Biochar

In an earlier post, I compared a number of methods, including using biochar and olivine as soil supplements, biomass burial in sea or on land, BECCS (BioEnergy with Carbon Capture and Storage/Sequestration), etc.

Pyrolyzing biomass and then adding the resulting biochar to soil can remove CO2 from the atmosphere and can avoid many emissions that would otherwise occur.

By contrast, both composting or burying biomass will each result in more emissions, since the biomass will decompose and that will add CO2 and CH4 to the atmosphere. When biomass is buried, it may take a bit longer before it will decompose, but decomposition will eventually occur, and such emissions will be more and it will typically occur earlier than in the case of biochar, which can remain in the soil for hundreds if not thousands of years.

As temperatures keep rising, there's increased risk of flooding (causing more CH4 emissions) and of wildfires (which besides emissions of CO2 and CH4 also come with soot and CO emissions). This growing risk makes biochar an increasingly attractive method.

Turning biowaste into biochar through pyrolysis and then adding the biochar to soil can prevent wildfires in two ways: firstly, because the biomass is removed from the land, this biowaste can no longer fuel wildfires; and secondly because the biochar increases the soil's capability to retain moisture and helps soil become more fertile, thue result is more and healthier vegetation growth (and thus CO2 capture) while the extra moisture in the soil gives additional protection against wildfires.

Biochar is also beneficial in regard to flooding. Firstly, the biochar makes that the soil can absorb more water. Secondly, the healthier vegetation that results from biochar will be deeper rooted and can better withstand flooding in general and this will in turn also prevent erosion.

Soil becomes more fertile when adding biochar to soil, which makes that application of pesticides and chemical fertilizers can be reduced and avoided. Nitrogen fertilizers are responsible for dead zones in lakes, seas and oceans, and for N2O emissions. Adding a combination of biochar and olivine sand to soil can make the soil become more fertile (without adding chemical fertilizers), enabling both the olivine and the healthier vegetation to take more CO2 out of the atmosphere. It can be economic to add both biochar and olivine sand to soil simultaneously, which can reduce the overall cost of adding soil supplements and keeping vegetation healthy in general.

Heating up biomass through pyrolysis can turn half the carbon that's contained into biomass into biochar, while turning the other half into bio-oil and syngas. As said, this will avoid emissions of greenhouse gases that would oterwise occur when the biomass was left to decompose or get burned in wildfires. The energy needed to heat up the biowaste can come from the biomass itself, but it can also come from clean power sources such as wind turbines.

The other half of the carbon that goes into bio-oil and syngas can be burned for energy, but it can also be turned into hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, etc. The hydrogen can then be used as clean energy, while the carbon can be used in construction or to produce carbon fiber, graphite, etc.

In conclusion, adding biochar to soil can remove CO2 from the atmosphere and can avoid many emissions that would otherwise occur, all with little or no emissions, at least for a very long time. This makes biochar an excellent method to reduce levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and to avoid greenhouse gas emissions.

Biochar is discussed in more detail at the Biochar group.

[ Earlier posted at the Geoengineering group and added at the Biomass page ]

Extinction Within Decades?

How the situation in the Arctic threatens most, if not all, life on Earth with extinction within decades.  

Vast amounts of methane

In the Arctic, vast amounts of carbon are stored in soils that are now still largely frozen. As temperatures continue to rise and soils thaw, much of this carbon will be converted by microbes into carbon dioxide or methane, adding further greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

In addition, vast amounts of methane are stored in sediments under the Arctic Ocean seafloor, in the form of methane hydrates and free gas. As temperatures rise, these sediments can get destabilized, resulting in eruptions of huge amounts of methane from the seafloor. Due to the abrupt character of such releases and the fact that many seas in the Arctic Ocean are shallow, much of the methane will then enter the atmosphere without getting broken down in the water.

What makes the situation so dangerous is that huge eruptions from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean can happen at any time. We can just count ourselves lucky that it hasn't happened as yet. As temperatures continue to rise, the risk that this will happen keeps growing.

What caused this dangerous situation?

This dangerous situation has developed because emissions by people have made the temperature of the water in the Arctic Ocean rise, and these waters keep warming much more rapidly than the rest of the world due to a number of feedbacks. One such feedback is the retreat of the sea ice, which in turn makes the Arctic Ocean heat up even more, as much sunlight that was previously reflected back into space by the sea ice, instead gets absorbed by the water when the sea ice is gone.

Without sea ice, storms can also develop more easily. Storms can mix warm surface waters all the way down to the bottom of shallow seas, reaching cracks in sediments filled with ice. This ice has until now acted as a glue, holding the sediment together. As the ice melts, sediments can become destabilized by even small differences in temperature and pressure that can be triggered by earthquakes, undersea landslides or changes in ocean currents.

As a result, huge amounts of methane can erupt from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean and once this occurs, it will further raise temperatures, especially over the Arctic, thus acting as another self-reinforcing feedback loop that again makes the situation even worse in the Arctic, with higher temperatures causing even further methane releases, in a vicious cycle leading to runaway global warming.

Global impact

Such a temperature rise in the Arctic will not stay within the borders of the Arctic. It will trigger huge firestorms in forests and peatlands in North America and Russia, adding further emissions including soot that can settle on mountains, speeding up the melting of glaciers and threatening to stop the flow of rivers that people depend on for their livelihood.

These developments can take place at such a speed that adaptation will be futile. More extreme weather events can hit the same area with a succession of droughts, cold snaps, floods, heat waves and wildfires that follow each other up rapidly. Within decades, the combined impact of extreme weather, lower soil quality, crop failure and shortages of just about anything can threaten most, if not all life on Earth with extinction.

Food security

Will higher temperatures and carbon dioxide levels stimulate more plant growth? Will a warmer world allow more farming at higher latitudes? Firstly, the devastating impact of extreme weather events that come with a warming planet, will severely curb the prospects of farming anywhere. Successions of droughts, heat waves, wildfires, floods, storms and wild temperature swings could cause crop failure, while increased pests and diseases will have further debilitating impact.

Frost can ruin crops. Rice will only germinate at temperatures above 20°C (68°F). Cold snaps, hail storms and strong winds, can be expected to strike with increased intensity as the planet warms. More generally, a recent study finds that, while the global mean number of days above freezing will increase by up to 7% under a RCP 8.5 scenario (“business as usual” until 2100), the number of suitable growing days will decrease globally by up to 11% when temperature, water availability, and solar radiation are taken into consideration.

Indeed, each type of vegetation has its own optimal levels of water, sunlight, temperature and necessary nutrients in the soil. Changes in any of these levels could affect their growth negatively, with soil quality constituting an additional factor. Soil degradation can occur due to continued intensive single-crop farming or grazing. More extreme weather will make things worse, making it ever harder for farmers to continue to grow the crops they're used to.

This study finds that most temperate grasses and cereals, as well as many woody species, have temperature optima in the range from 15°C to 25°C (59°F to 77°F). Rice has a higher optimal temperature, but requires lots of water. Many legumes have a low net carbon dioxide uptake because of their high rate of pod and seed respiration. A rise in temperature will result in even greater respiratory losses from the pod and thus even less net carbon dioxide uptake. Legumes are important for their ability to fix nitrogen to the soil, an essential nutrient.

Recent research found that the situation is even worse than thought and that higher carbon dioxide levels will reduce the ability of plants to take up nitrogen. A recent study examined various types of ecosystems, including crops, grasslands and forests. "The nitrogen content in the crops is reduced in atmospheres with raised carbon dioxide levels in all three ecosystem types. Furthermore, we can see that this negative effect exists regardless of whether or not the plants' growth increases, and even if fertilizer is added," says co-author Johan Uddling, senior lecturer at the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Gothenburg.

What can be done?

What can be done to improve this situation? The Climate Plan advocates support for soil supplements containing biochar and olivine sand, to make it easier for soil to retain nutrients, moisture and microbes that benefit vegetation growth. The Climate Plan avocates that funding for such support be raised through fees on sales of livestock products and nitrogen fertilizers. This will reduce the use of fossil fuel-based fertilizers, while the pyrolysis to produce biochar can also produce hydrogen that can in turn be used to produce nitrogen fertilizers. Furthermore, moving away from farming livestock and associated single-crop farming will give more room for growing legumes alongside other crops. 

Two sets of feebates can work simultaneously and in parallel, i.e. separately, yet complementary, to facilitate the necessary shift to clean energy (yellow lines in top half of the image below) and to reduce levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and ocean, while also increasing food security (yellow lines in bottom half of image below).

The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action as discussed in the Climate Plan. 

Related

- Towards a Sustainable Economy
http://sustainable-economy.blogspot.com/2011/09/towards-sustainable-economy.html

- Feebates
http://feebates.blogspot.com/p/feebates.html

- Climate Plan
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/plan.html

- Combining Policy and Technology
http://geo-engineering.blogspot.com/2011/11/combining-policy-and-technology.html

- The Mechanism leading to Collapse of Civilization and Runaway Global Warming
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/the-mechanism.html

BadgerChar Mobile: A Farmer-Friendly Mobile Biochar System

BadgerChar Mobile




BadgerChar Mobile will build, operate, and de-bug this MOBILE Biochar Production System. The idea is to produce kits and plans for farmers to build their own, using real world economics all the way- with better soil and profits for Farmers - the best reasons you can give them.

Support this project at kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/80297702/badgerchar-mobile-a-farmer-friendly-mobile-biochar

For discussions and more details see:

https://www.facebook.com/badgerchar

Biochar plus urine results in highest yield

The results from adding biochar to test plots in Bungoma County, Western Kenya, have been published by Re-Char.

• Plain soil (without chemical fertilizer or organic amendment) produced around 70 kg of dry sorghum per acre.
• A 15% solution of sanitized urine and water added to soil gives a sorghum yield of 205 kg per acre.
• Adding 50 kg of chemical fertilizer per acre– the Kenyan Government’s recommended quantity– can increase yield of sorghum to 420 kg per acre.
• By applying 6,000 kg per acre of composted cow manure, farmers can produce 810 kg of dry sorghum per acre.
• Applying the above urine treatment to soils amended with biochar (at a rate of 6,000 kg per acre) resulted in a sorghum yield of 533 kg per acre in season 1, and 1,025 kg per acre in season 2 without adding any additional biochar.

The data are presented below in an interactive graph (move mouse over bars to view data).
This highlights biochar's potential to help achieve higher crop yields than chemical fertilizers, while biochar has the additional benefit of helping combat climate change by avoiding emissions, such as of carbon dioxide, methane, carbon monoxide and soot. Moreover, adding biochar and olivine sand to the soil results in additional vegetation growth that takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, while safely storing carbon in soils.

Chemical fertilizers cause large nitrous oxide emissions and make farmers dependent on their continued supply, which can be hard given variations in farming income and in the price of the fossil fuel that is typically used to produce the chemical fertilizers. Long supply lines and extensive transportation and infrastructure requirements that are vulnerable to extreme weather events can significantly increase the cost of chemical fertilizers. By contrast, biochar and urine can be produced locally from waste products at little or no extra cost to local farmers.

Feebates are recommended as the best policy instruments to achieve the necessary changes, as part of a comprehensive and effective climate plan. The image below pictures feebates in agriculture, land use and construction. Fees are imposed on sales of Portland cement, with revenues used to fund rebates on clean construction methods that incorporate olivine sand. Similarly, fees are imposed on Portland cement, on nitrogen fertilizers and on livestock products, with revenues used to fund rebates on soil supplements containing olivine sand and biochar.

From:  President Obama, here's a climate plan!

Combined, biochar and olivine sand can help soils become more fertile. Applying olivine dust on top of biochar can also reduce the albedo impact of biochar, which can be substantial as described in a 2012 study by Meyer et al. Thus, biochar and olivine sand can complement each other in several ways, as discussed earlier in the post Towards a Sustainable Economy.

The Biochar Economy

The Biochar Economy offers a sustainable alternative to economic systems that fail to sufficiently take into account care for the environment and concerns for global warming.

Biochar is one of the products of pyrolysis, an oxygen-starved method of heating up biomass to (also) produce renewable energy.  

The Australian Government plans to award carbon credits for the application of biochar to soil, for biochar's ability to abate greenhouse gases. As part of the Carbon Farming Initiative $AU2 million will be provided for a Biochar Capacity Building Program. This in addition to $AU1.4 million that is already being invested in the National Biochar Initiative as part of the Climate Change Research Program.

Carbon credits constitute just one way to support biochar. Ultimately, carbon credits are typically paid from profits on fossil fuel, which are scheduled to decrease over time. To develop more lasting support for biochar, alternatively policies should be considered.

The idea behind the "Biochar Economy" is to try to embed biochar production into as many processes as possible, as pictured on above image, from open source ecology.

In carbon-negative 'Biochar Economies', biochar is proposed to also act as a kind of local 'gold standard' for local currency supply. Biochar-based currency could strengthen local economies and shield them not only from the volatility of global currency fluctuations, but also from the danger of global warming causing the entire global financial system to collapse, as discussed back in 2007.

Biochar-based local currencies go well together with three types of local feebates: 

• Energy fees, imposed on polluting fuel and the equipment and appliances used to burn the fuel, to fund rebates on local clean energy programs.
• Fees on polluting cement, livestock products and nitrogen fertilizers, made payable in local currency, funding rebates on locally-produced biochar and olivine added to local soils.
• Local rates that incorporate feebates, i.e. higher fees the lower the soil's carbon content, with rebates for soils with the highest carbon content.

Since pyrolysis of surplus biomass can produce renewable energy, it can benefit from local energy feebates as pictured below. 

In addition, soil supplements that include biochar can benefit from feebates as pictured below. 

These policies will avoid emissions and effectively take greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. 

These policies will also create local employment and investment opportunities without having to borrow money elsewhere, and will increase local standards of living and health, as well as increase the quality and value of the land. 

All this can be achieved though mechanisms that work in parallel and are often complementary, e.g. pyrolysis of forest waste can stimulate forest growth, avoid termite infections and reduce the risk of wildfires; furthermore, when pyrolysis provides power that replaces the practice of burning firewood and fossil fuel to power lighting and cooking, this will also reduce the risk of lung infections.

To increase demand for the local currency, rebates on local clean energy programs and soil supplements could be paid out in local currency. Furthermore, a community can call for local rates and fees on products such as fuel, polluting cement, livestock products and nitrogen fertilizers to be paid in local currency.

Much crop is now used to grow feed for livestock ― less livestock could free up land that could be used to produce food & wood, and the associated organic waste. Furthermore, such feebates can avoid soil erosion and deforestation, and instead result in more vegetation, thus further increasing the amount of biomass available for pyrolysis.

Below are some further ways pyrolysis can be integrated in the local economy:

• Pyrolysis of biomass is an excellent way of handling organic waste, while producing useful products such as biochar, biooils and gases such as hydrogen. Biooil and hydrogen can be used to power aviation and shipping.  
• Bioasphalt^® is a type of asphalt made from bio-oil. According to its manufacturer, it can save energy and money, since it can be mixed and paved at lower temperatures than conventional asphalt. 
• Apart from burial of biochar to enhance soil fertility, biochar can also be used to manufacture a range of products, including vehicle bodies made of carbon fiber and capacitors. 
  
  A team at Stevens Institute of Technology has designed, fabricated, and tested a prototype supercapacitor electrode made from biochar. The team demonstrated biochar's feasibility as an alternative to activated carbon for supercapacitor electrodes. Currently, supercapacitors use activated carbon. The team estimates that biochar costs almost half as much as activated carbon, apart from being more sustainable. 
  
  Supercapacitors can be used to power electric buses. Ultracapacitor buses by Sinautecus have been operational in the Greater Shanghai area since August 2006, as mentioned under this post on electric bus systems.

More reading at:

Feebates

Biochar

Biomass

Vortex towers could vegetate deserts

Carbon-negative building

Towards a Sustainable Economy

Agrichar

Agrichar can be produced by means of pyrolysis from organic material. In that case, it's often referred to as biochar. Agrichar can also be produced from carbon that is captured from the air, as indicated on the picture below.