Sub-Topics Biochar Biochar Fuel Biochar Kilns Biochar Soil Biochar Stoves Biomass Also Try Perennial Grasses Go To Global Warming Papers -001 Lovelock: One Last Chance to Save Mankind (NewScientist.com) "There is one way we could save ourselves and that is through the massive burial of charcoal. It would mean farmers turning all their agricultural waste - which contains carbon that the plants have spent the summer sequestering - into non-biodegradable charcoal, and burying it in the soil. Then you can start shifting really hefty quantities of carbon out of the system and pull the CO2 down quite fast." "Would it make enough of a difference?" "Yes. The biosphere pumps out 550 gigatonnes of carbon yearly; we put in only 30 gigatonnes. Ninety-nine per cent of the carbon that is fixed by plants is released back into the atmosphere within a year or so by consumers like bacteria, nematodes and worms. What we can do is cheat those consumers by getting farmers to burn their crop waste at very low oxygen levels to turn it into charcoal, which the farmer then ploughs into the field. A little CO2 is released but the bulk of it gets converted to carbon. You get a few per cent of biofuel as a by-product of the combustion process, which the farmer can sell. This scheme would need no subsidy: the farmer would make a profit. This is the one thing we can do that will make a difference, but I bet they won't do it." 05-09 -09-04-09 We Can Slow Climate Change With Biochar (RenewableEnergyWorld.com) "The natural balance of the earth has always included carbon storage in the plants and soil. The problem is that we have disrupted that balance. We have burned in one century much of the carbon that nature sequestered over millions of years. Coal is almost pure carbon, gathered by plants and sequestered by natural processes. We need to stop burning it!" "Carbon-inefficient slash and burn agriculture is practiced by 300-500 million people today. If these people could convert to slash and char methods, we could stop the growth of greenhouse gas in its tracks." 09-09 -Biochar Is Needed to Slow Climate Change (Alliance for Democracy and EDI) "What we need to do is rather simple in concept: We need to keep a portion of CO2 that is stored in biomass from being released back into the air each year. If we can store more CO2 than is being released into the air by burning fossil fuels, we have a good chance of avoiding the worst of climate change. The net result will be less total carbon emitted into the air each year." 09-09 -Climate Change: What We Can Do (Evaluation and Development Institute) "Earth's climate became very stable 10,000 years ago, allowing for agriculture for the first time. Our stable climate arose from a balance of three ingredients: -Greenhouse gases -Ocean currents and -Polar ice Greenhouse gases provided a stable temperature to allow ocean currents to mix heat and cold around the globe and to maintain a relatively constant amount of polar ice. We now have 1/3 more CO2 in the air than we had only 150 years ago--and CO2 stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. The extra carbon keeps more heat in the air. The extra heat is absorbed by polar ice, soil, and the oceans. The ice over the Arctic Ocean is expected to be gone during summers within 5-10 years. Instead of ice over the Arctic Ocean reflecting heat, the Arctic Ocean will absorb heat. This will slow the ocean currents even more--they already are slowing because of the change in climate. When the ocean currents stop and the Arctic ice melts, we will have a climate catastrophe that can be expected to last thousands of years. Permafrost in Russia and other regions will melt, releasing gigantic amounts of carbon and methane stored in the soil. The release will trigger even more extreme climate." "Only one cost-effective solution has been found for quickly reducing the carbon in the air:" "Each year we must convert enough biomass (organic waste) into biochar (charcoal) to extract at least 7 gigatons of carbon from the air and place it in our soils." 08-09 -Climate Change: What We Can Do (Evaluation and Development Institute) "Earth's climate became very stable 10,000 years ago, allowing for agriculture for the first time. Our stable climate arose from a balance of three ingredients: -Greenhouse gases -Ocean currents and -Polar ice Greenhouse gases provided a stable temperature to allow ocean currents to mix heat and cold around the globe and to maintain a relatively constant amount of polar ice. We now have 1/3 more CO2 in the air than we had only 150 years ago--and CO2 stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. The extra carbon keeps more heat in the air. The extra heat is absorbed by polar ice, soil, and the oceans. The ice over the Arctic Ocean is expected to be gone during summers within 5-10 years. Instead of ice over the Arctic Ocean reflecting heat, the Arctic Ocean will absorb heat. This will slow the ocean currents even more--they already are slowing because of the change in climate. When the ocean currents stop and the Arctic ice melts, we will have a climate catastrophe that can be expected to last thousands of years. Permafrost in Russia and other regions will melt, releasing gigantic amounts of carbon and methane stored in the soil. The release will trigger even more extreme climate." "Only one cost-effective solution has been found for quickly reducing the carbon in the air:" "Each year we must convert enough biomass (organic waste) into biochar (charcoal) to extract at least 7 gigatons of carbon from the air and place it in our soils." 08-09 Biochar (Wikipedia.org) "Biochar is charcoal created by pyrolysis of biomass. The resulting charcoal-like material can be used as a soil improver to create terra preta,[1] and is a form of carbon capture and storage.[2] Charcoal is a stable solid and rich in carbon content, and thus, can be used to lock carbon in the soil. Biochar is of increasing interest because of concerns about mitigation of global warming being caused by emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases." 02-09 Biochar Basics (Biochar-International.org) "Diverting merely 1 per cent of annual net plant uptake into biochar would mitigate almost 10 per cent of current anthropogenic C [carbon] emissions (see Chapter 18). These are important arguments to feed into a policy discussion (see Chapter 22)." According to the chart on page 8, humans are responsible for putting 7 gigatons of carbon in the air per year but decomposing organic matter releases 8 times as much carbon into the air each year. Converting a fraction of the decomposing organic matter into biochar to keep it in our soil could be our most powerful route to avoiding catastrophic climate change. Biochar is also very good for our soil and our water supplies. 06-09 Biochar Economics (BiocharEngineering.com) "Over 40% of the total carbon from the waste biomass is retained in biochar and sequestered in the soil for thousands of years, effectively removing that carbon from the atmosphere. The carbon in one tonne of biochar is equivalent to 3 to 3.5 tonnes of CO2." "At current global carbon prices in the $15/tonne range the additional value of biochar as a carbon sequestration agent should be worth another $50/tonne, but there is not yet a market for this carbon, so the immediate deployment of biochar will be driven by the soil fertility value." 05-09 Biochar Fertilizer and Biofuel (TheOilDrum.com) "Soil scientist and author of "Amazonian Dark Earths: Origin, Properties, Management" Johannes Lehmann believes that a strategy combining biochar with biofuels could ultimately offset 9.5 billion tons of carbon per year - an amount equal to the total current fossil fuel emissions. Lehmann also notes that unlike biodiesel and corn ethanol, biochar doesn’t take land away from food production." 05-09 Biochar Fund (BiocharFund.org) "The Biochar Fund eradicates hunger, deforestation, energy insecurity and tackles climate change by connecting markets and the cooperative efforts of our farmers. It is important to understand that the problems described are deeply intertwined. Only by tackling their root causes in a systematic and integrated way is it possible to solve them. We do this by generating a unique synergy that interacts with all aspects of the different problems and that is managed by the communities themselves." 05-09 Biochar Groups (biochar-international.org) "IBI is interested in showcasing the activities of the many national and regional biochar groups that are forming." 05-09 Biochar Is Carbon-Negative (biochar-international.org) "Biochar is a fine-grained charcoal high in organic carbon and largely resistant to decomposition. It is produced from pyrolysis of plant and waste feedstocks. As a soil amendment, biochar creates a recalcitrant soil carbon pool that is carbon-negative, serving as a net withdrawal of atmospheric carbon dioxide stored in highly recalcitrant soil carbon stocks." 05-09 Can Biochar Save the Planet? (Time.com) "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.' " 05-09 How Biochar Helps (CNN News) "Biochar helps clean the air two ways: by preventing rotting biomass from releasing harmful CO2 into the atmosphere, and by allowing plants to safely store CO2 they pull out of the air during photosynthesis." 05-09 How Much Biochar Do We Need to Counter Fossil Fuels? (Nature.com) " 'Any organic matter that is taken out of the rapid cycle of photosynthesis ... and put instead into a much slower biochar cycle is an effective withdrawal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,' says Johannes Lehmann, a soil scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who has spent years studying terra preta and biochar." "Lehmann and colleagues think that the potential benefits could be huge. Of the more than 60 billion tonnes of carbon taken up annually by photosynthesis, around ten per cent eventually becomes available as agricultural residue such as corn and rice stalks, or forestry residue such as branch and leaf litter, as well as animal waste. If all 6 billion tonnes were put through pyrolysis — the heating process that turns biomass into charcoal — 3 billion tonnes of biochar would be produced every year, reducing atmospheric carbon emissions by the same amount1. That would offset a substantial proportion of the 4.1 billion tonnes of excess carbon dioxide that accumulates annually in the atmosphere." "And since biochar manufacture has the added benefit of creating liquid fuel as a useful by-product, there's even greater potential for mitigating climate change than from sequestering CO2 alone. According to Lehmann's calculations, a third of a tonne of biofuel could be produced for every tonne of biomass used. If those biofuels replaced fossil fuels — in transport, for example — it would reduce carbon emissions by an additional 1.8 billion tonnes per year." 06-09 How Much Biochar Will Be Needed to Return to Pre-Industrial Levels of Carbon? (TerraPetra.BioenergyLists.org) "The Earth’s surface area is 51 gigahectares (nice unit!) of which 1.36 gHa are arable (by George M’s figure) - that’s 2.7% of the total. So:" "If all the 'excess' carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were converted into carbon and spread across all the earth’s arable lands, there would be 17kg of charcoal per square metre, in a layer 8cm thick." "That’s not an unfeasible notion. The Gardening with Biochar FAQ mentions biochar application rates of around 5kg/m2." 08-09 Pyrolysis (Wikipedia.org) "Residues of incomplete organic pyrolysis, e.g. from cooking fires, are thought to be the key component of the terra preta soils associated with ancient indigenous communities of the Amazon basin.[1] Terra preta is much sought by local farmers for its superior fertility compared to the natural red soil of the region. Efforts are underway to recreate these soils through biochar, the solid residue of pyrolysis of various materials, mostly organic waste." 05-09 Review of Literature Summary on Biochar (CSIRO.au) "Studies of charcoal from natural fire and ancient anthropogenic activity indicate millennial-scale stability. However, it is difficult to establish the half-life of modern biochar products using short experiments due to the presence of small amounts of labile components, partial oxidation and biotic or abiotic surface reactions. At the moment there is no established method to artificially-age biochar and assess likely long-term trajectories." "While biochar surpasses other biological forms of C with regard to its stability, estimates on the mean turnover time of biochar in soil vary from hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands of years." "Analysis of a limited number of biochar samples has indicated concentrations of toxic combustion products such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that are not at environmental risk level." 06-09 Wood Biomass Available for Biochar (BiocharEngineering.com) "The US alone generates 368M tons a year of forest product waste, with another 60M tons/year of wood from the Rocky Mountain pine beetle epidemic thus far; along with almost 1B tons of agricultural waste." 05-09 Purchase Resources What Is Biochar? (BioCharBrokers.com) "Biochar is a charcoal product that is created as result of either Pyrolysis or Gasification. Simply put, biochar is created from a low- to no-oxygen burn (thermal conversion) of feedstock or biomass under intense pressure, returning it to carbon." EternaGreen sells 50-pound bags of biochar for $12.50. Awesome Library does not endorse the products but provides them as examples. 05-09

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