Biochar Technology Rapidly Evolving

Science never holds still and the science of biochar isn’t any different.  There has been a great deal of publicity in recent months over biochar’s potential to act as a powerful new weapon in the fight against climate change.  New pyrolysis kilns being produced througout the world are capable of processing decomposing organic waste streams and transforming their decaying carbon into new organic fertilisers.  These new fertililisers inject the carbon back into the ground where it can safely stay sequestered away for thousands of years.  In addition to reducing global CO2 levels new cutting edge biochar formulations greatly enhance plant growth and crop yields.

Until recently carbon sequestration has been the main focus of biochar advocates.  In truth, the high application rates neccessary to mimic the results of chemical fertilisers were too high to be economically feasable for most farmers.  Biochar research at places like The NSW Department of Primary Industries indicated that farmers would need to use approxamately 20 tonnes per hectare to achieve the dramatic results that have shown up as hightlights in press clippings.  Those days are quickly coming to an end.

New pyrolysis kilns and scientists’ increasing understanding of how biochar interacts with the soil are leading to dramatic new developments in the ever evolving world of biochar.  New biochar formulations are more effective than ever with some experts predicting that we’ll see biochar on a broad acre commercial scale as early as next year.  Retail products for home gardeners are already being prepaired with a new product from Don Burke scheduled to begin hitting store shelves in coming months.

One thing is certain, consumers are ever more willing to vote with their wallets.  Companies like Don Burke’s Biochar and Agrichar Limited are answering the call for innovative new products that empower consumers to seriously alter their carbon footprints.  Biochar is the first product that provides users with the ability to quanitfy the amount of carbon they are removing from the carbon cycle.  In addition to feeling good about what they’re doing these home gardeners will be able to take advantage of healthier food grown in an environment where they have control of the chemicals entering their food.

To learn more about these exciting new advances please visit www.outbackbiochar.com where you can learn about biochar and the many benefits that accompany a biochar garden.

For More Information Please Contact:

Outback Biochar Tel 02 9773 9455 Email info@outbackbiochar.com

Biochar Believers

Word is that one of Cortez’s grunts stumbled onto a civilization deep
in the jungles of Amazona. The mythic metropolis supported by “black
soil,” Terra Preta in Portuguese.

El Dorado had been found.

Modern scientists found that a few tropical ancient societies created
Terra Preta soil by incorporating charcoal, manure and household
wastes into it, “biochar,” creating a host of benefits that are still
active after thousands of years.

Can this traditional practice be wed with modern innovations, and help
with our strained soils of the Northwest and beyond? Can the promise
of biochar be applied to remediate some of the most pressing concerns
of the planet and agriculture at large?

Biochar offers wedge solutions for an array of problems including
reducing wildfire fuel loads, countering nutrient loss in soils,
building tilth and adding water retention. These are benefits we need
right now!

The platitudes about the possibilities got my attention.

Location location

Up near the Hanford Reach, where tumbleweeds drift in the Columbia
River past the town of Richland, Wash., lies the sprawling Pacific NW
National Lab. The PNNL, is a high-security science campus focusing on
microbial and cellular biology, environmental, analytic and
interfacial sciences. Its denizens sport multiple security badges, and
walk over manicured lawns tended by leaf vacuumers. This is where I
ended up, mid-May after a wrong turn into the Umatilla Weapons Depot,
and a cruise past Richland’s Hanford High.

What I found was over 75 biochar enthusiasts from a host of
backgrounds and regions- agronomists, scientists, venture capitalists,
Forest Service rangers, deep ecologists, activists, composters,
gardeners and urban scavengers; all gathered together to work out a
process that would proliferate the pyrolysis of biomass and pepper our
fields with carbonized black gold.

The PNW Biochar Group meeting – organized in part by PNNL’s Dr. Jim
Amonette, John Miedema from Corvallis and Max DeRungs from Canby, Ore
- was a major effort to unlock the biochar movement socially,
systemically and scientifically.

Bio what?

Biochar is the baking of woody biomass, to create charcoal that is
ground up and added to the soil. The biomass is cooked in an oxygen-
starved kiln, (a pyrolysis process) where the volatile hydrocarbons
are burned or driven off. These vapors can fuel the incineration
process.

The charcoal is a carbon-enriched black solid with a structure that
resists chemical and microbial degradation. It is then ground up, and
applied to the soil, creating edge-effects for micro-organisms, and
adding porosity and water retention to the soil. This in part, is how
char becomes biochar.

Mass to gas

Excess biomass, such as slash piles on timberlands, tree prunings from
orchards and yard waste from urban areas could all be turned into a
biomass feed for biochar production. Biochar production processes can
potentially utilize virtually any agricultural or forestry waste
biomass, including wood chips, corn stover, rice or peanut hulls, tree
bark, papermill sludge, or animal manure, adding to the attraction.

The heat capture from pyrolysis can be used to cook, to heat spaces,
or for power generation.

Integrating the kiln onto an already heat requiring industry (paper
mills, dairies, etc.), can provide much (if not all) of the required
thermal drive of the given process, while yielding biochar as a co-
product. Design integration of kilns into industrial or even
residential architecture offers unbounded opportunities.

Biochar International notes on their website that “Energy and biochar
can be co-produced from biomass using thermal processes. The energy
produced from the remainder of the biomass is used to heat the
pyrolysis unit and/or provide energy for on-farm use, such as heat and
electricity for lighting, fans, refrigerators, etc.”

The co-production of biochar from a portion of the biomass feedstock
will reduce the total amount of energy that can be produced, but basic
soil science research indicates that even at today’s energy and
fertilizer prices the net gain in soil productivity is worth more than
the value of the energy that would otherwise have been derived from
that charcoal.

Once the cost of carbon emissions starts to rise and the value of CO2
extraction from the atmosphere is also considered, the balance will
become overwhelmingly attractive.

Questions of scale

At what scale would the practice need to manifest in order for it to
achieve its glory?

The answer comes in many sizes. Art Donnelly co-founder of SeaChar.Org
(Seattle Biochar Working Group) and his partner Don Hennick
demonstrated a small, almost free, biochar producing “stove,”
fabricated from street scrap and found objects. A personal, portable,
pyrolysis unit. These rust-punk prototypes will soon be adapted by
SeaChar for widespread developing world collaboration, application and
distribution. The goal is millions of these household energy systems,
proliferating over the world’s soil starved landscape, making charcoal
that can heal the land, one plot at a time.

Kelpie Wilson, who came to biochar with a love of ecological systems
and engineering, was inspired to build a more substantial backyard
kiln in her yard in Takilma, Ore. Constructed out of cinderblocks and
rebar, her kiln was expanded to a pizza oven. She demonstrated how the
captured heat can ultimately warm greenhouses, homes and schools, and
how community-level incentives for labor, forest land and fuel loads
could all dance together systemically.

On the other end of the spectrum, Tom Miles of T R Miles Technical
Consultants, gave a dizzying presentation on “The Economics of Biochar
Production” concluding that large-scale pyrolysis systems can be
economically and environmentally viable.

Deep ecology reality checks came from Gloria Flora of Sustainable
Obtainable Solutions, who reminded us that a potential woody biomass
bonanza has implications for wildlife habitat and forest health, given
the U.S. Forest Service’s focus on getting the cut out on public
lands.

Occasionally, the piercing whistles of MaryAnn Simonds (of
EcoTechnologies Group) kept us on track, moderating the discussions.
Though looking like a cowgirl, MaryAnn gave an inspired dinner keynote
at the Siam Thai Restaurant on her approach to listening to nature,
and her days as a rattlesnake hugger.

Farming in the black

Agriculture has a huge carbon-positive footprint. Six to 20 calories
of energy are needed to deliver one calorie of food to an American
kitchen. All over the Earth, soils—disturbed by deforestation and
plowing, sterile from chemical fertilizers, pesticides and acid rain—
are losing carbon and life, leaking fertility into air and water.

Yet, agriculture can be a huge net carbon sink to absorb vast volumes
of carbon out of the atmosphere and store it as stable carbon in soil.

One benefit of biochar is as a carbon sink. Its ability to sequester
atmospheric carbon and attract and hold on to nitrous oxide and
methane in the soil, could potentially be a wedge in countering
greenhouse gasses. If the practice was widespread across major
geographic regions, it could potentially become a player in the
complex world of carbon trading.

Peter Weisberg from The Climate Trust noted that they might support
biochar projects financially by buying the carbon that is sequestered
in biochar, instead of released as CO2 to the atmosphere; monetizing
the climate change benefits of biochar projects.

Peter notes that, “There is a tradeoff between producing energy and
producing sequestered carbon. Energy can be sold, but without a carbon
market, sequestered carbon cannot. Offsets provide an avenue to sell
this benefit.”

Yet, substantial carbon sequestering would need vast regions of
biochar application, requiring char on the order of gigatons.

So much infrastructure to build, while simultaneously building a
market for the biochar product itself. Part of that puzzle is in
research.

Biochar is one of a handful of new, high-priority research and
extension areas identified in the Research Title of the 2008 Farm
Bill.

This is how we came to meet USDA researcher Hal Collins, on a tour of
the WSU research farm in Prosser, Wash., near the Horse Heaven hills.
testing how 10 tons of biochar per acre can help grow his corn.

This USDA ARS Biochar/ Pyrolysis Initiative Field Trial, using char
from Dynamotive, is one of only five USDA test sites for biochar
domestically, far shy for a whole assessment of how biochar will react
in the wide variety of soil regions.

Hal noted that biochar is quite expensive to truck in, being
classified as a combustible material. Meanwhile, down the hill from
the test plot, a whole pile of wood slash sat, awaiting a likely fate
in a burn pile. This reinforced how biochar processing onsite – on a
farm-by-farm basis, with a colony of mobile kilns – could offer some
localized solutions.

By Andrew Rodman

Biochar — Many Potential Applications

Biochar can benefit the environment in many different ways — helping soil retain nutrients, mitigating climate change, and also processing energy.

A group called Biochar Ontario held a demonstration and presentation on biochar this past weekend.

Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority spokesman Rob Diermair, who is a  restoration projects lead and is involved with the Welland River Keepers, invited the organization to his property — land he hopes will become a research site for the benefits of biochar for rehabilitating soils in a project with Niagara College students. Discussions, he said, have already been held with the college and now all the students are waiting for is a green light for research funding.

Diermair learned of biochar while doing some research about the human-made rich soils in Brazil that were fertilized thousands of years ago and still remain fertile to this day. The primary ingredient, he said, is plant charcoal. He also attended a biochar demonstration and saw firsthand how a biochar stove was developed with low-emissions that could be beneficial for people in Third World countries.

“I wanted to share what I have learned of its potential uses,” he said.

Asked why he is interested in biochar, Diermair said because of its many benefits. When it comes to climate change, biochar, when placed in soil, removes excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stores it for thousands of years. It reduces the need for fertilizers and in turn reduces emissions from manufacturing and using fertilizer.

In soils it helps to retain nutrients and moisture and can improve medium and long-term productivity, fertility and stress tolerance for crops.

It can also act as a an additional filter in the soil between the source and surface or groundwater during storms. According to Biochar Ontario, that in turn may help to purify water sources, increase the return of wildlife and reduce the need for artificial filtration systems.

“The fourth reason, it’s green energy. You can use biochar in very low-emission stoves that release a tremendous amount of heat,” he said. “It can be captured and utilized. You could collect those gases and run a generator.”

Biochar Ontario president Lloyd Helferty said there isn’t much common knowledge about biochar and its potential uses.

“I talk to most people about biochar and they say, ‘Bio what?’ That’s our purpose for being,” said Helferty. “We’re not trying to push or sell anything. We’re trying to build awareness and get the idea out there so we can do trials to see if it can work here.”

Helferty said the one thing that is known is the potential benefits of biochar, but more research needs to be done. It might not be economically to use biochar but with more government support of green initiatives, biochar may become a new industry that creates employment.

“We don’t see any draw backs to its application,” he said. “These are all wishes … we don’t have government regulators and industry working together.”

To read the rest of this arctilce click here

It’s no drain on the brain to see that this is a potential carbon sink we need to explore

To view the original article from Brisbane Times click “here“.

SYD Shea stands before a couple of old 44-gallon drums, contented as a new father. The drums are hot and the air carries the scent of charcoal. Here is what Shea, an old man now, wishes to make his life’s final great work. He is producing what he believes could help save the planet and create great agricultural wealth.

Shea is professor of environmental management at Perth’s University of Notre Dame, and it’s not too much to say he is obsessed with the subject of biochar. “Biochar” is hardly a romantic term, and the stuff looks pretty unpromising. It’s just . . . well . . . charcoal.

It’s nothing more than the result of heating organic material such as wood (or just about anything else) while limiting the amount of oxygen in the process so it doesn’t actually burn. That’s why Shea’s 44-gallon drums are sealed with dried mud, and why there is no smoke escaping. As far as he is concerned, however, magic is occurring within those drums.

It’s no new discovery. Amazonian Indians were creating biochar about 2000 years ago to grow their crops, and it has been popular among Japanese farmers for centuries. Essentially, Shea contends, the magic occurring in his drums leads to three exciting results.

The char that is produced has locked within it virtually all the carbon that would otherwise escape into the atmosphere, and it will stay locked away for hundreds, and in many cases, thousands of years. The stuff can then be returned to the soil through tilling, its nutrients significantly boosting crop production. Furthermore, in the production process, a gas is produced that can be captured and used for heating, running motors and generating power.

A couple of old 44-gallon drums aren’t going to save the planet, though, and it’s a source of frustration for the professor and many like him that the industry hasn’t been able to advance much beyond that simple stage in Australia.

Shea envisions large, modern plants producing millions of tonnes of the stuff, using purpose-grown trees or crops as fuel, or taking the huge amount of waste generated by blue gum plantations. He also sees the potential to use the straw that is a byproduct of wheat harvesting across Australia’s plains. Indeed, just about any form of waste, including manure, can be converted into biochar.

Shea and two partners – Melbourne-based engineer and investor Peter Burgess and West Australian grain and sheep farmer Ian Stanley – have established what they call the Rainbow Bee Eater strategy to push their beliefs. They figure that with official support they could lock away 20 million tonnes of carbon and generate 12,000 gigawatts of low-cost energy a year – one-third of Australia’s renewable energy target.

You might imagine that at a time when governments everywhere are desperately trying to work out how to meet greenhouse targets by reducing carbon emissions and searching for alternative and renewable sources of energy there would be great official excitement about the potential of biochar. The Federal Government, for instance, is throwing large amounts of money at the idea of burying carbon – geo-sequestration, it’s called – from coal-fired power stations. Biochar is simply another method of sequestering carbon in soil. It’s a lot simpler than pumping it thousands of metres below the earth’s surface, and it comes with those side benefits of enriching crops and producing gas.

Problem is, government support for biochar is at best muted. Early this year federal Agriculture Minister Tony Burke made it clear he wasn’t an enthusiast. “There are many different technologies that can be used to deliver (carbon sequestration), and biochar is one of them. It’s untested. It’s unproven.”

Burke’s sniffy comment came after Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull delivered a speech in February making it clear the Coalition wanted biochar placed towards the centre of the debate about emissions trading and climate change.

The Government response sounded suspiciously like a purely political rebuff. If Turnbull liked the idea of biochar, then Labor wouldn’t have a bar of it. If that’s the case, it’s pretty low-rent politics. Quite a few biochar proponents half wish that Turnbull hadn’t raised the matter at all, figuring that if the Rudd Government had thought of it first, it would have grabbed the idea and run with it.

Problem No. 2 is that the Government’s emissions trading policy doesn’t include agriculture until 2015, so biochar doesn’t get a guernsey in the labyrinthine business of accounting for carbon capture.

But is it untested and unproven, as Burke claimed? Up to a point – that point being that the Government won’t stump up the money required for exhaustive testing and proving.

However, the NSW Department of Primary Industries has been running biochar trials since 2006, and has declared that it has scientifically demonstrated it can increase soil carbon levels while improving crop productivity and soil health.

Environmental scientist and former Australian of the year Professor Tim Flannery is a major enthusiast. He says biochar looks too good to be true, “but I’ve looked at it from every angle and I fail to see the fault in the system”.

The CSIRO is more cautious, and has produced a paper emphasising that more research is required to ensure biochar’s safe production and use.

However, that same paper states that “due to its high chemical stability, high carbon content and its potential to reside in soil over decades, centuries, and even up to millennia, biochar applications have the potential to turn into a long-term carbon sink. Thus, biochar could play an important role in helping to sequester carbon from the atmosphere and partially offset greenhouse gas emissions produced by the burning of fossil fuels”.

Meanwhile, Syd Shea tends his hot drums and imagines what Australia and the world might be able to achieve if only decision makers shared his sort of dreams.

Source: smh.com.au

Outback Biochar for Biochar News, Information and Research

For new information on biochar visit Outback Biochar for all the latest news, breaking stories and cutting edge research.  Outback Biochar also offers wholesale biochar sales to nurseries and garden supply stores.

‘Char-apalooza’ presents top biochar breakthroughs

Click “Here” To view the original article from MSN.

First North American Biochar Convention pulls in top Obama brass and puts this fledgling industry on the map.

Karl’s note: I invited Lopa Brunjes, one of the top proponents of biochar, to document her trip to the biochar convention this month. Biochar is a technology which could provide clean energy, sequester carbon, and enrich soil all at the same time.

Biochar: Turning Waste into Wealth

As all gardeners know, manure helps the flowers grow. But that manure also gives off greenhouse gases, contributing to global climate change.

At the newly established Biochar Research Centre at Massey University, researchers are trying to harness the good qualities of waste, while limiting the bad. Biochar is the result.

The project is one of three showcased at Massey University’s stand at National Fieldays this week.

Associate Professor Marta Camps has been recruited to help lead the centre. She says biochar can help in many ways.

“Biochar has the potential of carbon sequestration as it is much more stable than the carbon from the material it is made, and it can remain in soils for hundreds to thousands of years.” she says. “In New Zealand, there are high methane and nitrous oxide emissions as a result of the agriculture industry. The biochar technology may help New Zealand as a country in terms of meeting its international obligations regarding greenhouse gas emissions.”

Biochar is a fine-grained charcoal that is produced by a process called pyrolysis, or thermal decomposition under oxygen-limited conditions. “In addition to sequester carbon, biochar has other potential environmental and agronomic benefits when applied to the soils,” Dr Camps says.

Dr Camps and her team, who will be joined by another Professor and five PhD students later in the year, have been working on different biochars in the laboratory and will soon begin trials.

“We’ll begin with sandy soils which are low in nutrients and can’t retain water,” she says. “But ultimately we need to know the responses of all types of soil and also chart the characteristics of different types of biochar.”

To make the process more sustainable, it is important to source the waste material that will from close to where it will end up once converted, she says.

Source: Massey University

Hello world!

We couldn’t be more excited about the launch of our new site!  The biochars.info site will give people in the biochar community a central hub to share their visions and dreams.  Keep up with the latest biochar news and find other like minded people working to better the world.