This is from the American Chemical Society journal via a press release. After making a bunch of this, I’d be tempted to have a “BBQ summer”.
From the ancient Amazonian Indians: A modern weapon against global warming
Scientists are reporting that “biochar” — a material that the Amazonian Indians used to enhance soil fertility centuries ago — has potential in the modern world to help slow global climate change. Mass production of biochar could capture and sock away carbon that otherwise would wind up in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Their report appears in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology, a bi-weekly journal.
Kelli Roberts and colleagues note that biochar is charcoal produced by heating wood, grass, cornstalks or other organic matter in the absence of oxygen. The heat drives off gases that can be collected and burned to produce energy. It leaves behind charcoal rich in carbon. Amazonian Indians mixed a combination of charcoal and organic matter into the soil to improve soil fertility, a fact that got the scientists interested in studying biochar’s modern potential.
The study involved a “life-cycle analysis” of biochar production, a comprehensive cradle-to-grave look at its potential in fighting global climate change and all the possible consequences of using the material. It concludes that several biochar production systems have the potential for being an economically viable way of sequestering carbon — permanently storing it — while producing renewable energy and enhancing soil fertility.
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http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es902266r
“Estimating the energetic, economic, and climate change potential”
Yes, I can estimate it: Null, nada, zero
I already heard of this bizarre idea and then I calculated the amount of wood/grass whatever that you have to process to coal only to eliminate the CO2-output of the actually burned fossil coal.
I don’t have the numbers at hand anymore, put I can tell you:
This is totally hopeless
I thought the Amazonian indians were, y’know, crapping in the fields to fertilize them? That would make sense, at least.
Yes, but as a follow-up to the ethanol debacle, it might be a very effective way to back-door subsidize an industry that has no reason to exist aside from buying farm state votes.
This is just plain silly.
I’m really sorry AGW has got mixed into the Amazonian charcoal work. Makes me want to let rip a stream of expletives.
Because this Amazonian charcoal is IMO really, really important. It has the potential to rejuvenate soil, increase biomass, fertility, a quite extraordinary amount, and with only small quantities. It was the secret of the lost El Dorado civilization (they were wiped out by influenza, measles and a third complaint we think nothing of). Green the Sahara. You name it. Just leave the AGW bull**** out of it.
Some ideas about biochar, it’s production and use you will find here.
I’m thinking of writing a paper called “Polytheistic assessment of genuflectory anthropological systems: Estimating the ecumenical, sociological, economic, and climate change potential”.
I fully expect to be besieged with funding offers.
What the heck do they think charcoal briquettes are made of?
Same stuff. Costs energy to make charcoal. It is a net energy sink.
The tribes also did not have the knowledge (or access to ) modern methods of fertilizer production ( N from natural gas, mining of phosphorus and potassium, sulfur etc. ), tilling methods, etc. Don’t give me any BS about how ancient methods of agriculture are somehow “better” than modern science. That dog don’t hunt.
@ur momisugly Lucy Skywalker: Now come on Lucy – how do you expect those ‘scientists’ to get grants these days without implicating AGW in there somewhere?
And as for your mentioning “AGW bullshit” – stop that, you’ll only give them ideas.
I met a local professor who had a grant to do this sort of work, i.e. pyrolize plant trimmings to sequester the carbon. We do a lot of carbon processing in my lab so I’m sort of the local expert on this. We just chatted I saw no numbers on feasibility or the procedures she was planning on testing. She was looking for ovens to run tests. I guess on a large scale you could use coke ovens or charcoal kilns to do this, but it seems kinda pointless to me. Even if the actual charcoaling process was a net positive energy producer, so no extra fuel had to be used, you would need a lot of energy for all the bulk materials handling. I also pretty sure the natives who were mixing ashes and charcoal into the soil were more interested in the minerals in the ash than the carbon.
Here’s another crazy idea. What if we actually grew trees for wood that we could then use to build things? And then plant trees to replace the ones we took out? All that ‘old’ carbon is tied up in the lumber and the new growth would sequester the ‘new’ carbon.
Lucy has it right, although biochar could be a useful adjunct to controlling total CO2 if that is a desirable result. Biochar is seriously worth looking at, although there are indeed issues around scale. Try this link: http://www.garyjones.org/mt/ as the blog writer is very knowledgeable about biochar amongst other things, you may have to search for biochar posts.
The Amazonian “Terra Preta” soils are a genuine phenomena although the civilization that created them is not well known or understood.
Hmmmm. “AGW bullshit” eh? Now, I wonder: how much methane is expelled by the average pile of bullshit….?
Now you’ve done it, Lucy.
Gee, I thought that using “biochar” was that bad old technique called “Slash and Burn,” or did that go through a New Think grinder as well?
The Guardian MoonBat is at it again:
Rightwing climate change deniers are all for free speech – when it suits them
Sigh…..you mean carbon in the fields help crop production and you can make briquettes out of it? Will wonders ever cease.
Aren’t charcoal briquettes made from wood? What am I missing?
Over the past year or two, carbon is mentioned as the enemy more than CO2. I thought it was due to sloppy conversation. Anyhow, making charcoal consumes energy. I also read some wild notion from another sight about carbon negative. I assumed carbon is a constant. How can carbon be deleted to make “carbon negative”?
I gather they meant some level of optimal efficiency in oxidation. Like a perpetual motuion machine. Making a system that burns carbon and deletes it. All kinds of vooddoo come from Romm’s site.
From the abstract: “The economic viability of the pyrolysis-biochar system is largely dependent on the costs of feedstock production, pyrolysis, and the value of C offsets.”
Hey, let’s raise the value of those “C offsets” and all become charcoal tycoons!
Biochar can stop Global Warming!
Exclusive report from Dr Biochar, owner of the world’s largest Biochar factory.
Terra Preta is incredibly fertile soil. The Indians would, evidently, allow a patch of deforested land to lie fertile for a number of years, and then go in an cut down the small trees, bushes, etc that had grown on it. These cuttings would, then, be placed in piles, and burned. The resultant ash, and charcoal would work its way into the soil, and over the centuries they ended up with some of the best soil on earth.
Corn Plus, in Winnebago, Mn, burns the syrup from their ethanol process in a fluidized-bed reactor to provide process energy for their plant. The local farmers line for the “Ash.”
We used to burn the wheat straw. Made for a better crop the next year. All these things are proven winners. They Work.
“Slash and Burn” is still the predominant agricultural process in central Africa. Thousands of hectares of bush and scrubland are burned annually, killing mature muputu trees and devastating what is called brachystegia savannah (aka forests).
It’s not the carbon in the charcoal fraction in which the farmers have any interest, it’s the mineral content of the ash which is the requisite by-product of the burning. The burned-off area has an agricultural life of two years, then it’s move on and burn some more.
Of course the burnt bush land has nothing available to support any of the wildlife which might have escaped the flames. It is very common in Zambia, where I lived for many years, to find the corpses of starved buck in areas which had been burned off a month or two before.
Slash and Burn continues at a growing rate at least in Zambia.
Isn’t this the same way we used to handle trash in the City Dump before the EPA made all those absurd rules forbidding burning and requiring plastic barriers under landfills? We dug trenches, started fires, continually bulldozed new trash on top of the fires. The underpart of the fire smoldered for a long time, then became soil and stayed there.