This is a great idea. It sequesters carbon in 3 ways. Carbon is actually buried in the soil. The char in the soil reduces or eliminates the need for fertilizers reducing carbon emissions. Pyrolosis byproducts can be captured and used for biofuels or cogeneration diverting load from fossil fuels.

Make sure you look at the Terra Preta and Eprida links. http://www.eprida.com/home/index.php4

This is the only carbon sequestration scheme I know of that produces a virtual cycle where the benefits increase with each cycle of sequestration. Plus it is independantly confirmable and can be done on any farmland in the world with just a hoe and a machete.

Just look at compost. It should be a dark color. This is because it is organic (chemically).

I am skeptical about all sequestration methods, but this seems like a fairly good way. I am, however worried about the possibility of people using this as an excuse to set fires to clear land.

Terra Preta Sites;
http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/?q=about

http://forums.hypography.com/terra-preta.html


This some what orphaned new soil technology speaks to so many different interests and disciplines that it has not been embraced fully by any. I'm sure you will see both the potential of this system and the convergence needed for it's implementation.

Terra Preta Soils tech provides; Carbon Negative Bio fuels, massive Carbon sequestration, Lower soil emissions of CH4 & N2O, 3X Fertility and Charcoal / Ammonia Scrubbing Technology for Fossil Fuel Power Plants EmissionsToo


It is my understanding that atmospheric CO2 stands at 379 PPM, to stabilize the climate we need to reduce it to 350 PPM by the removal of 230 Billion tons.

The best estimates I've found are that the total loss of forest and soil carbon (combined
pre-industrial and industrial) has been about 200-240 billion tons. Of
that, the soils are estimated to account for about 1/3, and the vegetation
the other 2/3.

Since man controls 24 billion tons in his agriculture then it seems we have plenty to work with in sequestering our fossil fuel CO2 emissions as stable charcoal in the soil.

As Dr. Lehmann at Cornell points out, "Closed-Loop Pyrolysis systems such as Dr. Danny Day's (or BestEnergie's) are the only way to make a fuel that is actually carbon negative". and 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! "



Erich J. Knight
Shenandoah Gardens
E-mail: shengar at aol.com
(540) 289-9750

It's great to see this subject getting some attention on Treehugger. The recent IPCC report made clear (although not enough people noticed!) that the "Primary Cause" of greenhouse gas release is agriculture.

It's a known fact that our soils contain more carbon than the combined carbon content of our oceans and atmosphere combined. We would do well to pay heed to how we treat it!!

What timing! Just spotted this Instructable on how to DIY charcoal.

Definitely a much more controlled approach than simple slash'n'burn.

Andrew (a.k.a. clothbot over there)

I feel just as excited about this story as the other commentors above. It's not very well recognised that soil can be an extremely potent source of CO2 sequestration.

According to a 23-year long study organic farming increases this ability of soil. It calculates that potentially "580 billion pounds of excess carbon dioxide per year can be sequestered if corn and soybean farmers transition to organic grain systems."

Thanks to my interest in archaeology, I've actually known about terra preta for while, though it never occurred to me that it could be used in this way. I think this story is the perfect example of what I find so fascinating about archaeology. Ancient cultures, though long gone, can still have things to teach us, and even advanced technologies to give us. Who'd have thought that a technology, possibly as much as 2700 years old, could prove to be so useful in so many ways to us today? We have much more to learn from the past than most people would ever think possible.

I'm just as excited about Biochar and Terra Preta- In fact- I just started a website/social network where anyone who is interested in the subject can help collect and distribute information. The idea is that we can share and collaborate to make this a reality in your neck of the woods!

Check out:

http://terrapreta.ning.com/

Thanks!

(p.s. I'm also the author of this post on treehugger)

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 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.

TerraPreta has the potential to solve AGHG emissions WITHOUT having to change basic human behavior. We can keep burning fossil fuels till the cows come home and not worry about Global warming. Using an integrated, local, cellulose to charcoal process , most all GHG from burning Fossil fuels can be cheaply converted to soil food via Ammonia Scrubbing technology;

CO2 to Ammonium Bicarbonate, NOx to nitrogen and putting the end product Charcoal in the soil reduces the soil GHG emissions of CH4 & N2O by 30%! http://www.eprida.com/hydro/powerplant.htm

More Coal & Oil...........MORE Soil

If you have any other questions please feel free to call me or visit the TP website 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 G. I. T. , Dr. Antal of U. of H., Virginia Tech folks and probably many others who's back round I don't know have joined.

Here is my current Terra Preta posting which condenses the most important stories and links;

Terra Preta Soils Technology To Master the Carbon Cycle

Man has been controlling the carbon cycle , and there for the weather, since the invention of agriculture, all be it was as unintentional, as our current airliner contrails are in affecting global dimming. This unintentional warm stability in climate has over 10,000 years, allowed us to develop to the point that now we know what we did,............ and that now......... we are over doing it.

The prehistoric and historic records gives a logical thrust for soil carbon sequestration.
I wonder what the soil biome carbon concentration was REALLY like before the cutting and burning of the world's virgin forest, my guess is that now we see a severely diminished community, and that only very recent Ag practices like no-till and reforestation have started to help rebuild it. It makes implementing Terra Preta soil technology like an act of penitence, a returning of the misplaced carbon to where it belongs.

On the Scale of CO2 remediation:

It is my understanding that atmospheric CO2 stands at 379 PPM, to stabilize the climate we need to reduce it to 350 PPM by the removal of 230 Billion tons.

The best estimates I've found are that the total loss of forest and soil carbon (combined
pre-industrial and industrial) has been about 200-240 billion tons. Of
that, the soils are estimated to account for about 1/3, and the vegetation
the other 2/3.

Since man controls 24 billion tons in his agriculture then it seems we have plenty to work with in sequestering our fossil fuel CO2 emissions as stable charcoal in the soil.

As Dr. Lehmann at Cornell points out, "Closed-Loop Pyrolysis systems such as Dr. Danny Day's are the only way to make a fuel that is actually carbon negative". and 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! "

Terra Preta Soils Carbon Negative Bio fuels, massive Carbon sequestration, 1/3 Lower CH4 & N2O soil emissions, and 3X FertilityToo

This some what orphaned new soil technology speaks to so many different interests and disciplines that it has not been embraced fully by any. I'm sure you will see both the potential of this system and the convergence needed for it's implementation.

The integrated energy strategy offered by Charcoal based Terra Preta Soil technology may
provide the only path to sustain our agricultural and fossil fueled power
structure without climate degradation, other than nuclear power.

The economics look good, and truly great if we had CO2 cap & trade in place.


.Nature article: Putting the carbon back Black is the new green:
http://bestenergies.com/downloads/naturemag_200604.pdf

Here's the Cornell page for an over view:
http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/biochar/Biochar_home.htm

This Earth Science Forum thread on these soils contains further links, and has been viewed by 19,000 self-selected folks. ( I post everything I find on Amazon Dark Soils, ADS here):
http://forums.hypography.com/earth-science/3451-terra-preta.html

Terra Preta Discussion , central data base, and Mail list at REPP-CREST:
http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/?q=about

There is an ecology going on in these soils that is not completely understood, and if replicated and applied at scale would have multiple benefits for farmers and environmentalist.

Terra Preta creates a terrestrial carbon reef at a microscopic level. These nanoscale structures provide safe haven to the microbes and fungus that facilitate fertile soil creation, while sequestering carbon for many hundred if not thousands of years. The combination of these two forms of sequestration would also increase the growth rate and natural sequestration effort of growing plants.

Charcoal / Ammonia Scrubbing Technology for Fossil Fuel Power Plants Emissions:

Here is a great article that high lights this pyrolysis process , ( http://www.eprida.com/hydro/ ) which could use existing infrastructure to provide Charcoal sustainable Agriculture , Syn-Fuels, and a variation of this process would also work as well for H2 production and Charcoal-Fertilizer, while sequestering CO2, NO2 and SO2 from Coal fired plants to build soils at large scales , be sure to read the "See an initial analysis NEW" link of this technology to clean up Coal fired power plants.
Soil erosion, energy scarcity, excess greenhouse gas all answered through regenerative carbon management http://www.newfarm.org/columns/research_paul/2006/0106/charcoal.shtml



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


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 upcoming International Agrichar Initiative (IAI) conference to be held at Terrigal, NSW, Australia in 2007. ( http://iaiconference.org/home.html )
.

If pre-Columbian Indians could produce these soils up to 6 feet deep over 15% of the Amazon basin it seems that our energy and agricultural industries could also product them at scale.

Harnessing the work of this vast number of microbes and fungi changes the whole equation of energy return over energy input (EROEI) for food and Bio fuels. I see this as the only sustainable agricultural strategy if we no longer have cheap fossil fuels for fertilizer.

We need this super community of wee beasties to work in concert with us by populating them into their proper Soil horizon Carbon Condos.

I feel Terra Preta soil technology is the greatest of Ironies.
That is: an invention of pre-Columbian American culture, destroyed by western disease, may well be the savior of industrial western society.

Thanks,
Erich

Erich J. Knight
Shenandoah Gardens
E-mail: shengar@aol.com
(540) 289-9750