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Small Farm Biochar Kiln awarded funding
Geoff Moxham, Bodgers Hovel
It is with great delight I can announce that we have received significant funding towards our small-scale/village biochar kiln project.

... The project is to run for 8 months, and will produce Public Domain / Creative Commons working designs, and support material, including a low cost biochar kiln wiki in 2009. Contemporaneously it will construct, and extensively test and refine at least one full-size ~1m^3 prototype best-practice kiln, including monitoring and control systems. The constraints will be construction at the village-tech level of skills, in light steel, firebrick and concrete.

It is proposed that we economize by using second hand and donated materials, and voluntary labour. We have been given the enthusiastic support of one of the first intentional communities, and the use of land for a kiln site, farmland adjacent to the site, and farm machinery. This way the grant money can be used to maximise the quality of kiln materials, buy the local test gear, and pay for organic and other test and certification costs that we cannot cover from our local community.

... The resulting kiln will then be an ongoing test site, open for the community to access and copy. It is proposed that as far as possible, all work will be rewarded outside the failing world economies. We will use the local LETS, and their connection to the international CES, if necessary. In addition we will use the process of “payment in kind”, direct barter, and the use of the local LETS folding currency notes.

This will conveniently mimic both less developed countries’ current conditions, and the near certainty of collapse during the “long emergency”, that develops as the oil economies attempt to address climate chaos, change the entire vehicle fleet, use less energy, antidote the poisonous depression, shore up business-as-usual, and all without any more easy oil, and with decaying oil infrastructure.
(19 December 2008)
Technical details available through the original page.

Wildman forages for food in Central Park (audio)
Samara Freemark, The Environment Report
Everyone needs to eat. But not everyone gets their groceries at the shopping market. Some people find their food. They forage in backyards, forests, even city parks. It's free, some of it tastes pretty good, and as Samara Freemark reports, sometimes it's even legal:
(22 December 2008)

A National Renewable Ammonia Architecture
Neal Rauhauser, The Oil Drum
This white paper describes the current manufacture and uses of ammonia as well as describing a path forward to a fully renewable future for this vital fertilizer ingredient. The primary author and editor is Neal Rauhauser, known on TOD SacredCowTipper, with assistance in its development rendered by Dave Bradley, known as nb41, Bryan Lutter, known as CropDuster, Dr. John Holbrook, and Larry Bruce.
- Nate Hagens (TOD editor)

Ammonia Production Methods Today

It can be argued that ammonia is perhaps the most critical manmade substance to the existence of human society. Without continuing agricultural growth, the world's expanding population faces famine and the concomitant breakdown of civil society. The expansion of population and modern society is based on fertilizer driven agriculture...and modern nitrogen fertilizer is ammonia

... Global Ammonia Production Emissions

Global ammonia production is about 69% natural gas and 29% coal. One petroleum coke system is in operation today and three legacy hydroelectric facilities nearing end of life contribute about 1.5% of the total global production of 131 million tons.

The 90 million tons of ammonia produced annually with natural gas release 180 million tons of carbon dioxide.

... Ammonia In Domestic Agriculture

Fully half of all human protein comes from man made ammonia. Plants require nitrogen to produce protein and ammonia is the only viable source for large scale nitrogen applications.

... The three largest ammonia import sources are all under different stresses and will all fail within at most a decade, cutting the United States off from 88% of current imports. This alone will amount to a reduction in ammonia supplies in the continental United States of about 36%. Domestic natural gas fueled manufacturers face similar issues.

National Ammonia Independence

The United States can and must achieve national ammonia independence by a mix of refurbishing existing plants and construction of new renewable production facilities.

... Renewable Electric Sources

Ammonia can be produced by a completely carbon free process that releases no greenhouse gases. What is needed is renewably generated electricity at a relatively low cost, air and water.
(23 December 2008)