All about Kenaf

Kenaf is a 4,000 year old NEW crop with roots in ancient Africa.
A member of the hibiscus family (Hibiscus cannabinus L), it is related to cotton and okra, and grows well in many parts of the U.S. It offers a way to make paper without cutting trees. Kenaf grows quickly, rising to heights of 12-14 feet in as little as 4 to 5 months. U.S. Department of Agriculture studies show that kenaf yields of 6 to 10 tons of dry fiber per acre per year are generally 3 to 5 times greater than the yield for Southern pine trees, which can take from 7 to 40 years to reach harvestable size.




While the flowering can last 3 to 4 weeks, or more, per plant, each individual flower blooms for only one day. The stalk of the kenaf plant consists of two distinct fiber types.
The outer fiber is called "bast" and comprises roughly 40% of the stalk's dry weight. The refined bast fibers measure 2.6mm and are similar to the best softwood fibers used to make paper.
The whiter, inner fiber is called "core", and comprises 60% of the stalk's dry weight. These refined fibers measure .6mm and are comparable to hardwood tree fibers, which are used in a widening range of paper products.



Upon harvest, the whole kenaf plant is processed in a mechanical fiber separator, similar to a cotton gin. The separation of the two fibers allows for independent processing and provides raw materials for a growing number of products including paper, particle board, animal bedding and bioremediation aids.
 






At the end of the growing season, the kenaf plant flowers. After blooming the flower drops off, leaving a seed pod behind. In almost all parts of the U.S. the seeds can never mature. Because of their African origin they require an additional 60-90 days of frost free conditions to reach the point of germination. This means kenaf cannot run wild across the country like a weed. It also presents some interesting challenges for developers to insure a consistent supply of seed for next year's crop. Much research work is being done in the area of seed development, with leading edge companies like Vision Paper developing innovative and environmentally sound solutions.

Passive Solar Energy

I love these 3 words: Passive solar energy.

Passive and energy mentioned in the same sentence, seemingly contradictory, become a really exciting concept for anyone who wishes to conserve and preserve. It's astounding how far a little thought on design can go and even more astounding how much of this knowhow has been lost or simply ignored in fields like architecture and agriculture during the oil age. It's time we started rediscovering some and implementing some principles again.

Passive solar heating and cooling represents an important strategy for displacing traditional energy sources in buildings. Anyone who has sat by a sunny, south-facing window on a winter day has felt the effects of passive solar energy. Passive solar techniques make use of the steady supply of solar energy by means of building designs that carefully balance their energy requirements with the building's site and window orientation. The term "passive" indicates that no additional mechanical equipment is used, other than the normal building elements. All solar gains are brought in through windows and minimum use is made of pumps or fans to distribute heat or effect cooling.
All passive techniques use building elements such as walls, windows, floors and roofs, in addition to exterior building elements and landscaping, to control heat generated by solar radiation. Solar heating designs collect and store thermal energy from direct sunlight. Passive cooling minimizes the effects of solar radiation through shading or generating air flows with convection ventilation.
Another solar concept is daylighting design, which optimises the use of natural daylight and contributes greatly to energy efficiency. The benefits of using passive solar techniques include simplicity, price and the design elegance of fulfilling one's needs with materials at hand.
Passive solar heating
Passive solar heating of buildings occurs when sunlight passes through a window, hits an object, is absorbed and converted to heat. The most efficient window orientation for heat gain is due south, but any orientation within 30 degrees of due south is acceptable. Once the heat has entered the building, various techniques come into play to keep and distribute it. Even in the Canadian climate, the prevention of overheating in the sun space presents one of the biggest challenges.
To let the sun in, a ratio of roughly eight per cent window to floor area is recommended for south walls. Although this number may seem small, it is important to remember it comes from the floor area, which is much larger than the wall area. Again, the control of overheating is a significant issue.
Once the heat is in, a well insulated and air-tight building envelope helps prevent heat loss and allows the solar heat to provide more of the heating needed. A crucial component of the energy-efficient building envelope is the window system. Where common double-glazed windows let heat escape, high performance windows, with insulated frames, multiple glazing, low-e coatings, insulating glass spacers and inert gas fills, can reduce heat loss by 50 to 75 per cent.
High efficiency windows, together with R-2000 levels of insulation and air-tight construction allow passive solar heating to cover a large proportion of heating needs in many locations. With the heat contained, often a simple ceiling fan or a forced air furnace fan (furnace burner off, of course) is all that is required for heat distribution. Using building envelope upgrades alone, up to 25 per cent of a building's heating requirement can be gained with passive solar techniques.
A helpful technique to control overheating and extend warm conditions in the sun space once the sun is down is the use of heavy mass materials in the walls and floors. Quarry tile or stone on floors in a mortar bed, and one wythe of brick or double layers of gypsum board on walls, will absorb solar radiation, smooth out the peaks of solar gain, and slowly radiate heat back into the room when the sun is gone.
Some solar homes use a centrally located masonry wood heater to store heat. The bricks and stones surrounding the firebox absorb the solar gain or heat from short but intense firings and slowly radiate it into the room.

The Kyoto Protocol and GHG

The Kyoto Protocol is an international treaty aiming to reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions believed to cause global warming and climate change, the most pressing environmental issues of our time. The treaty requires developed countries to reduce GHG emissions to below 1990 levels, but does not set binding limits on developing countries such as China.
However, the parties to the Kyoto Protocol recognized that reductions in GHG emissions can often be achieved more economically in developing countries than in developed countries themselves. Therefore the parties created the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).
The CDM enables developing country parties who carry out projects that reduce GHG emissions to receive credits for these reductions. These credits can be sold to developed country parties, which use them to offset their own emission reduction requirements. For the developed country party this is often a more cost-effective option than reducing reductions from their own domestic operations.

The above introduction to the Kyoto Protocol is taken from Arreon Carbon's website. You can find more information at http://www.arreon.com/

Clean Parks in Japan

We live in a neat and clean country: There's usually a caretaker for every neighborhood park who sweeps the leaves, gathers them up and collects them into, yes, garbage bags. These are then picked up and disposed of in incinerators just like all the rest of the city's garbage. It always baffles me that nobody thinks of composting these leaves. They'd also make good material for worm bedding.

Oligochaetologists R US!

If oligochaetology is the study of worms, does that make us oligochaetologists?






"Oligochaete! Thou taxonomic pain!
My mouth and mind and memory affirm,
Twould be much less a stress upon the brain
To designate you merely as a worm..........
The object of my study is to try
To help both man and worm see eye to eye."
- D. N. Howell (1976)




Oligochaetology is the study of worms - specifically, the Class Oligochaeta within the Phylum Annelida. Other classes in the Phylum Annelida, the true segmented worms, include the Acanthobdellae (bristle worms), Aphononeura (suction-feeding worms), Branchiobdellae (crayfish worms), Hirudinea (leeches), and Polychaeta (sand worms, tube worms, and clam worms). Over 15,000 species of worms have been described worldwide; we now recognize 2,450 species in North America north of Mexico.








Worms occur in virtually all habitats where water is present, even in areas that are only slightly moist. Numerous species also occur exclusively on land. Most annelids are free-living, but many species are parasitic, mutualistic, or commensal during part of or throughout their life cycle.

Worms are an important and often dominant group in aquatic systems, providing a valuable food source for many other aquatic organisms; 131 species presently are known to occur in Illinois. As early as Aristotle, aquatic worms have been recognized for their ability to thrive in organically polluted waters, often forming dense colonies that resemble red waving carpets. Recent works have noted the presence of aquatic worms in almost every habitat that is associated with water, including pristine springs, streams, wells, seeps, and lakes, as well as industrially polluted harbors, large rivers, and waste retention ponds.

Earthworms, although numbering only about 30 species in Illinois, play an important role in the decomposition of organic matter, mineral cycling, and the aeration, drainage, and root penetration of the soil; through this activity, they also provide suitable habitat for smaller soil fauna, particularly micro-organisms. It has been estimated that earthworms can 'move' up to 18 tons of soil per acre each year. Abundance estimates of earthworms have been as high as three million per acre.


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This entry is borrowed from The Illinois Natural History Survey.

You can find them on the web at:

http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/

Worms slow down during winter

Activity slows down considerably during cold months

Winter

It's getting cold in Kobe. Temperatures around 5 C at night and 12 or 13 during the day. Worms are lazy and by far not as active as a month ago. Am considering 2 options:

A) buy a glasshouse to raise day time temperatures in the boxes and hop that the bedding will keep warm during the night
B) move a couple of worm bins into the house.

Cyd, my wife, does not protest.