Biochar by Lisa Abend

A recent revelation for me on biochar was the understanding that it was the advent of the steel axe that made slash and burn practical. Prior to that, the Indios would need to maximize the fertility and productivity of any land that was cleared and maintained for their livelihood.

This is a well written recent article on the subject that nicely covers the development to date. My long time readers will note that more and more reports of trials around the globe are popping up with impressive success.

In fact we have yet to see a serious setback anywhere, although some ruined soils are slower to respond to the treatment as could be expected.

http://spoonfeedin.blogspot.com/2008/12/world-carbon-biochar-solution.html

This all means that global fertility and productivity of soils in place are going to increase substantially over the next twenty years as we master the methodology.

It is also worth saying that the naysayers are fading and that the scientific explanation that I was one of the first to proffer eighteen months ago is slowly working into the ongoing debate. That the role of the carbon as a solid crystalline acid is to grab and hold nutrients is not obvious yet that is what happens.

My knowledge of that allowed me to immediately accept terra preta, since I had made the conjecture that activated charcoal would be as good as zeolites as a soil additive. A decade earlier I had reviewed work done by Cuba on zeolites and that had led to a review of an article in Scientific American on solid crystalline acids that tied it all together and led to the conjecture.

Doing anything about it was impossible because of the long lead times associated with implementing new agricultural methodology. I was thus delighted to discover the work on terra preta eighteen months ago and am equally delighted to watch the rapid progress it is now making around the globe.

There is nothing like a two thousand year field trial in the middle of the worst soils on earth to run off the regulatory crowd.

I would like to see many more documentaries and I would like to do one in which we simulate production methods using primitive techniques and even minimal farm equipment. I have written a lot on that subject.

World - Carbon: The Biochar Solution

Lisa Abend

On his farm in the hills of west virginia, Josh Frye isn't raising chickens just for meat. He is also raising them for their manure. Through a process that some scientists tout as a solution to climate change, food shortages and the energy crisis, Frye is transforming the waste into a charcoal-like substance called biochar that in the long run could be far better for the world than chicken nuggets. "It might look like this is just a poultry farm," says Frye. "But it's a char farm too."

Burn almost any kind of organic material — corn husks, hazelnut shells, bamboo and, yes, even chicken manure — in an oxygen-depleted process called pyrolysis, and you generate gases and heat that can be used as energy. What remains is a solid — biochar — that sequesters carbon, keeping CO2 out of the atmosphere. In principle, at least, you create energy in a way that is not just carbon neutral, but carbon negative.

And the benefits only begin there. When added to thin and acidic soil of the kind found in much of South America and Africa, char produces higher agricultural yields and lets farmers cut down on costly, petroleum-heavy fertilizers. Subsistence farmers seeking better soil have traditionally relied on slash-and-burn agriculture, which generates greenhouse gases and decimates forests. If instead those farmers slow-smoldered their agricultural waste to produce charcoal — in effect, slash-and-char agriculture — they could fertilize existing plots instead of clearing more land. This in turn would reduce emissions in the atmosphere, and so on in a virtuous circle of environmental renewal.

Could it really be that simple? It appears to have been for the original inhabitants of the Amazon basin. In the 16th century, Spanish explorer Francisco de Orellana wrote home describing the remarkably fertile lands he had discovered there. In the 19th century, American and Canadian geologists uncovered the reason: bands of terra preta (dark earth), which locals continued to cultivate successfully. Research revealed that the original inhabitants of the region had added charred wood and leaves — biochar — to their lands.

Centuries later, it was still there, enriching the soil. "You couldn't help but notice it. There would be all this poor, grayish soil, and then, right next to it, a tract of black that was several meters deep," says Johannes Lehmann, a soil scientist who worked in Manaus, Brazil, in the late 1990s. After he left the Amazon in 2000 for a job at Cornell University, N.Y., Lehmann started wondering what would happen if farmers today could make their own terra preta. He has found one answer in a field trial in Kenya, where 45 farmers achieved twice the yield in their corn crops with biochar than with conventional fertilizers.

Epidra, a private firm in Athens, Ga., is exploring larger-scale applications, such as pyrolysis systems that can produce both enough energy to power a tractor and a biochar tailored to improve particular soils. "If you're going to grow food, you have to do it responsibly," says Bob Hawkins, Eprida's project manager. "And one way of doing that is to use it to generate sustainable energy." A prototype can turn a ton of ground peanut shells into 600 lb. (270 kg) of biochar, with energy as the bonus.

Biochar's ability to sequester CO2 has given new urgency to such research. "Reducing emissions isn't enough — we have to draw down the carbon stock in the atmosphere," says Tim Flannery, chair of the Copenhagen Climate Council, a consortium of scientists and business leaders linked to next year's United Nations Climate Summit. "And for that, slow pyrolysis biochar is a superior solution to anything else that's been proposed." Cornell's Lehmann is even more emphatic. "If biochar could be massively applied around the globe," he says, "we could end the emissions problem in one to two years."

Not everyone agrees. "Biochar isn't a silver bullet, not by a long shot," says Dominic Woolf, a researcher at Swansea University in Wales. "You have to look at the big picture: pyrolysis itself produces carbon dioxide emissions, and you have to consider that when you try to determine biochar's capacity for sequestration." Lehmann says he welcomes the doubts, and notes that addressing them requires "investors willing to take the risk." Which is where chicken farmer Frye, with his small biochar operation, comes in as one of the few people out there actually making a business of it. With a pyrolysis unit that can create 3-4 tons of biochar a day, he generates enough energy to heat his hen houses; and he sells the char as fertilizer for $600 a ton. For Lehmann, biochar's benefits aren't so much a scientific novelty as a return to basics. "From cave drawings to iron smelting, charcoal has always played an important role in the development of civilization," he says. "Maybe it's about to do it again."

Can Biochar Paint the World Green?

I add this recent item on Biochar. This will refresh your knowledge on the subject. I have covered it extensively over the past year or so and it is always nice to see another good survey story.

The principle reason this flies is that in the face of the developed world’s regulatory environment and the clear lack of patentability, most protocols like this run into an irresistible headwind. Familiarity with the literature on zeolites and thence solid crystalline acids immediately suggests the use of activated carbon as a soil additive. It certainly did to me yet I backed off for the above reasons.

Because the Amazonian Indios have conducted a field test over thousands of years, the need for extensive field tests just to show feasibility evaporates and we can now study the effects of thousands of years of such practices on such soils.

Thus concern over scientific acceptance may make you look wise but science in the field makes you look like the guy sitting on the cure for cancer.

Can charcoal paint the world green?

A look at the promising future of biochar

by Myles Estey

October 31, 2008

Amidst growing documentation of global warming and its dangers, a simple method of carbon sequestration has been quietly demonstrating potential to play an integral role in the fight against climate change.

Far from the spectacular engineering of most sequestration methods or industrial greenhouse gas (GHG) capture systems, focus instead lies on very simple ingredients: waste organic matter, a kiln and chunks of charcoal. Interest in how this can not only fight climate change, but also soil degradation, soil toxicity and poor crop yields, continues to build rapidly around the world.

This is not your average charcoal. Originally called Terra Preta de Indio (Amazonian Dark Earth, after its region of origin), researchers today tend towards the term “biochar.” The char product derives from a special burning process called pyrolysis, where organic matter is burned in the absence of oxygen at a temperature between 300 and 600 degrees Celsius. Wood chips, crop residues, manure, food wastes: any and all forms of organic matter can be combusted through pyrolysis to similar results.

The anaerobic nature of this burning partially prevents the release of carbon as a gas, instead leaving a residual char that is extremely rich in carbon: the biochar. The differentiating feature in the two breakdown processes is simple.

Typical combustion of organic matter (burning, incineration), releases nearly all of the carbon as carbon dioxide (CO2) the gas which scientists increasingly identify as the root of the climate change problem. Similarly, when organic materials are left to break down naturally, these same products will release methane, a gas with 21 times more global warming potential (GWP) than CO2 which again fuels the climate change feedback loop. Pyrolysis burning ensures much of the carbon stays as a solid, thus not releasing it into the atmosphere as a gas.

The pyrolysis kilns – which can range from the size of a fist to an industrial facility - have yet another added feature that help mitigate the effects of climate change. Many are designed to harness the heat of the kiln to assist in generating the facility where they are stationed. In other words, while biomass gets treated in a carbon-responsible manner, it simultaneously diminishes the need to draw more power from the grid, which has associated emissions of its own, an added step of efficiency.

Within the actual pyrolysis process, instead of emitting the majority of carbon as gas, the nature of the anaerobic burning permits roughly 50 per cent of the carbon in the combusted product to end up as the carbon-rich biochar. The promising aspect here is that carbon is stable in this state. It can be buried safely in the ground, where it breaks down on the scale of hundreds to thousands of years, boosting soil health while doing so.

As Cornell professor Johannes Lehman – among the more prolific and respected researchers on the topic – writes in the article “Bio-energy in the Black”, the buried biochar has two main attractive features: “a high stability against decay and [a] superior ability to retain nutrients as compared to other forms of soil matter.” This means that as the carbon breaks down in the ground, it makes positive contributions to the soil health. Initial research has shown definitive potential for the char to boost crop yields, reduce soil degradation and offset the presence of dangerous chemicals that have ended up in soil - all fairly high accolades for little pieces of charcoal.

Despite the promising functions of biochar, research on the modern applications of biochar remains in the embryonic phase. To date, all that has been determined is there is enough potential for biochar to warrant further study. Initial observations of how well char has acted when put in soil, and how safe the char is as a carbon storage mechanism, has been a major boon to the burgeoning interest in the topic. Similarly positive results yielded from climate models calculating the extent to which pyrolysis methods of combusting biomass can prevent the release of CO2 into the atmosphere are further propping up interest in pursuing the practice.

With optimistic initial findings, claims have emerged that state even modest application of biochar systems could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 10 per cent, that biochar will be the wedge to avert climate change disaster or that biochar will help arrest the onslaught of desertification and topsoil depletion.

Professor Lehman, though himself an ardent believer in the worth of biochar, is insistent that much more research needs to be done to determine exactly what role biochar can play in helping society work towards a healthier planet before definitive claims can be made.

“We need to evaluate the biochar potential at the scale that it needs to be implemented, with solid accompaniment by research to evaluate both its benefits and potential problems,” explains Lehmann. He adds with some chagrin that the money needed to move forward is a drop in the bucket compared to U.S. research money backing biofuel and other carbon sequestration projects.

“I think the technology is at our fingertips,” Lehmann furthers, “if we could just get a few million [in funding] it would make a huge contribution to our understanding.”

Beyond understanding how it will all work scientifically on the larger scale, more also must be done to understand how biochar can work from an economic and policy standpoint. No matter how ecologically beneficial biochar may prove to be, it will go nowhere without industry backing.

Peter Fransham - the Vice President of Technology at Advanced BioRefinery Inc. (ABRI), an Ottawa-based company that works with pyrolysis - is well aware of this. Peter has the unique position of having worked in the small industry for 20 years, a veritable eternity in this young field. Even today, ABRI remains one of only four or five Canadian companies dealing with pyrolysis or biochar.

Fransham believes any decisions to invest in biochar will come down to simple cost analysis: will it bring sufficient financial benefit to those who use it? He offers the sample question of “what is the increase in yields that one will obtain from putting [char] into the field, and how long is the payback for that [individual]?” Being able to answer this question accurately will be crucial to biochar’s direction from here.

“At this point, we don’t really have the numbers to say what the payback is going to be. And that’s where the academic community comes in, to help determine these rates,” Fransham adds. “Can we put this in at this rate, and have this improvement, and generate a positive rate of return for the farmer?” Accurate answers to this question still hang in the balance, and Fransham underlines that determining actual dollar figures on the costs and benefits will be a prerequisite for an industry to grow around the technology.

These steps are being taken, however slowly, and far removed from the limelight. ABRI’s understanding of how the biochar process can work continues to develop in concert with others around the world. Joint research projects in both Canada and the U.S. continue to fuel ABRI with more information about how their two main biomass interests - poultry manure and wood chips - can be reduced through pyrolysis, and used as a marketable product.

Positives outweigh the negatives for Fransham and his company these days, but as he says of any long term success, “biochar has to prove this is something we have to do today, as well as in the future” in order to really flourish.

Lehmann and the academic community around biochar are hoping to do just this. Far more so than Fransham, Lehmann speaks with excitement of the potential for biochar not as a business, but as a means to fight climate change, boost crop yields and enrich soil quality. And it is in these latter three points that most of Lehmann’s work focuses, hoping to find that we may have a way to help us steer off our crash course to a climatic disaster.

However, Lehmann speaks firmly on the fact that biochar will never be the sole answer to curbing global warming. Such a goal, he reminds, will only be realized by reducing the high dependence on GHG-producing energy we see today. He cautions that it is an illusion to think that biochar is a magic solution, instead emphasizing that it can “play a significant role in a portfolio of options” to fight climate change, if done properly. He adds, “it may be the only option that we have right now, today, that can actually have a net withdrawal of CO2 from the atmosphere in a safe and environmentally conscious way.”

This, of course, is hugely important news for anyone even remotely concerned with our planet’s health.

The fact that biochar can conceivably remove CO2 from the atmosphere and make an end product that has its own set of benefits is certainly compelling, to say the least, and more than worthy of the research Lehmann, Fransham and their peers advocate.

If it is even half of what some have predicted, everything from timber mills in the Canadian north, to Australian farms plagued by arid ground, to African villages that rely on dangerous or inefficient combusting methods, to mega-farms in the American northwest could be reaping the benefits of biochar and revolutionizing how we deal with our organic waste. And all the while bringing our atmospheric CO2 to more stable levels.

If research heads in the direction many are hoping it will, there may be a chance yet for charcoal to do something few would have ever guessed of it: make our world a greener place.