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<pre>Uses for the sansa (jift in Arabic) mentioned below are similar to
applications used in the current Near East and in antiquity, see comments
below:

On Thu, 6 Apr 2000, P Caird wrote:

> Brian
>
> I don't know what Loxton is going to do but we have land located about 30kms
> from our factory in central Victoria (Australia) in order to let nature do
> the drying work for us. Beds will be made using sleepers as the formwork
> with each able to take about 5 tonne of sansa (wet). A bobcat will scurry
> around spreading the stuff and, come the Oz summer, we should have about
> 2.5-3.5 tonne of dry weight sansa ready for any number of applications.
>
> A mudbrick manufacturer has already tested the material in a mix with clay.
> It makes a delightful brick, structurally sound, but lighter than normal. A
> house of peace on the way! Tests are continuing.
>
In Roman Leptimus (Tunisia I believe) olive stones have been found in
mortar, suggesting a similar use.

> Compressing the dry sansa (or even wet with some modifications) to about 12
> tonne pressure in a cylinder makes a perfectly usable "log" of firewood. It
> will probably need a years aging if wet sansa is used. Most likely everyone
> already knows that the sansa fuel burns quite intensely and almost without
> ash. Truly an environmentally friendly fuel that has another sensory
> benefit in that it gives off a delightful aromatic scent.

Several companies in Jordan are making commercial charcoal from jift now.
Considered by many locals to be the "best" type of charcoal. In villages
in northern Jordan (the primary olive region), the jift is made into balls
(wet jift from older non-centrifugal mills is best), dried, and used as
fuel for winter heating and for cooking. However, one reason jift fuel is
highly praised is because it does not have any odor, a comment many people
told to me.

> I was informed quite recently that in the States they have quite a novel use
> for the pits of the olives. These are produced by the 100's of tonnes over
> there of course. They are mixed with bitumen and then used as tarmac for
> roads etc.

As mentioned above, olive stones were used in making mortar, and I've come
across several other references to them used as construction filler as
well.


Peter Warnock
>
> Regards
>
>
>
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