Comments by "Me Here" (@mehere8038) on "How Fast-Growing Weeds Become Charcoal And Eco-Bricks | Insider Business" video.

This is awesome! I love it when 2 problems can be solved at once & my birds love eating placemats made out of water hyacinth. I never realised the source of them, I just buy them from Kmart regularly cause the birds love them, now I'm even happier to be buying them, wish they advertised on the product what it's source is to get even more sales
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@jannatunzaman3104 lorikeets :) 2 rescues that sat in 2 separate cages with nothing to do for a decade, so don't really know how to shred/chew for fun, so they need soft stuff for getting them to actually attempt to chew & even then, they often refuse, but for some reason the water hyacinth really appeals to them. That & mahogany pods (which cost much more). The placemats are a nice texture for the cage bottom too, only downside is the cotton tying them together that I have to check at least daily & cut away any exposed loops so they can't tangle themselves in it. I've got about 10 placemats that I rotate for cleaning & then dispose of once they're largely gone & buy more to replace :)
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@WaterspoutsOfTheDeep might stay fertile for hundreds of years, but how many years does it take before it becomes fertile? biochar holds fertiliser, which is great long term, but in the short term, it locks up the fertiliser & makes it unavailable to the plants, reducing soil fertility - and it does it SIGNIFICANTLY if large amounts of bio-char are added in one go! Very negative consequences on crop growth for a number of years after initial addition when used at levels too high, which is what you are suggesting they do & they're not really getting rid of the invasive plant properly, not getting all the roots. Long term maybe, but certainly not enough that they can just use the land for crops again after initial removal, regardless of what they do with the charcoal!
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@fahqfatgurls8479 I'm in Australia & yes, here we have Kmart, Target & Big W, no Walmart, it went bust decades ago. I think Kmart is our version of Walmart now, it's the one of the 3 that sell the most cheap stuff. I heard Kmart went bust in the US recently, I didn't realise until then. Not sure if it's the same Kmart here that you had there or not
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carbon retains 70 times it's weight in water, so it can still be used for that as charcoal. I'm not sure if this stuff would work as mulch or not. I've grown rice in a bucket at my home, just to see how the process works, the rice straw is useless as mulch, as it repels the water, all these water growing plants likely do similar
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Denise Hill monoculture is never the solution to anything
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@cchavezjr7 to make charcoal, the organic matter is put into a container that allows the wood gasses to escape, but doesn't allow oxygen in, which means the wood gasses & water leave the organic matter, but all it's carbon content is left behind as charcoal (which is 100% carbon). It is normal to harvest the wood gasses that leave the organic matter & use it to fuel the charcoal making, but by doing so, the gasses burn cleanly, not mix with carbon as they burn, which means no smog is created. When the charcoal is burnt later, again it burns cleanly, because of the wood gasses having been removed, so double burning in this example is very beneficial
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very easy to research for yourself & see the benefits of charcoal v wood, I mean you can even do a practical experiment at home yourself if you don't trust the research, cook your dinner on a fire made of wood, then cook your dinner on a fire made of charcoal bricks & see which one makes your hair & clothes smell more of smoke. The wood gasses are removed in the charcoal burning process, so when the gas free charcoal is burnt later, it has less harmful emissions. Same total emissions, but far less getting into people's lungs & into the air around houses & populations
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@alexaecho4273 which of my comments do you think is ignorant & why exactly? What have I said that requires scientists not citizens?
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@cchavezjr7 no different to burning gas is it! This is just the wood gasses, before they've had a chance to become the coal gas we use extensively in the world today. Seperating the 2 allows clean burning of both & so reduces lung damage & also pollution in the air. Just compare using a mix of butane & charcoal to cook on your camping trip with using wood from the forest, which one leaves you smelling of smoke & other pollution huh? This is the same thing, they just seperate the 2 & use the gas to create the charcoal & charcoal to cook in people's homes later & so what if they need to burn a little of the raw materials straight to start off the whole process, it's still far more efficient than using straight wood, especially when you consider the transport costs for charcoal v the wood & more importantly is the impact on the lungs of those using the charcoal in their homes, compared to using wood cooking, without proper ventilation (which is the norm in the parts of the world we're talking about here)
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@cchavezjr7 or instead of running an engine, you run the charcoal making operation with that gas
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@cchavezjr7 lol you're claiming 3/4 to 7/8 of the volume is gas, yet claiming I'm suggesting it's a perpetual motion machine to use that to make the charcoal? Make up your mind!
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@cchavezjr7 I've not done it large scale, only small scale to learn about the process & yes I know there's some water in it, but not the amounts you claim! A simple search tells me firewood's 10-15% water & that would be fairly consistent with the results I got in water vapour coming off mine. When I tried charcoaling sugarcane straight off the plant, there was more water, but even that came off pretty quickly. Simple searching is also telling me the carbon's about 50%. I had a lit flame on the gas coming off mine for the majority of the process. I only did small scale, so didn't try to harvest it to power the operation, but certainly saw lots of videos from people who were doing that when I was looking for info on how to do the process. If you're doing it large scale & frequently, I don't understand why you're not harvesting the gasses to power it, even if you have to supplement with additional fuel. Also important to consider transport costs & the more your points are correct, the more validation there is for charcoal therefore being a better option, cause otherwise there's costs & fuel to transport all that water & weight & unwanted gas to it's destination, where it gets into people's lungs & damages their health. That to me is actually the biggest reason for this, the workload for the people buying it in carrying such heavy stuff, along with the damage to their family's health. I'm more conserned about that than the environment tbh, but also aware that this is viable to sell, due to reduced weight & compact burning substance, therefore it is much more likely the charcoal will be transported & used as fuel, whereas without this process, they will just burn the weeds onsite & have only ash left, while those currently buying this charcoal would then be burning additional timber or local materials, such as cutting down local trees close to their homes, so clearly this is a better option, even if, say 50% of the weeds must be straight out burnt to power the charcoal making, cause that's still 50% that's becoming fuel instead isn't it! It's very easy to look at first world resourse availability & say this is a bad idea, but it's important to look at the real world & what's currently happening & going to happen with different options
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@buykuibra2518 They're not using it themselves though, they're selling it to others for cooking, so you need to give all those people the solar for cooking. I actually did a few of micro-loans some time ago for "ACE stoves" in Africa (Lesotho), what they're doing is selling $100 fuel efficient, solar powered stoves to poor people. The stove still uses traditional fuels, anything from cow patties to charcoal or wood, BUT it has a solar powered fan in it that makes it burn more efficiently, therefore needing significantly less fuel for the same job, plus it's also got a USB port on it connected into that same solar panel & also comes with a USB connection LED light, so in addition to cooking more efficiently, the people buying that stove can also use the LED light in the place of a fire for lighting their little homes & can even charge mobile phones with it, to potentially access the net. There are options like this to help the end users, but just giving them all enough solar power to fully cook with isn't really viable
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@fitrianhidayat yup they would be. Probably lower than professionally made ones we're used to in the west actually, since the process isn't that refined, but yeh it's not going to be more efficient than wood made charcoal, it's just that this charcoal's being made from waste that is going to be burnt anyway, rather than cutting down trees to cook & charcoal is MUCH lighter & more compact per burning hour than wood is, so huge savings in transport cost, both in fuel & also what the people have to carry the last step of the trip to their homes
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no, they're not going to be buying gas & they are going to be burning this plant anyway, so finding a way to transport it to the homes of people buying solid fuel to power their cooking instead of just burning on site is obviously better. Delhi's air pollution comes from burning rice stubble, if they chared it instead of burning it, all that pollution would be removed from the air
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@tomsullivan5663 It's used to power the charcoal creation, they pipe it from where it comes out at the top to back under the container & ignite it there, so the gas heats what's in the container to make it into charcoal. I don't know what's released in the gas burning, but I know when I experimented & made charcoal myself, while the flame was alight, there was no smell, when the flame went out, it stunk! I also used to live near a landfill (about 1km away) & we would know when their gas flame went out, cause it stunk! Garbage smell over the whole neighbourhood! One neighbour even had the misfortune of having an open house when it was out, needless to say, they didn't get any buyers. Was zero smell normally though & that site is now a super impressive sports complex & the methane gas from the landfill underneath is actually harnessed & provides gas for the facility, so I'm just all round not convinced there's serious issues with the contaminates in this process & even if there are, at least it's being done away from people's homes, not inside them as happens when using the solid wood/plants as fuel
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awesome! & I know that's the case with water hyacinth, cause I've been buying placemats made of that from Kmart in Australia, without knowing the source, but now I know the source, I'm even happier with my purchase
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@WaterspoutsOfTheDeep They ARE turning it into bio-char, but then they are selling the majority of it to fund their living. No doubt some of it ends up back in the soil too, but no point attempting to do that if they don't have the money to live & must then cut down everything that grows in that soil to survive. This is much more effective, cause it provides them with money. If you want bio-char into the ground, go to your local supermarket & buy some charcoal & then go out & bury it under trees around your home
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A R not if it's not properly charged it's not!
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@Ass_of_Amalek that's where the techniques in the video are so good, cause no limits on growing C4 grass in that environment & grass can become a fire fuel just as easily as trees, just needs the charcoal process to make it viable to transport
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@evilsharkey8954 so? cattails don't grow in arid regions do they, since they grow in water! The C4 grasses that do grow in arid regions can be managed the same way as this though can't they!
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