Seattle Biochar Working Group (SeaChar) (United States)

SeaChar formed in Sept. of 2008 with this mission: to help heal the world, and we wisely amended that by saying we would start here in Seattle, Washington, USA. One shovelful at a time, if need be. With some luck and some hard work we begin with a 5-year, well designed, multi-partner, biochar plot test, this spring. That this project now has a secure home on South Seattle Community College's campus means we have a very public platform from which we can educate the people in our region about biochar technology. This concrete project provides us with a focus and it gives us a clearly defined program for which we can seek funding for.  The organizers at SeaChar.org have identified several areas in which to develop well defined projects. The following are either active or planned:

• Outreach and education: presentations, workshops and demonstrations
• Technology development
• A biochar/energy co-generation demonstration project
• A "stove" program (linked to an international stove development program)
• A performance and built infrastructure sequestration program
• The development of Voluntary Market Carbon Credit projects

So please pass this on. Help us build the garden, design a project, work the computers and phones, work with us in the shop. To learn about our next meeting and other activities, visit our website, or contact Art Donnelly by email or phone 206-612-3018.

Updates:

• February 2010
• August 2009
• July 2009
• March 2009

February 2010 Update:

SeaChar will be working at the South Seattle Community College Carbon Garden to welcome spring--on Saturday the 13th of March starting at 10am we will have a garden chore and stove demo day and at 1pm we will have our first meeting of 2010.

As any of you who have followed our activities this winter know: SeaChar has some exciting biochar related projects on tap for the coming year. The agenda for the meeting will be as follows:

• Forming a  2010 biochar test plot committee (First order of Business: picking the spring crop)
• An update on the Adam-retort building project (scheduled build: April-May)
• An overview of the recently announced SeaChar/Sol Colibri: Estufa Finca... Central America stove project and how you can get involved (see Practitioner Profile article above)

SeaChar will also be tendering a freshly revised SeaChar Mission statement and matching goals and strategic for our discussion and possible approval.

Thanks to the good work of our volunteer Vivian Scott and the far sighted generosity of the curators of Bellevue's Open Satellite Gallery http://www.opensatellite.org, we will also have several hundred, small, wild native strawberry starts to plant at the plot. These are from the recently closed Meiro Kolzumi installation: "The Corner of Sweet and Bitter". This will be our group's first contribution to the Campus Crops Initiative, recently announced by the S&A Campus Sustainability Task Force http://www.southgoesgreen.blogspot.com; fitting support for Seattle's "Year of Urban Agriculture".

The plot is located at the south end (next to the cell-phone tower) of  SSCC's Delridge Campus (6000 16th Ave.SW. Seattle, 98106; http://www.southseattle.edu/campus/map.htm)

August 2009 Update:

Photos courtesy of SeaChar

TLUD Workshop: On Saturday, August 1, Seachar hosted Dr. Paul Anderson (Dr. TLUD) for an all-day workshop in the construction of Top-Lit Up Draft (TLUD) cookstoves.  The stoves can quickly be constructed from commonly available materials, and produce charcoal while providing heat for cooking (or other uses). Paul's TLUD stoves have been tested and shown to produce very low emissions of CO and particulates. The stoves can provide benefits wherever people rely on biomass for cooking. TLUD stoves use a wide variety of small pieces of biomass for fuel. The clean burn greatly improves indoor air quality compared with open burning and many other types of stoves. In addition, the charcoal can be used as biochar to improve soil fertility, sequester carbon, and potentially provide a source of income through carbon credits.

The key to the clean operation and the production of charcoal is the separation of the production of flammable gases and the combustion of those gases. The gases are produced by the heat of the limited flame within the biomass. The flame is constrained by limiting the amount of primary air. The combustion occurs with the introduction of secondary air above the biomass zone.

Read the full workshop synopsis here.

More information about the TLUDs is available at the following sites.
Theory of opertion: http://www.hedon.info/docs/BP53-Anderson-14.pdf
Video and graphic: http://www.thinkingglobalactinglocal.com/the-stovers/a-t-lud-stove-demonstration.html
Construction plans: http://www.bioenergylists.org/files/Construction%20Plans%202009-03-11.pdf
Emissions: http://www.bioenergylists.org/andersontludcopm

To really get a feel for what we did, check out slides from the day's events

July 2009 Update:

The team at SeaChar.org is proud to announce that after much work and planning, the Alterna Energy Biochar and Bailey's Compost treatments are in the ground. This signals the official start of our 5-year USDA supported biochar plot test. We have also begun a limited release of our soon to be available: SeaChar BlackBerry BioChar ("It's the gnarly char.") We have kept up our series of public outreach talks, tabling and demos, with more to come. We have just launched our new website: seachar.org and we hope it will grow into a valuable resource for information sharing and community building. Our Tech. Dept. (Don Hennick) is nearing completion of his solar fired, steam pyrolysis unit. We are hoping to debut his exciting prototype at this month's Seattle Stove Lab. From Thursday July 30th through Saturday August 1st, SeaChar is pleased to be hosting a visit from noted TLUD-Champion designer and biochar researcher: Dr. Paul Anderson. Dr. Anderson will present a talk and a design workshop.

August finds some of the SeaChar organizers heading to Summer Stove Camp at Aprovecho in Oregon, some heading to the North American IBI Conference in Boulder and one, Scott Eaton (our Coordinator of Biochar Development), heading to Nicaragua. Scott will be carrying biochar producing stoves, Spanish language biochar educational materials and a lot of great ideas. He will be hosted by the NGOs Agros International and Sustainable Harvest International, while he presents biochar workshops and stove demonstrations at their village projects on both coasts. The feedback and research Scott accumulates will help lay the groundwork for our planned 2010 Central America Biochar Development Project.

March 2009 Update:

SeaChar announces a test plot ground breaking work party and biochar stove demonstration on Saturday April 4th from 10:00 am until 5:00 pm. This concrete project provides us with a focus and it gives us a clearly defined program for which we can seek funding for. The organizers at SeaChar.org have identified several areas in which to develop well defined projects.