[GSBN] Help us help in Haiti

[Tracy Vogel]

Hello Bruce etal.

Derek posts great questions and I have some ideas and have had a few low
tech systems to deal with this.  Send any info - even if approximate to
volumes of material and percentages of silt vs clay.

In New Mexico processing clay for the Apache's we ritually cooked a large
feast at the beginning of the clay harvesting season and feed the earth --
and clay pits -- after a long winter she was hungry.

Tracy

On 1/3/11 12:46 PM, "Derek Roff" <derek at unm.edu> wrote:

> Hi, Bruce,
> 
> I appreciate your humor, and your New Year's salutations.  Sign me up
> for the Hawaii Silt Vacation Sweepstakes.
> 
> Can you say more about the volume and efficiency that you need in the
> system?  That would help us propose ideas that would be useful to
> you.  For example, are you trying to process a hundred pounds of
> soil, a thousand, or ten thousand per day?
> 
> What amount of "waste" soil is acceptable.  I'm guessing that your
> goal is to get at the clay, and that the silt will be a unimportant
> byproduct.  Is that correct?  In wondering about efficiency, I'm
> thinking along these lines:  If the soil is naturally 20% clay and
> 30% silt, then the optimum system would extract 2 pounds of clay from
> each ten pounds of soil.  What if you could only extract 1 pound of
> clay from each ten pounds, but you got pretty good purity of that
> clay.  Would that be acceptable?  Alternatively, what if a process
> gave you 4 pounds of product from each 10 pounds of soil, but that
> product was 50% clay?  Would that be useful?  If not, what sort of
> purity percentage would be worthwhile?
> 
> Does this process need to be human-powered, or could electrical or
> gasoline motors be a part of the machinery?  What is your "easy
> enough" process for separating the sand and gravel?  Perhaps the clay
> separation process could be added to the sand/gravel separation
> phase.
> 
> I have some ideas, and have done some small-scale tests, but I'm not
> sure they would fit your needs.
> 
> Dere-"particulate"-lict
> 
> Derek Roff
> Language Learning Center
> Ortega Hall 129, MSC03-2100
> University of New Mexico
> Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001
> 505/277-7368, fax 505/277-3885
> Internet: derek at unm.edu
> 
> 
> --On Sunday, January 2, 2011 1:46 PM -0800 Bruce King
> <bruce at ecobuildnetwork.org> wrote:
> 
>> Happy New Year, baleheads.
>> 
>> We have a lot of soil in Haiti that is rich in both clay and silt.
>> Easy enough to separate the sand and gravel, but we haven't figured
>> out a good way to separate silt from clay.  So far we've tried:
>> 
>> 1) Asking nicely
>> 2) Offering every silt particle a chance to win a Hawaiian dream
>> vacation if it separates itself from the clay
>> 3) Telling the silt that if it just leaves quietly now, no one will
>> get hurt
>> and, getting really hardball,
>> 4) Hanging a few "example particles" of silt by their silica
>> crystals  in the public square, with warning notes attached.
>> 
>> Still no luck!  Anyone have a good low-tech field method for
>> separation?
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> Bruce "Hang 'em High!" King
> 
> 
> Derek Roff
> Language Learning Center
> Ortega Hall 129, MSC03-2100
> University of New Mexico
> Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001
> 505/277-7368, fax 505/277-3885
> Internet: derek at unm.edu
> 
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