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
I have seen articles indicating that having farmers converting left over biomass to “biochar” not only works as a carbon sink, but could provide significant improvement (one study indicated 30%) in production and soil quality. I also heard that if somewhere that if something like 10% of farmlands adopted this it would effectively offset our CO2 emissions.
The response from the CAGW lobby to this issue has been interesting to watch. When CAGW proponents have seriously raised this as a potential option they have been thrown to the wolves for it. More than any other Geo-engineering option, this one seems to get under the skin of the Greenpeace/WWF-types – I can only guess it’s because it doesn’t require us moving society backwards and/or work towards population stabilization/reduction.
One other thing to note… the more refined processes for creating Biochar also creates a byproduct they call “Bio-oil” (I think that’s what they call it) that can be used for heating oil. If you’ve ever seen a wood gasification setup, the bio-oil is a condensed form of those gas byproducts.
In short, this seems to have significant benefits beyond just being a CO2 sink, so lets make sure we look at it in its entirety and not just focus on one aspect of it.
My $0.02 at least…
RE: Jimbo (23:43:55) :
Anyway, the greens would never approve of mass deforestation for the sake of farmers as it would lead to an increase in population.
:o) :o) :o)
According to the GCM’s, deforestation is responsible for a net cooling forcing due to forests having a lower albedo (~10) than farmland (~20)
I do think it’s interesting that the green response to this conversation is to always imply that adoption of Biochar practices would result in massive deforestation. It would only do so if Cap and Trade paid people for turning forests into charcoal – if adopted as a farming practice using leftover biomass (stover, etc) there is the potential that it could lead to increased crop production, and a secondary income for farmers from Bio-Oil production.
That said, it remains to be seen if this could be economically feasible without subsidies of some sort… but just thinking from a US standpoint, we have plenty of farm subsidies around and if we could re-point them to soil improvement instead of the generally insane assortment of directions we have them for today (ranging from paying people not to plant on their farmland to overproducing plants like corn and cotton to the point of artificially suppressing prices), we could probably do this without Cap and Trade.
What about sequestering not carbon, but water on a mass scale? It’s a major greenhouse gas after all. I mean something like a two miles high heap over Sweden, Scotland, the North & Baltic seas, part of Germany and Poland, Canada, the nothern US down to NYC perhaps. It would also alleviate sea level rise, actually dropping it by some four hundred feet, enhancing polar ice as well. Wouldn’t it be nice?
What? Is it called an Ice Age? Oh.
Remember those fine grooves in Central Park.
http://www.fettes.com/central%20park/Glacial%20groove.htm
I might be turned into Terra Preta for saying this, but, isn’t this mysterious black fertile soil stuff staring to sound like Biodynamics ?
Amazing. People have already posted that briquettes are different from natural charcoal, yet people keep posting “I’m confused. I thought bruiquettes were charcoal?” No wonder the AGW things poorly of the Watts Up With That crowd…
No, briquettes are different. http://www.madehow.com/Volume-4/Charcoal-Briquette.html
This is why you can’t use briquettes to, say, filter water.
I’ve seen that some gardeners have had great success in grinding up natural charcoal as a supplement. I plan to do that for my compost mix.
Smokey (16:58:38) :
royfomr (16:45:22),
That reminds me of the Super High Intensity Training my boss used to give me.
The really sad thing though, Smokey, is that neither of us can still think of a suitable acronym!
Steve Schaper (21:04:55) :
“Terra Preta possibly could not be developed in Canada. Especially now that the ice sheets will be coming back.
Help me, Please: I know we have been mining the organic from our best agricultural soil for hundreds of years. No good. But I don’t understand the rational between “no-till” and plowed planting. I assume access to the soil by sun and air consumes some organic, but i would also assume that plowing the green waste under also Improves the organic content.
[Although somewhat OT, this thread in WUWT has been one of the more exciting to me in a long time. I don’t expect Terra Preta to be used to prevent the terrible nutrient loss and pollution our current farming methods cause, but you might note that there are many jurisdictions that are banning fertilizer use over certain periods just because of the lack of stay-put nutrients…”
I’m trained in soil management. I’ve done three courses. Permaculture, Crop and Pasture science and a uni degree in sustainable farming. For each ecosystem and cropping system you can name there is a farming system that sustains soil. Terra Preta will help a little in Canada but there are others that work better in your area. Don’t fall for the propaganda against plough agriculture. Its correct in some places and wrong in others.
On soils that are prone to water logging and acidification due to freeze thaw packing or alluvial deposition the plow is essential. These soils are generally valley bottom land or major flood plain farming: Nile valley, Euphrates, Rhine river, Mississippi and the plough works.
On the great plans limited till is better than bare fallow or burning off stubble.
The problem is that we transpose one system from where it worked best to other landscapes or soil systems. Things go wrong.
In drought stressed continental plains system: the great plains, central china, the Australian wheat belt, and equivalent systems three systems work best.
1.Limited till with cover crops. Living mulch. Bare fallow is the problem.
2.Legume and grain rotations. Wheat and lentils, corn and soy. Natural nitrogen.
3.Perennial polyculture cropping systems. http://www.landinstitute.org/
These must be combined with long rest grazing http://www.holisticmanagement.org/index.html
AGW is not a viable reason for doing these things. You have no natural contact between buyer and seller of carbon. However farm fertility and farm value adding is viable as an alternative.
The greens know this, but to make it work you must buy farms restore them and resell them. The greens being generally left wing wont do capitalism even when they have the skills to do real capital gains. They hate profits. Yet profits are needed to to buy again and repeat the process.
Farmers who value add to their products, selling brand name stuff not bulk commodities, can afford to buy expertise to make the transition to more stable systems. Most farmers still operate as basic commodities producers and rarely gain enough in a good year to invest in the soil.
One global reason why we have a problem today that did not seem to be as bad in the past is that we have blocked many rivers systems with dams and weirs. Fish swimming up stream balanced phosphate, etc draining down stream. The dams now stop the fish. At the head waters and farms the fish would be eaten with most of that phosphate spreading on the fields as predator droppings. There are many places where fish ladders should be considered not a green issue but a farmers cause.
Keith Minto (15:00:53)
Biodynamics means ‘life force’ and (regardless of whether its techniques have any a merit – which, I would argue, should be established scientifically, rather than on faith in the mysticism of founder Rudolph Steiner). Terra preta appears to have made possible what was presumed to be impossible: agriculture under on soils cleared of tropical rainforest, where high levels of rainfall were thought to make it impossible. The secret was not just adding organic matter but preventing nutrients simply being washed out. It does appear to involve micro-organisms, and the inoculation of soils with them. Just as pre-scientific as Steiner, but perhaps more functional since it seems to have supported a substantial civilisation. Biodynamics has never been more than a fringe activity for the believers, and come to prominence (like organics) as part of the romanticism swirling about western society in the 1920s and 30s – especially in Germany. What Geoffrey Herf referred to as ‘reactionary modernism. In addition to the ‘blood and soil’ movement in Germany there was a strong antivivisection movement and, charmingly, an organic garden at Dachau.
Aynsley Kellow (20:45:23) :
Interesting comment, Aynsley.
Soil science does seem to have had its fair share of German researchers. The 19th century produced Justus von Leibig and Carl Sprengel,in time the ‘humus’ theory of plant nutrition was replaced by more conventional models of nutrition. Steiner seems to have revived the humus theory in the 1920’s and it does seem to have a mystical quality to it, but then as I have heard, that one gram of soil contains more organisms than people on the planet, is it any wonder that soil biological activity is mysterious?
This discussion has relevance now, because how much CO2 intake is from the soil, and how much from the atmosphere?
I have a soil scientist friend I could ask, but as he is firmly in the AGW camp, our communication on this issue is limited.
The theory behind biodynamics is not valid but there are practices integrated into the method that have benefits. Its a combination of poly-culture pasture management and non laboratory artificial selection of soil micro-organisms. Manure in cow horn buried for months then mixed in aerated water and distributed on the farm. That’s putting soil bugs though hell: acid then alkali extremes, starvation, then hyper-oxygenation in water. One micro-organism in a trillion will survive. But in poor soils that bug is a soil super bug and grows to dominate the farms soil. It selects for one though bacteria or fungous. There’s also a placebo effect on farmers that cant bring them selves to go cold turkey on fertilizers. They also use rock dust, night working of the soil and biological control all of which have benefits on many farms.
Like some eastern medicine and several pharmaceuticals the cure works even though the theory behind it is all wrong.
What we really need is a science of selecting and breeding soil micro-organisms and deploying them as a cheap product. Its being done for fungi see: http://www.fungi.com/front/stamets/index.html
A good site on soil carbon is amazing carbon. http://www.amazingcarbon.com/
Dr Christine Jones. Yes its AGW focused occasionally but she was I the game well before CO2 was an issue and will be long after I suspect. Sustainable soil is very important.The first green revolution was about mastering soil chemistry. The next will be about mastering soil ecology.
wesley bruce (22:35:26) :
A good site on soil carbon is amazing carbon. http://www.amazingcarbon.com/
Thanks,an interesting link. A quote….
The world’s soils hold over 3 times the quantity of carbon in the atmosphere and 4 times the quantity held in vegetation. Soil represents the greatest carbon sink that we can control.
Something else for the IPCC to chew on.
This is plain drivel:
“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”.
Fact? Proven how?
If the addition of carbon to the soil improved its fertility, it could do so by being degraded into eventual CO2 (as happens the world over, or our soils would have been 100% char a long time ago); or by other mechanisms such as better ion exchange of nutrients, it can increase the yield of plants containing carbon, which plants again will eventually report as CO2 in the air, through decay or burning. Otherwise the forest floor would be as deep in dead leaves and twigs as the trees themselves are tall today.
Unless soil carbon is removed from dynamic processes like oxidation, it will mostly end up back in the air as CO2. The other path is burial in such a way that new coal is formed.
Oh, the wife reminds me that the other final path is diamonds.
wesley bruce (22:26:34) :
Maybe you should try talking to the fairies you see at full Moon. No scientist of good training would touch this topic with a barge pole.
NickB. (10:00:44) :
You say ” If you’ve ever seen a wood gasification setup, the bio-oil is a condensed form of those gas byproducts.”
You should, to be scientifically honest, add “Open combustion or oxidation of this oil produces as much airborne CO2 as most fossil fuels and it cannot possibly help reduce atmospheric CO2 because it does not sequester – permanently, if at all.”
@ur momisugly Geoff
“You should, to be scientifically honest, add “Open combustion or oxidation of this oil produces as much airborne CO2 as most fossil fuels and it cannot possibly help reduce atmospheric CO2 because it does not sequester – permanently, if at all.”
You should, in order to be scientifically honest, add “while the CO2 was sequestered from the atmosphere from the plant before while fossil fuels are adding the CO2″…
You should, in order to be scientifically honest, add “while the CO2 was sequestered from the atmosphere from the plant before while fossil fuels are adding the CO2″
Always remembering that the trees which formed the coal measures laid down during a highly productive biological phase in our planets history (Along with other sequestering lifeforms such as shelled sea creatures) reduced co2 levels to the point where trees were almost starving for it. How many younger giant redwoods alive today are as large as they grew 1000 years ago during the MWP? Or when the coal measures were laid down?
Henery Chance wrote:
“How can carbon be deleted to make a carbon negative?”
It’s pretty simple, really. You carbonize the biomass in an electric kiln. You generate the electricity without fossil fuels. Viola’ less CO2 in the atmosphere! OK, so that second part needs a little work, but that’s the idea. Plants are extremely efficient at sequestering CO2. The only problem is when they die and decay, all that sequestered CO2 goes back into the environment.
Carbonizing biomass is a really good way to remove CO2 in principle. In addition, the by-products are water and hydrogen. Does anybody know what we can do with hydrogen?
BTW, one of the reasons this idea isn’t getting more attention is it wouldn’t require draconian cuts in CO2 emissions. It does not give central governments an excuse to take over the energy industry or allow the trading of carbon credits, nor would it justify the one-world government the UN envisions. In short, carbonization doesn’t give governments the excuse to grab power- so they are not funding the research.
regeya (15:02:29) :
Amazing. People have already posted that briquettes are different from natural charcoal, yet people keep posting “I’m confused. I thought bruiquettes were charcoal?” No wonder the AGW things poorly of the Watts Up With That crowd…
What a egocentric pompous statement. WUWT is here to inform and discuss.
To wit: Commentary on puzzling things in life, nature, science, weather, climate change, technology, and recent news by Anthony Watts.
@Sanford
“In short, carbonization doesn’t give governments the excuse to grab power- so they are not funding the research.”
The problem with the “official” research is that no 3rd World farmer will ever hear about the results. These scientist are travelling around the world from one congress to the next conferrence, talking with each other and have a nice time on taxpayers expenses.
Whenever they are publishing results of their experiments it’s either in a language no farmer can understand or it is very costly to download the scripts. In most cases both. Another problem is that many results are kept secret because the respective university or scientist wants to make big money out of it.
I’m basically a (Chemical) Process Engineer. I specialize in operating problems in ‘black-art’ processes where knowledge of actual process effects is limited. In the case of wet-process phosphoric acid, because the process response is a complex output of the interactions of raw material variations, process chemistry, operator technique, plant maintenance (and design factors) it is often impossible (or uneconomical) to create a working artificial intelligence to answer all exigencies.
Hence I often sit down in meetings that include (crucial) operators that did not graduate from high school at the same table as PhDs from MIT or Yunnan University. Yeash! I graduated from Lehigh University, and, as a Professional Engineer, my bent is to get the job done. Period. I focus on the important people, the operators and their supervisors, and don’t worry about educating the educated.
Hence you can see that I take many of the marvelous WUWT comments with a grain of salt, discarding the chaff from the wheat, so to speak, and try to learn from all. I have learned a lot from you guys and gals, and I thank you profusely. I don’t expect everyone posting here to be clear, polite, or on point. It just is more fun and takes less energy when you are. And your “intelligence” is a lot less important that your ability to understand, appreciate, and share.
A couple of weeks ago on this blog I suggested the author look into terra preta.
Back in the days when I still believed in AGW, I was looking for ways to get rid of CO2 and came upon terra preta. My goal was to put a ton of charcoal in my yard (about .4 acre).
I never made it to a ton. Probably more like 100 pounds. But believe me the stuff makes the most fantastic soil. I have also made my own charcoal, probably 10 pounds worth. Making your own is kinda fun.
I have it in potted plants and in my vegetable garden and around my trees.
You don’t use briquettes, you use what is called lump charcoal. The briquettes are loaded with petroleum additives, which is something you definitely don’t want in the soil.
You make charcoal by starving the wood of oxygen, essentially letting the wood smolder but never ignite. When you make your own charcoal, the first smoke to come off is gray when the water vapor is coming off. Then the smoke turns yellow as the wood gas is burned and finally the smoke turns blue when the wood oils are burned. When it quits smoking, you have charcoal. There is actually lots of energy in the wood gas and oil which can be captured and used as any other gas or oil.
Charcoal, of course turns the soil black, but it also breaks up clay (the Amazonian soils are primarily a yellow clay). Mix a bit of charcoal, clay and sand and you have a great soil that requires very little soil amendment. The charcoal traps both water and minerals from the rain. Some people claim that water usage declines by 15-17 %. After a couple of years, the soil grows microorganisms in abundance. It takes two to three years for the microorganisms to reach full growth and it is these microbes that make the soil so fertile.
This summer my okra was eight feet tall and my tomatoes about five feet. No fertilizers. Just grown in about a foot of terra preta. My oaks have just done stellar, as have my roses and chrysanthemums.
You just really have to see for yourself.
Buy some lump charcoal and try it out. Its about $5 a bag and in most every grocery store now.
What does it do for sandy soil?
I’m from black soil country, but the story is that it was caused by the glaciers, though the tallgrass prairie is a more likely suspect, I think.
Wesley Bruce, I didn’t write what you quote as if from me.
You are a soils scientist and you don’t understand the rational behind the shift from moldboard plowing to minimum and no till? It is about preventing erosion. The government also has a powerful influence on farmers concerning what they may and may not do. As with soviet agriculture, the government thinks it knows best and makes you obey them. Even when you suspect differently.
The settlers ‘in these here parts’ said that the first crop on newly plowed sod was amazing, and went down after that. I suspect the reason is soil biota, and that was even before the modern heavy reliance on chemical application. People I know have commented that the earthworms don’t seem nearly as abundant, and that that can’t be good, even though everyone chisel plows these days (where they don’t use slit trenches, etc) instead of using moldboard (composting?) plowing. I do wonder about compaction on our heavy clarion-glencoe soils. But I haven’t heard any complaining about that, so maybe that isn’t happening. Our subsoil is mostly yellow clay with inclusions of blue clay (kaolinite?), but our topsoil has such a high carbon content that even when it isn’t peat soil, it will smoke under a magnifying glass on a sunny day.
@ur momisugly David
You can even improve your terra preta soil by adding large amouts of wood ashes (about 10 times the quantity as charcoal powder), animal dung and fertile topsoil (both also 10 times of the charcoal quantity).
This is what we are doing at our vegetable farm in the Philippines. We are also planting in pots to avoid stagnant water. The ashes are increasing the P and K amounts in the soil, the manure the N contents. Also all other minerals etc. are there in good amounts.
At growing stage we are adding 3 grams of urea or other N fertilizer per plant and week. We are also intercropping tomatoes with okra, no more spraying needed and both plants are generating hughe yields. Okra leaves can be permanently partially harvested and used as animal fodder after cooking or drying.
If you like have a look to our new farm video:
Regards from the tropical office, Jochen