Is anyone using biochar for personal carbon sequestration?

asked by Theo Jones on Sunday 10th January 2010

Question

I have been looking into using biochar/expanded clay in an attempt to improve my soil quality (fairly poor quality moorland, with a housing estate built on top of it - it's horrible!) and possibly to sequester my personal carbon usage.

I'm finding it hard to get good information about this.

Some groups (like biofuelwatch) seem to be trying to spread a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt about biochar. it seems that anything which seeks to be a fix, other than sitting in the dark in mud huts, is automatically rejected by the dark green groups.

So, the question - has anyone been experimenting with soil improvement, nutrient retention or personal carbon sequestration using biochar?

in particular, is anyone using coppiced willow wood as a sourcefeed for biochar?

annoyingly, I can't create tags at this level - there should be a biochar tag

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carbon, biochar
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+4 #2 Fernanda Rivas 2010-01-13 15:20

Hello Theo,

I have just completed some research regarding the "goodness" of biochar as a capture carbon and storage technique.

There is some information out there that can help you and I will try to include some of the most relevant sources.

However, it is my opinion that this topic, just as biofuels were earlier, has extremist points of view with opinions either 100% positive or a 100% negative. I think neutrality about biochar is very hard to find for the moment. You can have small domestic build-it-yourself biochar systems (very low-tech pyrolysis) but..I doubt that such systems will prevent the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere, since, in essence, you are just fancily burning biomass. I guess that for personal CCS you would require a more advanced system that effectively captures all the combustion gases. Also, the CCS really depends on what you use as feedstock (I take it you would use your organic waste) and its original final disposal method.

Anyway, here are some key words to type into your Internet browser that will lead you to information (hopefully the useful type):

International biochar initiative. They have some technical information about biochar making processes and benefits as soil improvement.

Biochar central. I believe they have links with smaller groups of biochar fans that could give you practical advice.

UK Biochar Research Center. It stems from the University of Edinburgh. Even though most of their work is rather on research, you can come in contact with some of the people there to ask for advice. In my experience they are very happy to help.

Hopefully this helps you!

Fernanda

 
 
+3 #1 JCP 2010-02-15 22:06

Hello,

I agree, this a really interesting technology. Here are some other links: http://www.biochar.info/biochar.biochar.info.cfml http://www.biochar.org/joomla/

This book is also quite good:

The Biochar Debate: charcoal's potential to reverse climate change and build soil fertility (Schumacher Briefing No 16) (Schumacher Briefings) Looking forward to hear about your personal scale experiment.

About the boifuelwatch article, I also agree. As any new technology, for sure there are challenges and gaps, but that’s the only way for finding a solution to such a massive problem.