JMG and I were both too optimistic. We both thought charcoal agriculture was ready to play a limited but real role in controlling global warming. Burn some high carbon biomass, turning it into charcoal that will stay stable for thousands of years; add it to soil, which builds tilth and structure; you have just sequestered some carbon and improved agriculture at the same time.
We know it can be done. Pre-Columbian Indians covered much of Brazil with terra preta (black earth) built up through "slash-and-char" agriculture over thousands of years. Terra preta is not just dead, well-structured soil. It hosts a complex ecology of living organisms that help maintain soil ions and PH -- one of the most amazing agricultural environments ever created.
Unfortunately, it turns out we don't know how to duplicate it yet. Applying pyrolysis to biomass and then mixing it with compost turns out not produce terra preta. According to Scientific American, modern attempts increase yields at first, but they drop after three or four harvests. So while it is worth more research, terra preta is not a solution for today.
Climate Citizen: Michael Pollan on agriculture and health care
Tweet for the bees
Soda lobby gets its game on
Comments
View as Flat
Rune Posted 11:09 am
20 May 2007
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/CarbonHydrology/
http://www.amazingcarbon.com/KingaroySUMMARIES.pdf
linked text
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Delay And Deny Posted 1:26 pm
20 May 2007
As I've written previously, I think Americans eat way too much food.
The reason is: we're starving.
We don't get the right balance of amino acids...so we eat and eat to try and get nutrition.
The Mayans ate a blend of corn, beans and squash. The triad was able to give them all their amino acids, so they didn't need much meat.
While we're arguing efficiencies for the automobile...how about fuel for the human body?!?
John Bailo, The "Denier Guy"
You Read It Here First
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erich Posted 1:39 pm
20 May 2007
can manage Carbon for the greatest collective benefit at the lowest economic price, on vast scales. It just needs to be seen by ethical globally minded companies.
Could you please consider looking for a champion for this orphaned Terra Preta Carbon Soil Technology.
The main hurtle now is to change the current perspective held by the IPCC that the soil carbon cycle is a wash, to one in which soil can be used as a massive and ubiquitous Carbon sink via Charcoal. Below are the first concrete steps in that direction;
Tackling Climate Change in the U.S.
Potential Carbon Emissions Reductions from Biomass by 2030
by Ralph P. Overend, Ph.D. and Anelia Milbrandt
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
http://www.ases.org/climatechange/toc/07_biomass.pdf
The organization 25x25 (see 25x'25 - Home) released it's (first-ever, 55-page )"Action Plan" ; see http://www.25x25.org/storage/25x25/d...ActionPlan.pdf
On page 31, as one of four foci for recommended RD&D, the plan lists: "The development of biochar, animal agriculture residues and other non-fossil fuel based fertilizers, toward the end of integrating energy production with enhanced soil quality and carbon sequestration."
and on p 32, recommended as part of an expanded database aspect of infrastructure: "Information on the application of carbon as fertilizer and existing carbon credit trading systems."
I feel 25x25 is now the premier US advocacy organization for all forms of renewable energy, but way out in front on biomass topics.
There are 24 billion tons of carbon controlled by man in his agriculture , I forgot the % that is waste, but when you add all the other cellulose waste which is now dumped to rot or digested or combusted and ultimately returned to the atmosphere as GHG, the balanced number is around 24 Billion tons. So we have plenty of bio-mass.
Even with all the big corporations coming to the GHG negotiation table, like Exxon, Alcoa, .etc, we still need to keep watch as they try to influence how carbon management is legislated in the USA. Carbon must have a fair price, that fair price and the changes in the view of how the soil carbon cycle now can be used as a massive sink verses it now being viewed as a wash, will be of particular value to farmers and a global cool breath of fresh air for us all.
If you have any other questions please feel free to call me or visit the TP web site I've been drafted to co-administer. http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/?q=node
It has been immensely gratifying to see all the major players join the mail list , Cornell folks, T. Beer of Kings Ford Charcoal (Clorox), Novozyne the M-Roots guys(fungus), chemical engineers, Dr. Danny Day of G. I. T. , Dr. Antal of U. of H., Virginia Tech folks and probably many others who's back round I don't know have joined.
Also Here is the Latest BIG Terra Preta Soil news;
ConocoPhillips Establishes $22.5 Million Pyrolysis Program at Iowa State 04/10/07
Erich J. Knight
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GreyFlcn Posted 2:34 pm
20 May 2007
ConocoPhillips Establishes $22.5 Million Pyrolysis Program at Iowa State
Now is that charcoal, or thermal depolymerization?
Last I checked, they were doing TDP.
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Gar Lipow Posted 4:28 pm
20 May 2007
Yes, sequestration in soil can still provide some sequestration. No till agriculture (done properly with low input biodiverse crop rotation), permaculture based on trees and other perennials can all provide some sequestration, though since it is biological, how long lasting is another question.
GreyFlcn. Apparently the pyrolysis still produces charcoal in the end. But I think experiments have been done with traditionally made charcoal as well. It is not the same as Preta Terra.
Knight: that post looks a lot like spam. It is completely unresponsive to my post. Nobody can champion Preta Terra until we know how to do it. If you want to champion more R&D, I'm all for it. But Preta Terra is not something we know how to do today. Whereas efficiency, conservation, solar, wind, low-input soil building agriculture, preserving forests and reversing deforestation are all things we do know how to do today. I'm all for research, but we need to start implementing the things we know how to do.
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GtoeOne Posted 11:17 pm
20 May 2007
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Billhook Posted 11:40 pm
20 May 2007
your suggestion that because something has been done badly, somewhere & somewhen,
we should "think twice" before advocating doing it at all,
seems a near classic example of what passes for discussion on so many US sites these days.
It is so obviously fallacious that I can't see why you'd want your name attached to it.
Maybe you just propose any old junk if it will diss the idea of felling trees ?
In my country we've been making charcoal for at least five millenia,
and at least four millenia back we developed the silviculture of Coppicing.
This is probably our oldest sustainable industry, which is now enjoying a major resurgence.
FYI in-cycle coppice & standards hold the highest biodiversity of any European ecosystem.
And you'd like to close it down, in case it's done badly ?
Maybe you should learn a bit about the very ancient arts of forestry before you go dissing them ?
For instance, that it is not the forester who kills forests . . . .
it is the rancher who brings cattle, sheep or goats to graze off the regrowth and so prevent regeneration.
If I sound fed up its because I've seen thirty years of environmentalists dissing productive forestry,
abour which they tend to know bog all,
thus obstructing the critically important worldwide reforestation projects
that are urgently needed.
Regards,
Billhook
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Wilson_Energy Posted 12:53 am
21 May 2007
The conference was attended by soil scientists, socially-responsible investors interested in the economic opportunities, some people who farm or work in the farm sector, and just a few government employees and an even scanter few environmental activists (including me). This may be the best indication of what is happening with this concept.
My impression is that agrichar (aka biochar) is the real deal. It will help store carbon and keep it out of the atmosphere. It will help restore or enhance soil fertility.
Yet it is also obvious that we don't know the answers to questions like, "How much?" "Where?" "How quickly?" "How well?" "Made with what?"
Certain presentations pointed out that the energy value of char may well exceed the value of char as a global warming solution, at pretty much any forseeable value of carbon dioxide sequestration. But those presentations rest on assumptions about the value of char as a fertilizing agent or catalyst that may well be exceeded.
Our organization focuses on solutions to global warming that can be effective in the Southeastern US. Soils here tend to be low in carbon and require significant fertilization - so this approach is, as a first impression, a good match. But going from enthusiasm to spreading thousands or millions of tons of charcoal bits across the landscape is a big challenge.
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amazingdrx Posted 1:26 am
21 May 2007
But I still think biogas digestion is better. the biogas used in fuel cells to produce clean electricity and organic fertilizer from the digestor to build soil. That soil will sequester CO2. Inert matter for soil is available already, that would be the part played by the charcoal.
The thing that is missing is organic fertilizer to feed the soil ecosystem. Chemical fossil fuel dreived fertilizer doesn't feed the living soil, it strips it of organic matter. Soil with charcoal and chemical fertilizer would still be dead.
I believe more carbon would be stored this way with less GHG emissions in total. And of course there is always the temptation of those producing charcoal to cheat and instead of adding it to soil burn it to add to bottomline profit.
This is much worse if charcoal is made using combustion and worse yet if carbon offset funds are used to pay for the supposed sequestration. people think they are offsetting when really they are contributing to a scam that releases even more GHG.
That vision of prehistoric slash and burn charcoal production to build soil makes me cringe. it may have been harmless then, without the gHG emergency we face today, but it is far too close to the common practice going on right now all over the tropics. Al Gore showed it from space in his movie.
And now rain forest is being slashed and burned to grow fuel for gas guzzling! Very alarming.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Gar Lipow Posted 2:03 am
21 May 2007
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David Roberts Posted 2:36 am
21 May 2007
grist.org
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amazingdrx Posted 3:11 am
21 May 2007
Mighty difficult to verify Gar. But I would like to see a contest between organic fertilizer users with and without charcoal.
That would be interesting. And the totals of net GHG is yet to be done.
At least we are all talking about organic farming. But I just don't like combustion. The only kind that is justifiable is burning downed trees from fire prone zones. And even that would be better digested.
Come to think of it, maybe I should start burying the charcoal from my campfires (about half the mass started out with is left). Using pyrolisis sequestration in that case seems to make perfect eco-karmic sense. I usually bury the charcoal chunks to stop the fire then dig them up next time and reincorporate them in the next campfire.
I always used downed wood that presents a forest fire hazard, but this charcoal sequestration might be worthwhile.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 3:18 am
21 May 2007
We'll see what happens in a few months. Excellent!
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 3:25 am
21 May 2007
From a link in the blog DR linked to. Fascinating history. Maybe tribal peoples copied nature's own randomly periodic fires when they realized the soil was better? They do tend to clear forest using fire.
Prairie and even forest soil in our region has this natural process too. Fire is even necessary to activate many seeds.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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sunflower Posted 3:32 am
21 May 2007
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amazingdrx Posted 4:05 am
21 May 2007
But only in the ancient Twerra Preta soil. It has absorbed micronutrients for millenia through filtration. Charcoal is a great filter, water passes through, micronutrients are held.
In newer use of charcoal, the charcoal has yet to absorb micronutrients. That may take decades.
What about a combination of biogas digestor organic fertilizer and charcoal? Biochar charcoal granules soaked in organic fertilzer for days or years, then dried and added to soil.
That might effectively simulate Terra Preta.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Philip Small Posted 7:04 am
21 May 2007
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amazingdrx Posted 1:14 am
22 May 2007
It's the soil. Especially in the realm of carbon sink restoration.
Soil sequesters carbon without easily corrupted carbon offset programs and huge pyrolisis power plant facilities. Organic farm soil, prairie soil, wetland soil.
Prairie soil sequesters 1.8 tons of cO2 per acre per year. If all dead chemically fertilized farm soil were instead converted to organic farming, how much CO2 would be removed from the climate system? 1 ton per acre per year?
How many acres of chemically destroyed soil are there in the US alone? Lawns, golf courses, gardens, cropland, that could all go organic with organic fertilizer replacing chemical/fossil fuel derived fertilizer?
Maybe a billion tons of CO2 could be removed from the atmosphere by converting to organic and restoring the soil?
Not much compared to the huge amount emitted here now. But cut those emissions with conservation such as plugin cars and geothermal heating/cooling and distributed renewable generation and storage. And that billion tons per year might actually reverse this climate disaster.
Not to mention the soil that could be restored in the rest of the world.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Bart Anderson Posted 2:54 am
22 May 2007
The book is based on the work of soil microbiologist Elaine Ingham, located in Oregon.
If you are interested in the subject, I wrote on online article on soil ecology, summarizing a set of lectures that Dr. Ingham delivered.
Soil food web - opening the lid of the black box.
I believe that most of the concepts advanced by Dr. Ingham are accepted by soil scientists, although the validity some of her techniques have not been scientifically confirmed.
I am very excited about Terra Preta. I suspect that its apparent ability to hold nutrients comes from complex interactions in the soil, probably with micro-organisms.
The industrial tone of the Scientific American article turned me off. The soil is something to respect, not to exploit. It is complicated and beautiful... is it too much to ask that we observe and understand it, before unleashing our massive high-tech solutions?
Bart
Energy Bulletin
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GtoeOne Posted 3:49 am
24 May 2007
We do need to think twice based on poor practices of the past.
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SKBTE Posted 2:17 pm
28 May 2007
The possibilities for improving the productivity of cultivated crops is there and real too. It is evident by the existence of "an area the size of France" covered in Terra Preta soils in the Amazon River basin. We may not have the recipe for to make Neo Terra Preta the same as the original Terra Preta yet and it may take 50 or 100 years for us to make it that useful as an agricultural paradigm, but we ought to get started. The ancient Amazon people didn't just build that soil for shits and giggles. It did work. It did improve agriculture in the soils. It still works there today. Its only a mystery to us now. It's not ancient magic. We can do it again.
Clearly, the current anthropogenic flux of carbon into the atmosphere is a primary cause of global climatic change. The IPCC has studied it long enough to have verified that and thousands of scientists are in agreement. The critics are in handfuls and they've got axes to grind and the wrong kind of corporate backing for their researches. It amounts to like 5.4 to 6 billion tons of carbon goes into the atmosphere as a result of human activity. That carbon was not there before. It was buried and has been buried in the ground for hundreds of millions of years. Mining fossil fuels and burning them to harvest the energy they contain is probably not going to stop anytime soon either. The mining and oil interests alone are going to throw every bleeding pseudo-scientific quack at trying to debunk an anthropogenic cause for global warming until doomsday comes. They do not want to pay to clean up the mess. They do not want to pass the cost along for cleaning up the mess to consumers (clearly that is what they would do too!)
The outputs from human civilization of carbon in the form of CO2 and CH4 (methane) are not the only greenhouse gases we generate. NO2 is a gas which is released from industrial fertilizer that has been put into soils which have little or no organic matter to retain the fertilizer nutrients. NO2 pollution is an outgas of tremendous proprtions from agricultre fields and streams, rivers, and lakes in agricultural areas. NO2 pollution is 200 times more potent as a green house gas than CO2. The worlds annual budget is for 150 million tons of nitrogen based, industrially produced fertilizer! Much of it is released into the atmosphere as NO2.
For more than thirty years, soil scientists at the USDA have tried to convince farmers to increase the soil organic matter in their fields by promoting "no-till" and "low-till" farming practices. Although effective if practiced, these methods take a long time. Charcoal inputs to soil (Neo Terra Preta) helps soil form soil organic matter, and helps soil retain fertility. Neo Terra Preta can prevent NO2 off gas release. Neo Terra Preta can reduce the need for fertilization at current levels.
Profit and politics are the most impatient, short sighted endeavors on the planet. That is why we are in the pickle we are in. We need to revert to our old mores and and old way of doing things, to reward the efforts of hard working people all over the world. Huge governments, oil companies, and mining companies need to become dinosaurs and extinct themselves. Neo Terra Preta is something that all people can be a part of. It can be formed on any land with any biomass. Anyone making charcoal and burying it in soil should be able to receive a carbon credit. They will be creating a real value to the world. They will have sequestered carbon, effectively and cheaply for thousands of years.
Our world is as populated as it is, because of the success of human agriculture. We are 6 billion because we can feed the world. That did not happen because of magic or politics. The profit of the farmer has been for centuries to feed his family. Just in this past century farmers have learned and developed ways to feed many, many families. There is great potential in agriculture, still. Hundreds of thousands of acres and hectares of land, which were previously uncultivated, are going in new production now. The agronomists and farmers doing this can do it economically now, too. The arable land is not unlimated, though, and they will eventually need ways to improve the productivity of the lands they cultivate. I believe farmers will find a way to do it using Neo Terra Preta.
You know, too, it was not politics or profit which put a man on the moon, either. That cost a great deal of treasure for the space race, here and in the former Soviet Union. The consequent arms race cost a great deal too. We have yet to see a profit from either of them. Both the space race and the arms race were accomplished by the work of science and engineering professionals. They did it. It was not for profit and it was only directed and financed by politicians, even if it was economic folly.
Scientists, engineers, and farmers can build a working solution to the global warming crisis. Scientists, engineers, and farmers can build a working solution to how we are going to possibly feed 10 billion people on this planet by the end of the century. I think we need to listen to scientists, engineers, and farmers about how and what to do and do some of the things they say should be done, some of the things they can do.
Neo Terra Preta is a great hope, possibly our "Last Great Hope". All the the renewable energy sources like solar thermal, solar photovoltaic, wind, geothermal power, and ocean tidal power, cannot boast what biomass use and Neo Terra Preta can. They are only "carbon neutral energy" and can only reduce future emissions (population growth alone will likely offset any gains in output reduction).
But, Neo Terra Preta from biomass is the one "carbon NEGATIVE energy" possibility. Neo Terra Preta from biomass is the only way to REVERSE the current trend in increasing carbon output to the atmosphere. Neo Terra Preta is the only way we can clean up the mess and take back all of that CO2 pollution that we out into the atmosphere. We can still use all of the renewable energy technologies. We can harvest carbon from the atmosphere and energy from the biomass and we can clean up this mess. It only took 150 years to make the mess. We can clean it up as fast, I think. We just have to change how we get energy. If we do this, we will see a cleaner world in our lifetimes. We may also see the benefit to agriculture that Neo Terra Preta promises.
Neo Terra Preta alone can clean the world and feed the world.
But we have to act NOW! We must begin doing this work immediately. It must be seen that the IPCC is not telling us that global climatic change caused by humankind is a serious problem. It must be seen that the IPCC is telling us that it is an international emergency.
Sean K. Barry
Troposphere Energy, LLC
(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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SKBTE Posted 2:39 pm
28 May 2007
Someone says 90% of the energy is left in the charcoal. Not possible, I say. At most conversion of dry biomass to charcoal will leave 30-40% of the original biomass weight as charocal weight and it will contain maybe 60% of the chemicla energy from the biomass. This would be an extrodinarily good yield, too. it's more likely to be 25% by weight and 40-50% of the energy. Drier biomass can be charred with less energy lost. The lost energy is in the form of heat and some energy containig exhaust gases (CO, H2, and CH4).
Charocal in soil does NOT decompose or gas off into the atmosphere, like 3 full inches of compost disappears in 2 or three years. Compost is desompisng waste biomass. Bacteria and fingus digest it and they do repire CO2 and H2O as waste products from their digestion of it. Charcoal, which in 93% percent pure carbon. Pure carbon is not digested by soil microorganisms. Pure carbon is not taken up by the roots of plants growing in the soil and respired into the atmosphere.
Charocal in soil does not in anyway resemble the effect of composted biomas (soil organic matter) in soil. Charocal in soil is highly resilient. Charcoal, which has been carbon dated up to 4500 years old has been found in original Terra Preta soils in the Amazon river basin. Charcoal in soil is the only truly verifiable millenium grade carbon sink that has ever been invented.
Yes, Terra Preta soil in the Amazon river basin is absolutely a human made structure! Humans invented it! Anciuent Amazon poeople did not invent Terra Preata to sequester carbon. They invented it to make the in-arable ferralsol/acrisol/oxisol soils in the Amazon river basin grow food crops and they succeeded on a grand scale. It has been estimated that several million people lived in the Amazon river basin before European colonization.
The Terra Preta soil formed two thre and four millenia ago is still there! It covers 10% of the land in the basin, an "area the size of France" It is still very fertile soil. It is prized soil, mined, sold and used for agriculture purposes to this day. It still hold most if not all of the carbon in the charocal which was put into it those milleniums ago.
Neo Terra Preta can unquestionably sequester carbon for a very long time.
Sean K. Barry
Troposphere Energy, LLC
(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:02 pm
28 May 2007
Where our nitrogen fertilizer comes almost entirely from Natural Gas, to form Ammonia.
(CH4 into NH3)
http://energy.seekingalpha.com/article/33925
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amazingdrx Posted 1:55 am
29 May 2007
If organic soil without charcoal dissappears, how does prairie and wetland souil build up thicker and thicker storing more and more carbon over time? American paririe soil was 20+ feet thick when sodbusters started plowing. Chemical agriculture has released all the carbon it once stored to leave it inert. Adding charcoal alone would not change that, organic fertilizer and biomass as compost is needed too.
Switching to organic farming and restoring prairies, wetlands, and conservation reserve croplands, could store 1 billion tons of CO2 per year here in the US.
Enough to reverse the trend of increasing GHG if human sources are eliminated with distributed renewable energy generation and storage, plugin cars, and geothermal heating/cooling.
A whole new industry that produces clean energy from biomass and uses charcoal soaked in organic fertilizer as a soil amendment could be a big help. But the cO2 released by fuel cell/turbine energy production from the pyrolization process and the biodigestion process ought to be captured with solar collector algae systems.
Burning biomass to make charcoal for neo terra preta will cancel the benefits of carbon sequestration from charcoal, it will need to be done with waste heat from the fuel cell/turbines instead.
But it seems possible to replace chemical fertilizer entirely with organic fertilizer soaked into granulated charcoal. It is time release and holds micronutrients, encouraging colonies of microorganisms within the charcoal that seed larger populations of microorganisms in the soil.
I'm trying this in my garden. And I wrote to Terra cycle, the worm poop liquid fertilizer company, about this. Maybe they'll go ahead and provide a dry fertilizer alternative to miracle grow as well? For another lawsuit? Hehehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Gar Lipow Posted 2:06 am
29 May 2007
So charcoal is not necessary to build soil structure, but some form of carbon fixation is. Anerobic digestion (which is what produces methane) preserves nutrients, but builds zero soil structure. The result is a liquid fertilizer which is just as bad for soil structure as artificial nitrogen fertilizer created from natural gas. Such fertilizer is good for hydroponics, or combined with something to build structure, but does not make sense agriculturally on its own.
Yes, switching to low input farming combined with no-till or low-till means can sequestrate quite a bit of carbon. Anaerobic digestion to produce methane can play a role in this; but it has to be done carefully, and using a limited percent of organic waste as input.
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amazingdrx Posted 2:43 am
29 May 2007
Organic fertilizer feeds the soil microorganisms, chemical fertilizer strips the biomass out.
Ask any organic gardener, or better yet taste their tomatoes, then taste one from a store grown on sterile, inert "soil".
The taste in produce comes from the soil.
The problem with chemical fertilizer is that it is a very harsh additive that runs off with the first irrigation or rain. That means it has to be applied over and over. Exactly the way hydroponics works, that IS modern chemical agriculture.
It also strips organic matter out of soil. The addition of the concentrated chemical nitrogen "burns" the organic matter, in aerobic and aneroebic digestion. Think of it as a slower form of combustion that releases methane and cO2.
Could organic fertilizer be used just as chemical fertilizer is to farm hydroponically? I suppose so. But you would see even sand start to build a soil structure. Organic fertilizer contains seed colonies of microorganisms.
They latch onto any organic matter in the soil and start the soil building process.
Linear scientific thinking brought us this disaster. We're going to need symbiotic thinking to get out of it. Think symbiosis within the soil ecosystem, and organic fertilizer feeding that system.
Aneroebic digestion in biodigestors turns waste that normally runs off (and releases methane from wetland and sediments), like manure, into organic fertilizer that helps build soil. A byproduct is clean water, another byproduct is renewable electric energy from biogas to backup solar, wind, and water power.
Burning biomass to produce charcoal and very dirty electric power is a very bad idea. I see that being promoted over and over with these pyrolisis sequestration, charcoal soil amendment schemes. Combustion is not helpfull to planet earth's human friendly climate.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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SustainableGreen Posted 4:16 am
29 May 2007
Uh, sorry, I don't get it. Not...at...all. Someone wants to partly burn biomass, to create charcoal ,or suck CO2 out of the air, and produce Carbon out of that, and then plow it into soil somewhere? With what energy--where--at whose expense--and at what cost?
The South Americans who created Terra Preta did it over thousands of years, strictly with manual labor, and we expect something similar in...Ohio? Utah? South Carolina? In 50 years? Where--what--will contain and transport this additional, highly capital-, energy-, land-, and labor-intensive activity?
This sounds an awful lot like monster repellent from the makers of the monster. This is a repeat of the Monsanto business model, wherein the world was given Roundup, then Roundup-ready crops, and then the next generation of Roundup. We must give credit to Monsanto for the "Perfect Business Plan". Kudos!
And labor--are we envisioning recreating the Native American model and have people turning over soil by hand to incorporate the Carbon? How big a 'Guest Worker' Program will that require?
And what blinders we must have--the least among us--people--sit in a squat and sift through ashes in the Sahel region of Africa, looking for unburned bits of wood to use for cooking, and we want to synthesize the same material, manufacture at enormous cost what they crawl on the ground for, so we can bury it?
Honestly this sounds like an industry idea from people who are desperately determined to make money with any idea possible, at any cost possible, in any way possible. It is too bad narcissism, greed, marketing, and blindness don't meet in self-annihilation.
The simple act of putting Carbon into the ground may be a Carbon-positive act, but beyond that it becomes another shell game. "Clean Coal" must be jealous. And they dig this stuff up in Brazil and haul it off for sale? There is another business plan right there!
Hell is much too good for all of us.
David
Sustainability For Life
Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
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Gar Lipow Posted 7:05 am
29 May 2007
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erich Posted 2:56 pm
29 May 2007
David,
I hope Clean Coal just realises that deep Geologic/Oil well sequestration is too expensive.
Also, after harvest the Terra Preta soils GROW BACK.
Erich
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GreyFlcn Posted 3:01 pm
29 May 2007
Which is significant since most N2O comes from fertilizers.
http://www.greyfalcon.net/forcing3.png
Fowles believes that storing black carbon in soil carries less risk, would be quicker to implement, and could be done at much lower cost than burying carbon dioxide in old oil fields or aquifers. And he says the secondary benefits to agriculture could be substantial: "Biochar reduces the soil's requirement for irrigation and fertilizer, both of which emit carbon." Fowles adds that it has also been shown to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases from decay processes in soil. This would include nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas. "Biochar has been observed to reduce nitrous-oxide emissions from cultivated soil by 40 percent."
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18589/
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GreyFlcn Posted 3:20 pm
29 May 2007
Biomass pyrolysis without drying.
Produces lignite-charcoal and water, with no byproducts.
http://www.mpg.de/english/illustrationsDocumentation/mult ...
Asside from the heat needed to drive the process, it's 100% carbon effecient.
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amazingdrx Posted 3:45 pm
29 May 2007
That's not what I meant.
What I meant that is with chemical agriculture fertilizer has to be added over and over, a little more organic matter is "burned" away by aerobic digestion each time. The chemical fertilizer mostly washes away and runs off into ground water and wetlands, that's why repeated application, similar to hydroponics, is needed to keep plant growth going with chemical agriculture.
By using organic fertilizer, with organic matter returned to the soil of course, we ARE talking about orghanic agriculture, the soil ecosystem is activated. The organic fertilizer is absorbed by the living soil. It does not need to be applied repeatedly and thus does not run off.
Add organic matter to chemical fertilized soil and repeated chemical fertilizer applications eventually turn the organic matter to methane and CO2 that blows away into the air, adding to GHG problem.
Aneroebic digestion in dairy farming is facilitated by wood chip bedding for the cows. The chips are not completely broken down in one cycle, they are softened. Then the fertilizer is leached out of them and they are used as bedding again.
The best digesting for organic farming and energy production would leave biomass like these wood chips or straw particles mixed wth the fertilizer slurry which could then be used as soil amendment, charcoal could be added too at this stage. Injections of liquid fertilizer could reactivate the soil ecosystem from time to time.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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spaceshaper Posted 7:33 am
30 May 2007
In the meantime our job here is to pay attention, and over time, to help sort out the wheat from the chaff. You know that as soon as there's enough information the Grist machine will call it like it is. Yes, we're all hopeful with every new idea that another piece of the puzzle might be just about to fall into place, and this concept may turn out to be just another blind alley. But it could yet be the real McCoy. Time (and critical attention) will tell.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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GreyFlcn Posted 1:08 pm
30 May 2007
I think we can mostly all agree that using biomass as fertilizer is far better than:
Using biomass as energy
Using fossil fuels as fertilizer
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amazingdrx Posted 5:10 pm
30 May 2007
I think mowing it once every three years, in rotation, would only reduce the natural carbon sequestration by one third. If this harvested grass were used in biodigestors or fuel cell pyrolisis, a large amount of easily stored renewable backup power would be produced. The byproducts would be organic fertilizer and charcoal. A lot of cellulose could be left in the mix too by allowing only partial decomposition.
Crop waste and manure could be used too. This eliminates the need for fossil fertilizer, saving a lot of GHG. And prevents run off of manure and chemical fertilizer that produces a lot of GHG from cellulose stored in wetlands.
More renewable energy and less GHG from fossil fertilizer.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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