I have given periodic mention to the unfolding aspect of adding "biochar" charcoal to soils, in an effort to recover some of the benefits of Terra Preta - highly rich and fertile dark soils found in South America, in which carbon (char) has been stored for hundreds of years. In addition to locking-up carbon over a long term, as noted, the soil is more fertile than the surrounding (lighter coloured) soils and has better properties in retaining water and nutrients.
Creating charcoal and assembling a kind of synthetic "terra preta nova" has the added advantage that while the charcoal is being formed by pyrolysing biomass, BioOil and BioGas are simultaneously produced. Ideally, the gas can be used as the fuel for the pyrolysis and the oil can be mixed to an extent of 25% with conventional liquid fuel, in the intention that by 2025, 25% of the U.S. oil requirements will be met by means of it: hence the name of the "25x25" club, a political group with this outcome as its primary agendum. It's a tall order and some of the estimates of how much biochar can be made are staggering, up to 9.5 billion tonnes/year, which I don't think is realistic either in terms of land use (growing enough biomass) or building bio-mass pyrolysis capacity on this immense scale. This is an estimate by Professor Johannes Lehmann form Cornell University, whose expert opinion I respect, but I don't see it personally since it amounts to producing about one tonne of biochar/hectare on two-thirds of the entire land surface of the Earth (95 million out of 150 million km^2).
The International Biochar Initiative (IBI) are working to a more modest 1 billion tonnes/year by 2050, and I reckoned recently that almost this amount could be produced in total throughout a collection of world-wide small communities in which each person made 100 kg of biochar per year - or it was collectively made for them within the activities of their community. The latter strategy cuts-down the prohibitively massive centralised plant-engineering required, if it were done this way, to more manageable chunks.
Now, there is the proposition of a connection between biochar and microbial life in terra preta soils, in which mycorrhiza fungi thrive and produce glomalin. I have noted that there is strong evidence that this glue-like glycoprotein is significantly responsible for the storage of organic matter in soil and for soil health. There is speculation that glomalin is the secret of terra preta soils/biochar as a consequence of the elevated fungal population (thought to thrive in the carbon micropores). Glomalin is produced by hair like hyphae filament structures of fungal bodies.
Overall carbon capture and humification in soil is probably the long-term process by which terra preta soils are produced and I wonder how long it would take for a soil, simply amended by charcoal, to become a fully-fledged terra preta with the properties noted. I envisage it is not likely to be an immediate event, and probably the Amazonian indians created these soils over many years, to their fully self-generating glory. The native people described the soil as physically "growing", which may suggest an accretion process involving fungi and other microbiota.
There is an interesting discussion of some of these topics at the link address below. I would be grateful for any input from those who know more than me about these things.
Related Reading.
http://bioenergylists.org/newsgroup-archive/terrapreta_bioenergylists.org/2007-February/000042.html
Creating charcoal and assembling a kind of synthetic "terra preta nova" has the added advantage that while the charcoal is being formed by pyrolysing biomass, BioOil and BioGas are simultaneously produced. Ideally, the gas can be used as the fuel for the pyrolysis and the oil can be mixed to an extent of 25% with conventional liquid fuel, in the intention that by 2025, 25% of the U.S. oil requirements will be met by means of it: hence the name of the "25x25" club, a political group with this outcome as its primary agendum. It's a tall order and some of the estimates of how much biochar can be made are staggering, up to 9.5 billion tonnes/year, which I don't think is realistic either in terms of land use (growing enough biomass) or building bio-mass pyrolysis capacity on this immense scale. This is an estimate by Professor Johannes Lehmann form Cornell University, whose expert opinion I respect, but I don't see it personally since it amounts to producing about one tonne of biochar/hectare on two-thirds of the entire land surface of the Earth (95 million out of 150 million km^2).
The International Biochar Initiative (IBI) are working to a more modest 1 billion tonnes/year by 2050, and I reckoned recently that almost this amount could be produced in total throughout a collection of world-wide small communities in which each person made 100 kg of biochar per year - or it was collectively made for them within the activities of their community. The latter strategy cuts-down the prohibitively massive centralised plant-engineering required, if it were done this way, to more manageable chunks.
Now, there is the proposition of a connection between biochar and microbial life in terra preta soils, in which mycorrhiza fungi thrive and produce glomalin. I have noted that there is strong evidence that this glue-like glycoprotein is significantly responsible for the storage of organic matter in soil and for soil health. There is speculation that glomalin is the secret of terra preta soils/biochar as a consequence of the elevated fungal population (thought to thrive in the carbon micropores). Glomalin is produced by hair like hyphae filament structures of fungal bodies.
Overall carbon capture and humification in soil is probably the long-term process by which terra preta soils are produced and I wonder how long it would take for a soil, simply amended by charcoal, to become a fully-fledged terra preta with the properties noted. I envisage it is not likely to be an immediate event, and probably the Amazonian indians created these soils over many years, to their fully self-generating glory. The native people described the soil as physically "growing", which may suggest an accretion process involving fungi and other microbiota.
There is an interesting discussion of some of these topics at the link address below. I would be grateful for any input from those who know more than me about these things.
Related Reading.
http://bioenergylists.org/newsgroup-archive/terrapreta_bioenergylists.org/2007-February/000042.html
8 comments:
Biochar viewed as soil Infrastructure; The old saw, "Feed the Soil Not the Plants" becomes "Feed, Cloth and House the Soil, utilities included !". Free Carbon Condominiums, build it and they will come.
As one microbologist said on the TP list; "Microbes like to sit down when they eat". By setting this table we expand husbandry to whole new orders of life.
UNCCD Submission to Climate Change/UNFCCC AWG-LCA 5
"Account carbon contained in soils and the importance of biochar (charcoal) in replenishing soil carbon pools, restoring soil fertility and enhancing the sequestration of CO2."
http://www.unccd.int/publicinfo/AWGLCA5/menu.php
This new Congressional Research Service report (by analyst Kelsi Bracmort) is the best short summary I have seen so far - both technical and policy oriented.
http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/R40186_20090203.pdf .
Home made Low Tech Clean Biochar;
Simple "Can in Can" method;
http://holon.se/folke/carbon/simplechar/simplechar.shtml
Biochar producing BBQ grill;
http://www.chipenergy.com/products.htm
Bichar particles as little condominiums for soil microbes. I rather like that idea. Thanks Erich, I'll look out the other links too.
Cheers,
Chris.
Hi Chris,
Moringa oleifera may have significant potential to produce needed biomass without displacing food production. Under optimal conditions of waterfall, sunlight and nutrients, moringa produces on the order of 100 tonnes of dry weight biomass per hectare and year when cropped. And this is without the added soil fertility benefit that biochar may bring to productivity levels. Under production, it is cut back about once per month to about 20cm tall and it immediately regrows, which eliminates the need for reseeding.
The leaves are very high in protein, and in a cropped system, you can get about 10 times the protein yield of soybean per hectare from Moringa, and you still have the shoots to make biochar at a rate of about 50 tonnes per hectare per year.
If my calculations are correct, replacing Brazil's soybean production (currently carried out on about 30 million hectares) with moringa seems to have the potential to give us the needed feedstock for "a wedge" using the stems for biochar: (50 x 30 million = 1.5 billion tonnes of biochar per year * 80% to derive the fixed carbon content = 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon). Subtract from that some loss of productivity, not all will be optimal. Add to that some productivity gain from incorporating all that biochar in soil used for moringa production, AND, as you point out, the potential for added sequestration via glomalin.
Moringa is a nitrogen fixer, so you can also subtract the GHG effect from current nitrogen fertilization of those 30 million hectares of soybean. Since we would have a surplus of protein, perhaps a better use could be found for 90% of those leaves, in the production of biofuel for instance. Our initial estimates show potential biofuel productivity levels multiples over that of any other feedstock. So we could also subtract the GHG effect of the fossil fuels replaced.
Sustainable food and biofuel production may entail the use of crop rotation. Moringa can be repeatedly cut back for perhaps 4 or 5 years, after which the field should be reseeded, which provides an opportunity for rotation, utilizing the nitrogen rich soil for another crop.
We are attempting to get funding for a validation study that would demonstrate moringa's potential as a biochar/biofuel feedstock. If we manage, we should include glomalin levels as a part of the study.
On another tangent, well established data from the agricultural sector show that about an equal amount of waste is produced, on average, compared to production tonnage, in both forestry and food production.
A presentation by Jim Amonette gives some figures on "Human-Appropriated Net Primary Productivity", available here: < www.harvestcleanenergy.org/conference/HCE9/Post-conference/PPT/JimAmonette.pdf > The figures cited in this PDF seem low to me at first glance, compared to the figures available on wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_production. It should be noted tho', as in the Wikepedia article, that we have significant potential to either increase or decrease NPP. The crops we currently use for agriculture, which number in the tens of species, tend to decrease NPP, but Moringa is an example of a species we can use to increase NPP.
Of course, realizing this potential would be a significant investment in infrastructure! The need to feed ourselves and provide liquid fuels for agricultural production and transport will hopefully be a significant driver to get that to happen, but at least the raw materials are not rare and the technology is, for the most part, known.
Kind regards,
Nando - CarbonZero.ch
Thanks Mark,
I guess that growing this in a regenerative way (i.e. without or with minimum inputs of fertilizers) would be even better, thus regenerating the soil too. Do you think that's possible?
Perhaps it could be grown on small community plantations, if the climate is good for that, and turned over to local biochar production.
I am just trying to get around that huge level of centralised infrastructure and transportation of the crop on the 1.5 billion tonne scale.
Glomalin does seem central to soil/plant processes and it is suggested in humification too. A complex system indeed!
Cheers,
Chris.
The best, perhaps only way forward would be the decentralized production of biochar/biofuels. From figures I've seen, most of the cost variable is in the transportation of biomass, so from a financial perspective, you'd want to keep those distances down. I don't think large, centralized plants that require the hauling of biomass would be economically the most efficient, but before we go there, we should explore opportunities where biomass is already centralized.
In agriculture, significant amounts of waste biomass are already collected, and sometimes burned in the open air, just to dispose of it. In Cairo, the dark haze of air pollutants that hangs in the air in autumn, precipitated by the burning of rice waste, is called "The Black Cloud". Air pollution levels can reach 25 times over WHO recommended levels on the worst days.
In Punjab state alone, some 70 to 80 million tons of rice and wheat straw are burned annually, releasing approximately 140 million tons of CO2 to the atmosphere, in addition to methane, nitrous oxide and air pollutants. And Punjab produces only 10% of the annual rice output in India. It seems likely that more than a gigatonne of CO2 is released from rice waste burning in India alone annually. A change of practice there, lower the cutting blade on the harvester and producing biochar and electricity from the waste, could have a significant impact.
http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/may102008/1185.pdf
It is estimated that humans initiate over 90% of the biomass burned globally every year, which causes approximately 40% of annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
[Levine, J. S. et al., In Global Biomass Burning: Atmospheric, Climatic, and Biospheric Implications (eds Levine, J. S.), The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1991]
Much of this biomass would decompose anyway a short time later, so the overall effect goes largely unregistered in atmospheric CO2 levels. If we produced biochar from all this biomass instead of burning it, there seems to be a significant potential to intervene in the carbon cycle and generate usable energy that can be inferred from the 3 gigatonnes or so of carbon we release annually from burning biomass.
I haven't yet looked into worldwide figures for chicken manure, but there seems to be an excellent potential here, using the model that Josh Frye has already established (google Josh Frye biochar). He seems to be on the verge of declaring that the manure is worth more than the chickens at this early stage of the game. Chicken manure is known to be the best feedstock for biochar, largely because it has so much nutrient value. If biochar and electrical energy was generated on a widespread basis in China, in fact throughout Asia, the potential to mitigate global warming in this way seems quite significant.
There are some clear advantages to disposing of chicken manure via pyrolysis, and one of them, I believe, is that the process binds the nitrates and phosphates in the char, as long as pyrolysis temperatures are kept relatively low. Here's a PDF I just found illustrating the potential in your backyard:
www.niassembly.gov.uk/agriculture/2007mandate/research/PoultryWasteAlternativestoIncineration.pdf
A very interesting set of figures to develop would be the worldwide potential of chicken manure biochar. Quickly, if annual production of chicken manure in Ireland alone is 485,000 tonnes, we might expect world production to be on the order of a billion tonnes or more, extrapolating from population figures and factoring in Asian preference for chicken over red meat.
Again, quick figures, but if 35% of the manure is carbon, sequestration could amount to perhaps 1/4 of a wedge utilizing low temperature pyrolysis, and the effect on N2O, methane, and CO2 emissions would also be substantial, perhaps bringing the net effect up to 1/2 a wedge if adopted worldwide. All very rough, simply for a quick comment in a blog post, but all together such an approach would sequester carbon, displace commercial fertilizer production, transportation and use, displace fossil fuel use, and prevent N20 and methane emissions, so a significant impact seems plausible.
Yes,
it all sounds pretty plausible. I have been looking into soil etc., according to some of my recent postings as I try to get my head around the complexity of it all!
What seems clear is that we need animals - cattle, chickens etc. - in an interactive way in terms of regenerating land to natural levels of fertility and as you allude here, manure from non-grazing animals (chickens) being converted into biochar to seed soil health.
I don't see it as realistic that the world can turn to a totally vegan lifestyle, except through "forest gardens" and other kinds of permaculture which nonetheless rely on fauna (birds, soil life) as an intrinsic part of their mechanism; and keeping chickens and pigs is not ruled-out in such a scheme.
As you remarked in the previous comment, the "technology" is established in these approaches, allowing for the engineering to do them. Decentralised systems are possible in all these activities, and that looks better still, as it is another handle on the "peak oil" problem, i.e. by reducing reliance on agricultural transportation.
Keep in touch, Mark, I welcome your input.
Cheers,
Chtis.
You must read this
“The Biochar Revolution” with “The Biochar Solution”
http://biochar-books.com/
The Biochar Revolution collects the results and best practical advice that these entrepreneurs have to offer to the biochar community. When practice and theory advance to the point where they meet in the middle, then we will truly see a biochar revolution.
Great information and well written. The multibillion dollar biochar industry has expropriated ancient indigenous agritech, without recognizing the source of their idea. In the process they get Biochar very wrong. Exploring actual Amazon Terra Preta sites, we conclude the biodiversity here is the key to their secret recipe. Rice husks, sawdust, bagasse, etc produced Biochar is all carbon dust, so you might as well burn the hay on the field like ancient times. Again I’ll say actual, original Terra Preta process produces a very different product.
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