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Soil offers new hope as carbon sink
The huge potential of agricultural soils to reduce greenhouse gases and increase production at the same time has been reinforced by new research findings at NSW Department of Primary Industries’ (DPI) Wollongbar Agricultural Institute.
Trials of agrichar - a product hailed as a saviour of Australia’s carbon-depleted soils and the environment - have doubled and, in one case, tripled crop growth when applied at the rate of 10 tonnes per hectare.
Agrichar is a black carbon byproduct of a process called pyrolysis, which involves heating green waste or other biomass without oxygen to generate renewable energy.
Tim Flannery, Australian of the Year and renowned scientist, conservationist, writer and explorer, is a major advocate of agrichar and pyrolysis.
In The Bulletin magazine, Flannery recently ranked “fostering pyrolysis-based technologies” fourth among his five steps for saving the planet, because they convert crop waste into fuel and agrichar which can be used to enhance soil fertility and store carbon long-term.
NSW DPI senior research scientist Dr Lukas Van Zwieten said soils naturally turn over about 10 times more greenhouse gas on a global scale than the burning of fossil fuels.
“So it is not surprising there is so much interest in a technology to create clean energy that also locks up carbon in the soil for the long term and lifts agricultural production,” he said.
The trials at Wollongbar have focused on the benefits of agrichar to agricultural productivity.
“When applied at 10t/ha, the biomass of wheat was tripled and of soybeans was more than doubled,” said Dr Van Zwieten.
“This percentage increase remained the same when applications of nitrogen fertiliser were added to both the agrichar and the control plots.
“For the wheat, agrichar alone was about as beneficial for yields as using nitrogen fertiliser only.
“And that is without considering the other benefits of agrichar.”
Regarding soil chemistry, Dr Van Zwieten said agrichar raised soil pH at about one-third the rate of lime, lifted calcium levels and reduced aluminium toxicity on the red ferrosol soils of the trial.
“Soil biology improved, the need for added fertiliser reduced and water holding capacity was raised,” he said.
The trials also measured gases given off from the soils and found significantly lower emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide (a greenhouse gas more than 300 times as potent as carbon dioxide).
NSW DPI environmental scientist Steve Kimber said an added benefit for both the farmer who applies agrichar and the environment is that the carbon in agrichar remains locked up in the soil for many years longer than, for example, carbon applied as compost, mulch or crop residue.
“We broadly categorise carbon in the soil as being labile (liable to change quickly) or stable – depending on how quickly they break down and convert into carbon dioxide,” he said.
“Labile carbon like crop residue, mulch and compost is likely to last two or three years, while stable carbon like agrichar will last up to hundreds of years.
“This is significant for farmer costs because one application of agrichar may be the equivalent of compost applications of the same weight every year for decades.
“For the environment, it means soil carbon emissions can be reduced because rapidly decomposing carbon forms are being replaced by stable ones in the form of agrichar.”
Unfortunately, agrichar is not widely available. BEST Energies Australia, a company involved with NSW DPI in the trials, has a pilot plant at Gosford which is producing minimal amounts for research purposes.
“We are hoping the technology will take hold and pyrolysis plants will be built where there is a steady stream of green or other biomass waste providing clean energy that is carbon negative,” Dr Van Zwieten said.
“But until pyrolysis plants are up and running, the availability of agrichar for farmers will be scarce.”
Submitted by BJS on Fri, 2007-06-01 08:32.
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Terra Preta Soil Technology
Terra Preta 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 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 EPRIDA , Dr. Antal of U. of H., Virginia Tech folks and probably many others who's back round I don't know have joined.
This Earth Science Forum thread on these soils contains further links, and has been viewed by 40,000 self-selected folks. ( I post everything I find on Amazon Dark Soils, ADS here):
http://forums.hypography.com/earth-science/3451-terra-preta.html
Also Here is the Latest BIG Terra Preta Soil news;
ConocoPhillips Establishes $22.5 Million Pyrolysis Program at Iowa State 04/10/07
http://www.conocophillips.com/newsroom/news_releases/2007+News+Releases/...
Other Links;
University of Beyreuth TP Program, Germany http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/?q=taxonomy/term/118
__All the Bio-Char Companies and equipment manufactures I've found:
Carbon Diversion
http://www.carbondiversion.com/
Eprida: Sustainable Solutions for Global Concerns
http://www.eprida.com/home/index.php4
BEST Pyrolysis, Inc. | Slow Pyrolysis - Biomass - Clean Energy - Renewable Ene
http://www.bestenergies.com/companies/bestpyrolysis.html
Dynamotive Energy Systems | The Evolution of Energy
http://www.dynamotive.com/
Ensyn - Environmentally Friendly Energy and Chemicals
http://www.ensyn.com/who/ensyn.htm
Agri-Therm, developing bio oils from agricultural waste
http://www.agri-therm.com/
Advanced BioRefinery Inc.
http://www.advbiorefineryinc.ca/
Technology Review: Turning Slash into Cash
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/17298/
_The reason TP has elicited such interest on the Agricultural/horticultural side of it's benefits is this one static:
One gram of charcoal cooked to 650 C Has a surface area of 400 m2 (for soil microbes & fungus to live on), now for conversion fun:
One ton of charcoal has a surface area of 400,000 Acres!! which is equal to 625 square miles!! Rockingham Co. VA. , where I live, is only 851 Sq. miles
Now at a middle of the road application rate of 2 lbs/sq ft (which equals 1000 sqft/ton) or 43 tons/acre yields 26,000 Sq miles of surface area per Acre. VA is 39,594 Sq miles.
What this suggest to me is a potential of sequestering virgin forest amounts of carbon just in the soil alone, without counting the forest on top.
To take just one fairly representative example, in the classic Rothampstead experiments in England where arable land was allowed to revert to deciduous temperate woodland, soil organic carbon increased 300-400% from around 20 t/ha to 60-80 t/ha (or about 20-40 tons per acre) in less than a century (Jenkinson & Rayner 1977). The rapidity with which organic carbon can build up in soils is also indicated by examples of buried steppe soils formed during short-lived interstadial phases in Russia and Ukraine. Even though such warm, relatively moist phases usually lasted only a few hundred years, and started out from the skeletal loess desert/semi-desert soils of glacial conditions (with which they are inter-leaved), these buried steppe soils have all the rich organic content of a present-day chernozem soil that has had many thousands of years to build up its carbon (E. Zelikson, Russian Academy of Sciences, pers. comm., May 1994). http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/carbon1.html
______________________
Erich J. Knight
Erich J. Knight
Shenandoah Gardens
1047 Dave Berry Rd.
McGaheysville, VA. 22840
shengar at aol.com
(540) 289 9750
Video of Technology
Here is a short clip of a new soil technology that may be of use to the readers.
GeoSolutions
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