil is in the details.

gotta admit, that is a lot safer approach than trying some shit on the real thing

The statistic of low Firefox use is based on accessing US government websites. Could it be that there is significantly LESS government site access by the population of users that prefer Firefox? As a corollary I recently read that game companies observed significantly HIGHER bug reporting from Linux users on Steam, not because there were more Linux-related bugs, but simply because that set of users were more likely to initiate bug reports. Of course Firefox is not Linux and Steam is not the world, but a statistic from a relatively narrow segment of the internet should not be assumed representative of the whole.

Biochar is such an expanding area of investigation, it would be difficult to write a comprehensive book at this point. Of course the root idea of partial-combustion to make soil amendment is well-enough known, but there is much being learned about how to alter the properties of the char by how the pyrolysis is performed. There is much to be learned about how much char to add and how to pretreat the char. Beside burning to make char, there are other ways it can be heated and those affect the type of pyrolysis products that form - molten salt, steam, and subcritical hot water are all gaining prominence. The management and use of the pyrolysis products aside from the char is also a complex topic.

sorry nobody has replied - I'm no help for you from here in Puerto Rico. Are you familiar with the site iNaturalist.org? When we're looking for a species that seems to be missing, we use iNaturalist to check for sightings in the region. You can filter by dates.

I also recently read about "hydrocarbonization" which is another approach for pyrolyzing sewage sludge. Pyrolysis of biomass on a dry basis is often energy-intensive in part because of moisture in the biomass. Nowhere is this more relevant than with sewage sludge, which leaves a wastewater plant at only about 25% solids, typically (though it has a solid appearance like damp clay). If the pyrolysis is performed IN water (which means under pressure if one wants to avoid evaporating the contained water), it can not only still occur, but the water at high temperature and pressure is an active medium for converting some of the biomass into smaller organic molecules.

Upshot is that there is quite a lot of work going on nowadays to be creative with biomass management - that seemed to be of low interest even a decade ago.

In the US, stove burners are rated in the confusing units of "BTUs" which is actually a unit of energy, not power. When they say BTU, they mean BTU/hour. The highest-rated burners on a typical stove are about 10,000 Btu (per hour), but high-end stoves can get up to about 18000 - that is equivalent to about 5000 watts. My single-element induction top is only rated for about 1000 watts. So although it heats and cools rapidly, I suspect it is not up to the demands of wok cooking (unless one wants to cook only very small portions).

not Chinese, but I cook a lot with a wok. I also have a single induction cooktop and surprisingly, the wok has enough iron to work with it while some old cheap conventional cookware did not. However, wok cooking needs to be hot all over the wok and not just in that little point where the wok is close enough to the induction coil.

I have a conventional propane stove which I need to keep, because here in Puerto Rico the power system is quite unreliable (especially during a bad hurricane year). But the conventional stove burners are not really hot enough. With a 1/16 - inch drill bit I could increase one of the burners capacity substantially. I painted the stove knob red so people have some warning when they light that burner! It burns more gas, but wok cooking is really fast, so in the long run it is probably more efficient than lots of other cooking approaches.

I would definitely consider a wok-shaped induction heater. Induction heating is quite remarkable.

Have you tried your hand at biochar? I know composting the chips for mulch is high value in a farm operation, but a few tons of biochar can work like a permanent upgrade - improving the soil permanently with one addition - though ongoing permaculture operation continues. I am about to make a biochar cooker out of two steel barrels - inner fuel chamber and outer draft shell. It would probably be more effective with wood scraps than chips though - some air passages through the fuel.

To test it out for myself, I made a miniature version documented at https://github.com/jcadej/TLUD-biochar-reactor (uses a gallon paint can for the fuel chamber. You could test it small and see how it does with wood chips. When I make my bigger version, I will add it to the github project. My rough idea is to cut one barrel down the side and squeeze it smaller and bolt it so it fits inside the other.

I have heard this, and I can imagine it is true, but have you seen any analysis? There must be a large crew traveling and lots of equipment - transportation is a big user of petroleum in general -- for entertainment. Though they say the entertainment is good.

Swimming pools are normally constructed empty. They were withstanding surrounding soil before they were filled, and concrete strength increases with age (for about 90 days, typically). On the other hand, a sunken structure like a pool that is roofed over, becomes a "confined space". Unlike a typical structure, heavier-than-air gases cannot escape from the pool. Such gases could originate from the drain system or flow from leakage outside the pool area. For examples, leaking propane or various gases from sewer lines in the vicinity. A sunken greenhouse would almost certainly be a building code violation for that reason. If you build it, ventilate it by means both active and passive and do not enter if you can't verify that ventilation is working.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/36/37/42/36374294e5183a96de3e3e6696f4d3ad.jpg

It is not a surprising situation at this point - oil and gas companies already had a large available supply of CO2 from "sweetening" of natural gas. We have to understand the dramatic difference between "capturing" CO2 - meaning capturing from a point source like a stack or process - and "removing" CO2 - meaning removing it from the atmosphere. In normal use, these terms have such similar meanings that it is very easy for nefarious actors to conflate them. It is very easy for regulators to become confused. It is very easy for the oil and gas industry to take advantage of the situation. I think the key solution is education.

The technology to capture CO2 from industrial streams where it is already concentrated, is quite different that removal. Advances in capture technology are only stop-gap and can be better driven by strong enforcement of ever-tighter emission limits than subsidizing of costs.

I think the most likely route to fast pyrolysis will be as an adjunct to power generation with solar power towers in the midst of heliostat mirrors - just speculation.

I only made a small amount of pyrolysis oil - not enough for any further experiments. I recently have read that it can contain quite an array of fairly toxic benzene-family compounds. It could be refined and "cracked" to make a range of products now made with petroleum, but I just washed mine down the drain into my septic tank (where it will probably remain for some centuries).

I have plain ol' Ubuntu LTS and I do not recall a Steam crash in a decade. Playing with Nvidia GPU on AMD Ryzen in recent years.