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.
DOWNLOAD FULL TEXT ARTICLE
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es902266r
The solution that the warmists are just starting to allude to though is to tackle population growth.
My government while pushing the AGW agenda has increased the population of the UK by 3,000,000 in ten years through immigration.
The reason being that a demoghrapic trough was appearing between the amount of old and young.
Falling birth rates in the west has been identified as a problem.
Problem.I see a solution.
Many of the 3,000,000 come from Islamic countries as well.
How the hell am I meant to take seriously ‘The war on Terror’ and ‘The war on Climate change’ waged by my government with such contradictary policies.
There was a programme about this stuff on British Tv a couple of years ago and I was wondering just a couple of days ago as to what had happened to it.
The main point of the programme was about the astonishing fertility of the material so perhaps readers ought to bear this in mind rather than the rather more dubious prospects of its carbon sequestration.
Tonyb
Okay… so… English coal… is bad.
But… Amazonia charcoal is…Good?
You guys are messing with me! I know it!
The problem with biochar as a method to sequester carbon in soil is that it may actually work. The last thing a government trying to grab huge carbon taxes on the false science of AGW needs is a workable mitigation scheme to spend their ill gotten gains on.
There’s another old fashioned BioChar method that the UN and “scientists” such as these should consider. I find it difficult to believe that they haven’t already. Simply diverting a few moderate sized meteors or comets would do the same thing much quicker. I’ll bet they’re have difficulty raising money to pay for it.
please read Charles C. Mann’s “1491” (please i said “CHARLES”!!) pages 306/311. there are “terra preta do indio” and “terra mulata do indio”, the last one “lighter” than the other. the amazon basin, had a lot of people before “the conquest” say the archaeologist. please see too, this link: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/100104-amazon-lost-civilization-circles.html
I’d like to know who wrote the press release.
“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.”
Gee, and here all along I though water vapor was the main greenhouse gas.
Charcoal is not charcoal.
I learned this studying blacksmithing. Traditional charcoal, as used for heating for millenia, is plant matter reduced to a rather pure carbon form. It provides more heat and a more intense heat than BBQ “charcoal” which is a formed product.
Traditional large-scale method: Assemble large wood pile. Then surround it with a shell of dirt, leaving some openings at the bottom for incoming air, with a single hole at top for venting. Start burning the wood. When the fire is judged to have burned long enough, the holes are covered. In the past, someone, often the most junior person there, would be sent up the mound to cover the top hole. Normally the top would hold and not collapse. I do not know how that is done “these days.”
The heat “cooks” the wood, driving off the volatiles, leaving behind the carbon. After cooling, the mound is taken apart and the carbon recovered. This form of carbon is what is known as traditional charcoal.
Blacksmiths like carbon, when they’re not using gas forges. Fire tending of a traditional coal fire is a complicated thing. At the center they burn the carbon form known as coke. They surround it with low-sulfur coal, which is gradually cooked by the heat, the volatiles driven off which converts it to coke, and the new coke is moved into the center of the fire. There are also forges which burn straight coke, requiring a design that can better take the intense heat, as well as traditional charcoal.
But they do not use BBQ briquettes. That charcoal is not charcoal.
I’ll bet they assumed energy inputs from sources that emit no CO2 – like wind, solar, hydro, etc. to come up with their carbon balance in the production of biochar.
First rule of reviewing a feasibility study – carefully check the assumptions.
If you accept certain assumptions, anything can be proven to work.
Yet another solution looking for a problem.
If CAGW keeps going as predicted by the scientists we’ll all be bio-char soon.
There’s something in the fine structuring of this particular charcoal, that has to be got just right IIRC. Nothing against coal, but it is as different… as diamonds which are also… carbon. Just as water has some extraordinary anomalous properties that seem to be connected with life on earth being possible, so does carbon. Think of gas masks. That’s another curious property of carbon, its ability to absorb real pollutant gases. Burnt toast in water was an old folk remedy for absorbing pollutants out of water. And so on. You have to be open to the possibility of interesting science right under our noses, hehe.
Biomass has more energy stored in it than the energy it takes to break it down by fast pyrolysis. In fact, if you use the gas part to drive the process, it does not cost you much in power.
It takes about 1000 kJ/kg to break down wood to char, bio-oil and gas. The original heating value of the wood is about 18 MJ/kg. The portion for the bio-oil recuperated is at about 17 MJ/kg. The chars don’t have much energy content and even with the ~ 1 MJ/kg from the combustible gases created by the process, it is sufficient to drive the whole plant and even dry the material witht he waste heat created.
The extra energy used is in the processing to prepare the material (chipping, drying) for fast pyrolysis, but as you can see, there are still plenty of room, even for transport.
“has potential in the modern world to help slow global climate change.”
In which direction? Is is magic, and stops both warming and cooling?
It is a solution to the problem of how to get more fertile land that requires less inorganic fertilizer. It’s a Very Good Solution.
This carbon sequestering scam is starting to get some more press:
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2010/01/13/the-next-big-scam-carbon-dioxide.aspx
Deloitte Forensic calls it “the white collar crime of the future.” Kroll, a business risk subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan, the global professional services firm, calls it “a fraudster’s dream come true.”
Paul
“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.”
Ummmm…. 0.04% makes C02 the “main greenhouse gas”? I am by no means an expert but I am pretty sure water vapor is the “main greenhouse gas”…
OT, but 40M hits coming up.
End of the month seems like a likely date.
Or use them to make phone books and then bury the phone books when we are done with them and plant more trees to make more phone book. Save the planet! Stop global warming! Throw your phone book in the trashcan!
It looks like the Pennsylvania legislature is taking a pro-active approach on the Penn States Climategate scandal. Sic em boys.
Penn State at Center of Global Warming Debate
http://www.whtm.com/news/stories/0110/695383_video.html?ref=newsstory
I am with Lucy on this. I think that there is more to it than just carbon storage.
I was impressed when our former opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull suggested Biochar as a form of storage 12mths ago. I am not interested in its use as carbon storage but more as a form of permanent soil biota capture, especially in our poor Australian soils.
Some reading here .
There may be minerals, yes, but only released when all of the carbon is oxidised. My feeling is that the physical structure of carbon with its cavernous structure and large surface area provides a stable physical space for soil biota to harbour and flourish. This form of carbon does not break down, witness its use in carbon dating in Archaeology, good for 40k years.
The images in my mind of this Terra Preta de Indio is that the charcoal is in layers well beneath the soil surface, hence its stability.
“Mass production of biochar could capture and sock away carbon that otherwise would wind up in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide…”
Of course, they do not explain how that GIANT leap (…wind up in the atmosphere ) is accomplished. I personaly do not understand the logic of cutting down a perfectly good tree doing what it is supposed to do (take Carbon gas & trasform it into Carbon solid) and remove most of the excess to put the remaining Carbon in the ground. I do not believe for one second that there is no gasious Carbon liberated into the atmosphere in the charcoal making process.
“…wind up in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.”
As someone else above said – no, the main greenhouse gass is water vapor!!!
Jeff
One of the authors of the ACS paper has written extensively on Terra Preta. Even though most Amazonian soils are relatively thin and poor in nutrients (kinda like Central Florida) the natives pre-Columbus were able to support an immense and advanced civilization see http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1240821/Lost-Amazon-civilisation-revealed-forests-cleared-cattle-grazing.html
The idea of tying up carbon is silly, but the Terra Preta soil also chelates phosphorus (“the next great crisis”) and dissolves bones without sulfuric acid.
Kinda high-tech for us Norte Americanos, but we’ll get there some day.
I’m confused now. I could have sworn that Charcoal briquets are made from wood. The process of making charcoal involves “cooking/burning” wood in the absence of oxygen. So, the natives in the Americas figured this out too? Did someone tell them that they have been doing it in Africa for millenia and still fight over charcoal production?
To put it bluntly, this is just a re-visitation of the CoC principle. Conservation of Carbon.
Ignoring elemental transmogrifications aka radioactive mutations and extra-terrestial Comet innoculations, we’re sort of stuck with the amount of available Carbon we’ve got to play with!
Yup while those greedy echinoderms gobble away at our precious hexa-proton stocks it’s actually up to us to preserve enough to keep us carbon-based organisms to keep ticking along.
This is my proposal. We need to introduce a Carbon Release and Profit bill. It has one major plus in that it will feed the Planet.
The downside is. I can’t think of an appropriate acronym!
Any suggestions?
royfomr (16:45:22),
That reminds me of the Super High Intensity Training my boss used to give me.