[HelpChileanFiresVictims]

Hi: We're a group of people who wants to help people, domestic animals and wildlife recovering from this MEGA fire.
Summary:

 - We're having in Chile one of the largest fires in South American history.
 - More than 1,235,527 wood acres has already been burned
 - The fires aren't stopped but rather increased
 - People, domestic animals and wild fauna are suffering badly
 - We're a group that want's to help in the recovery of the lands that have been burned
 - There're several products with industrial applications that can be extracted from Wood Ashes. For instance, Potassium Peroxide
 - Our idea is to do the following onsite:
    1.- Build over a truck(s) a mobile laboratory
    2.- Go to the places where there's too much ashes (making the soil extremely alkaline and hard to recover)
    3.- Get some of the ashes, and extract a product with industrial application  that can be sold for a price that produce profitability
   4.- The profits would be used for supporting the people who lost everything, helping the wildlife¡fe to recover faster and financing the project


The Question:
- Are there Wood Ash sub products that you think are suitable to be extracted on site and allow the mentioned objectives mentioned above?
- Do you know a technology to be used to do the extraction onsite?
- Do you know a chemist who could be interested to participate in the project?

Thank YOU!!!

[Enthalpy]

¡Bienvenido!

I just wonder what in wood ash could have any value.

If it's too alkaline, you might try to use it to catch atmospheric carbon dioxide and store it as carbonate, or alternately combine it with dioxide from a cement plant or a fossil-fuelled power plant. Get a few $ for removing dioxide from the atmosphere through the mechanism of emission bonds - but these are very cheap presently.

Then, bury the carbonate locally as a fertilizer with neutralized pH.

Same for unburned wood debris: you may recover chemicals (turpentine and derived compounds) from them, but paper plants do it already for cheaper. Wood chips for heating could make more sense, provided that you can convince enough customers to use them, and that you store the chips for several years.

You might be interested in an automatic wood chips feed for fireplaces
http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/79599-open-flame-home-heating/#entry774820
and in a water bomber (but it's late now!)
http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/79265-water-bomber/
with water scooping by a ski, preferably piloted remotely, and preferably powered by hydrogen.