Biochar 101
It removes carbon dioxide from the air, improves soil quality and creates clean energy -- and it's surprisingly easy to come by.
By Shea GuntherThu, Jul 09 2009 at 4:02 AM EST
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Photo: alextiller/Flickr Though you may not have heard of biochar, it's a good bet you'd recognize it if you saw it.
Biochar is just charcoal. It's created when organic matter like wood chips, rice stalks or even manure is heated up in the absence of oxygen --think of a sealed metal drum full of wood chips over a fire. It's simple, can be produced anywhere and could just end up saving the world.
For something as simple as charcoal, biochar -- in the right applications -- does three pretty amazing things: It takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and locks it into a solid form, improves the health of soil it's plowed into, and creates clean energy.
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When former slash-and-burn farmers in the rain forests of South America adopt slash-and-char techniques, they're able to stay on and farm the same plot of land year after year instead of having to move on every couple of seasons when the soil becomes depleted. Their path through the rainforest is halted, saving countless acres. The farmers are able to produce a lot more food on the healthier soil and can improve and invest in their land and infrastructure.
When organic matter is heated up in the absence of oxygen, it releases hot gases that can be captured and burned in power generators, or also refined into bio-oil and syngas, both which can be further refined into effective gasoline and diesel substitutes. If the gases are burned right away, the process of creating biochar — called pyrolysis — is energy-positive, returning six to nine times as much energy as necessary to run and maintain it.
Right now we're far from squeezing out all the benefits biochar offers. Sustenance-based slash-and-burn farmers still must switch to slash-and-char, and we need to build the infrastructure for taking in agricultural waste from farms and then distributing the resulting biochar back to their fields. One of the great things about biochar is how easy it is to make. Poor farmers can make it using simple, handmade clay kilns, while rich farmers can build elaborate biochar processing plants that also generate electricity, bio-oil and syngas.
Biochar is an easy sell. Everyone involved in the process wins. Poor farmers get more food for their work and are able to settle on one plot of ever-productive soil. Rich farmers and corporate agriculture save a lot of money on fertilizer and also see the same boost in production. The environment benefits because of the reduction in fertilizer runoff and the removal of CO2 from the air. Big business wins because of the profits generated from the production and distribution of biochar. Politicians get to take credit for implementing a pragmatic, job-creating solution to global warming. Workers get jobs. Governments get tax revenue.
The Obama administration seems to be a budding friend of biochar. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, while still a U.S. senator from Colorado, introduced the Salazar Harvesting Energy Act of 2007 that would have provided $30 million to help farmers buy pyrolysis systems. Though his act ultimately failed to pass, Salazar is on record as being in favor of pyrolysis and the widespread adoption of biochar. In a recent interview, President Obama spoke out in favor of a plan floated by food-policy guru Michael Pollan that decouples our agricultural from a dependence on cheap fossil fuels and a monocultural corn-based focus. Our government is primed for biochar.
Obama has made it clear science will get its seat back at the table of power after eight years of being on the fringes, something that bodes well for the scientifically vetted biochar. An effective deployment of biochar could solve problems in energy production, global warming prevention, job creation and food security, in both price and availability.
For more information on biochar, check out these links:
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Comments
new_biochar_land
01/27/2011 14:53 PM
You want to know all the secrets about biochar ?
This book will help !
Here practice and theory merge under a single cover of "The Biochar Revolution" and reveals hidden secrets of science called Biochar
Henrik Jensen
08/09/2009 18:54 PM
On the 1st of August, 2009, Mantria Industries opened it’s Mantria EternaGreen Center at Dunlap, Tennessee. The facility is the world’s largest BioChar plant - and the only commercial operation of its kind anywhere.
The Center's output of BioChar can potentially sequester 96,000 tons of CO2 per year. The plant will convert 43,000 tons of biomass waste to 32,000 tons of EternaGreen™ BioChar annually. Additionally, the facility will produce enough BioElectricity to power more than 1,200.... More
Erich J. Knight
07/09/2009 16:13 PM
Biochar Soil Technology.....Husbandry of whole new orders of life
Biotic Carbon, the carbon transformed by life, should never be combusted, oxidized and destroyed. It deserves more respect, reverence even, and understanding to use it back to the soil where 2/3 of excess atmospheric carbon originally came from.
We all know we are carbon-centered life, we seldom think about the complex web of recycled bio-carbon which is the true center of life. A cradle to cradle, mutually co-evolved.... More
