Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR)

(Image Source)

Since peat bogs collect and store large amounts of carbon, they are what is known as a “carbon sink.” So, one way to help the planet would be to protect these spaces, but unfortunately peat, and often the land, is valuable.

"Worldwide, the remaining area of near natural peatland (over 3 million km2) sequesters 0.37 gigatonnes of CO2 a year. Peat soils contain more than 600 gigatonnes of carbon which represents up to 44% of all soil carbon, and exceeds the carbon stored in all other vegetation types including the world’s forests.“ IUCN

Peat is built up dead vegetation that(thanks to the wet and low-oxygen environments) does not break down, creating a sponge-like effect. They hold carbon, help control water flow(helping with both floods and droughts), and improve water quality through filtering.

If harvested on a small and sustainable scale, it can provide a firewood alternative, a plant substrate, a fertilizer, and more. However, the peatlands are drained on large scales, so it is important that people know the importance of these (often hated) areas.

More Info:

• https://youtu.be/MtsQPV49cAk
• https://youtu.be/fOYaUZdgCA0
• https://youtu.be/r-LY17qcQEk

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN:

On a slice of the ocean front in west Singapore, a startup is building a plant to turn carbon dioxide from air and seawater into the same material as seashells, in a process that will also produce "green" hydrogen — a much-hyped clean fuel.

The cluster of low-slung buildings starting to take shape in Tuas will become the "world's largest" ocean-based carbon dioxide removal plant when completed later this year, according to Equatic, the startup behind it that was spun out of the University of California at Los Angeles. The idea is that the plant will pull water from the ocean, zap it with an electric current and run air through it to produce a series of chemical reactions to trap and store carbon dioxide as minerals, which can be put back in the sea or used on land... The $20 million facility will be fully operational by the end of the year and able to remove 3,650 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, said Edward Sanders, chief operating officer of Equatic, which has partnered with Singapore's National Water Agency to construct the plant. That amount is equivalent to taking roughly 870 average passenger cars off the road. The ambition is to scale up to 100,000 metric tons of CO2 removal a year by the end of 2026, and from there to millions of metric tons over the next few decades, Sanders told CNN. The plant can be replicated pretty much anywhere, he said, stacked up in modules "like lego blocks...."

The upfront costs are high but the company says it plans to make money by selling carbon credits to polluters to offset their pollution, as well as selling the hydrogen produced during the process. Equatic has already signed a deal with Boeing to sell it 2,100 metric tons of hydrogen, which it plans to use to create green fuel, and to fund the removal of 62,000 metric tons of CO2.

There's other projects around the world attempting ocean-based carbon renewal, CNN notes. "Other projects include sprinkling iron particles into the ocean to stimulate CO2-absorbing phytoplankton, sinking seaweed into the depths to lock up carbon and spraying particles into marine clouds to reflect away some of the sun's energy."

But carbon-removal projects are controversial, criticized for being expensive, unproven at scale and a distraction from policies to cut fossil fuels. And when they involve the oceans — complex ecosystems already under huge strain from global warming — criticisms can get even louder. There are "big knowledge gaps" when it comes to ocean geoengineering generally, said Jean-Pierre Gatusso, an ocean scientist at the Sorbonne University in France. "I am very concerned with the fact that science lags behind the industry," he told CNN.

Abstract credit: https://slashdot.org/story/427506

📢📢📢 OpenAir joins 350+ companies and organizations from across the CDR sector to call for a method-neutral EU #CRCF 🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺  docs.google.com/document/d/1...

quite a lot of captured CO2 can go into concrete. Maybe a cement (powder) producer is not able to tap into that method directly, but policy shifts will open it up. There are already several US states with low-embodied-carbon concrete laws creating markets for this purpose.

https://now.humboldt.edu/news/research-explores-capacity-biochar-combat-climate-change-improve-forest-soils

Researchers will conduct tests in the Six Rivers National Forest, treating each test site with a unique biochar mix that’s seeded with a native, pollinator-friendly plant mix to compare growth between test sites.

They’ll measure changes in vegetation productivity, diversity, native species composition, soil carbon, nutrients, metals, bulk density, seasonal water availability, and microbial community composition over a five-year period.

The article discusses a new Australian innovation called PYROCO that uses high heat to turn waste like sewage sludge and food waste into a carbon-rich product called biochar. This process removes pathogens and can turn waste into resources like fertilizer or materials for batteries. The technology has undergone trials and shows promise to more sustainably manage waste. Researchers are now working to commercialize the technology.

Any recommendations on books about biochar?

I recently read and enjoyed The Biochar Debate: Charcoal’s Potential to Reverse Climate Change and Build Soil Fertility by James Bruges. It’s a short read, slightly academic but not stuffy, and written with a sense of urgency. At the end he briefly talks about the CMF (Carbon Maintenance Fee) which I hadn’t heard of and is essentially a proposed strategy for financially incentivizing land-based carbon sequestration (reforestation, increasing soil carbon, etc). I would recommend this book to anyone interested in biochar or climate change.

What other biochar books do people like, and what do you like about them?

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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/3903718

Excerpt:

That’s the theory, anyway. But today, the lion’s share of the CO2 captured from industrial processes doesn’t go back into the ground. Instead, 60 percent of it is used to extract more oil, in a controversial process known as “enhanced oil recovery.”

“I think it’s a huge problem,” said Lorne Stockman, research co-director of the advocacy group Oil Change International. “The oil and gas industry has done a very good job of co-opting our climate and clean energy policy.”

For over a decade, the U.S. government has been quietly funding the capture of CO2 that is ultimately used to drill more oil. Some experts and researchers argue that the climate impact is net positive: The oil will be drilled anyway, and the process can help companies learn how to capture CO2 more efficiently. But others say that the government shouldn’t be helping companies sustain more fossil fuel extraction.

Excerpt:

That’s the theory, anyway. But today, the lion’s share of the CO2 captured from industrial processes doesn’t go back into the ground. Instead, 60 percent of it is used to extract more oil, in a controversial process known as “enhanced oil recovery.”

“I think it’s a huge problem,” said Lorne Stockman, research co-director of the advocacy group Oil Change International. “The oil and gas industry has done a very good job of co-opting our climate and clean energy policy.”

For over a decade, the U.S. government has been quietly funding the capture of CO2 that is ultimately used to drill more oil. Some experts and researchers argue that the climate impact is net positive: The oil will be drilled anyway, and the process can help companies learn how to capture CO2 more efficiently. But others say that the government shouldn’t be helping companies sustain more fossil fuel extraction.

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"Biochar production today ranges from small scale at a few lb per day to 50 tons - 300 cubic yards - per day. New production is being planned for 70-140 tons per day."Uses range from retail gardens to landscaping, turf and trees, community gardens, municipal stormwater, small to medium farms with high value crops, environmental applications and building products.

"Biochar accounts for 50% of the carbon and 20% of the mass of the biomass you start with. The other 50% of the carbon is available as condensable liquids, and non-condensable gases. We have limited markets for the liquid products today. In today's market you need to use renewable energy to justify production, which is a barrier to building industrial scale facilities." Down The Rabbit Hole biochar Image courtesy of Carbonculture When I first contacted Jock Gill, he warned me that biochar is a very deep rabbit hole, and he was so right.

There is a common misconception that biochar is one thing. Perhaps the most important benefit of biochar is that it converts about 50% of the carbon in organic waste into a stable compound that stays locked in the soil.

According to Grist, the amount of biochar being produced in the United States today - about 100,000 metric tons - is tiny compared to the amount needed to sequester carbon in a globally significant way.

"Biochar started to be promoted as a single solution and a silver bullet, and it's much more nuanced than that. A lot of people are trying to shift toward understanding that biochar is a class of products." To learn more about biochar, the USDA website has a wealth of information Researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are putting together a national database to help farmers choose from the many different types of biochar and connect them with local producers, and Congress is weighing legislation with bipartisan support - the Biochar Research Network Act - that would increase funding for similar research.

Adding of crushed bamboo biochar to a horse manure bedding for a hands-off biological inoculation of the feedstock.

This isn't my usual worm farm (https://beehaw.org/comment/100268), just one I temporarily put together at a 50:50 ratio of 50L:50L manure:biochar for adding to a structural soil raised garden bed build some time in the future (the longer the better for inoculation purposes).

Mixed in are a small amount of castings from the actual worm farm to accelerate correct bacteria composition and then worms will be added for the processing. It may be fed sporadically, I haven't decided yet.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/2639720

Abstract

Stability and transformation products of incomplete combustion of vegetation or fossil fuel, frequently called pyrogenic or black carbon and of biochar in soil, remains unknown mainly because of their high recalcitrance compared to other natural substances. Therefore, direct estimations of biochar decomposition and transformations are difficult because 1) changes are too small for any relevant experimental period and 2) due to methodological constraints (ambiguity of the origin of investigated compounds). We used 14C-labeled biochar to trace its decomposition to CO2 during 8.5 years and transformation of its chemical compounds: neutral lipids, glycolipids, phospholipids, polysaccharides and benzenepolycarboxylic acids (BPCA). 14C-labeled biochar was produced by charring 14C-labeled Lolium residues. We incubated the 14Clabeled biochar in a Haplic Luvisol and in loess for 8.5 years under controlled conditions. In total only about 6% of initially added biochar were mineralized to CO2 during the 8.5 years. This is probably the slowest decomposition obtained experimentally for any natural organic compound. The biochar decomposition rates estimated by 14CO2 efflux between the 5th and 8th years were of 7
104 % per day. This corresponds to less than 0.3% per year under optimal conditions and is about 2.5 times slower as reported from the previous shorter study (3.5 years). After 3.5 years of incubation, we analyzed 14C in dissolved organic matter, microbial biomass, and sequentially extracted neutral lipids, glycolipids, phospholipids, polysaccharides and BPCA. Biochar derived C (14C) in microbial biomass ranged between 0.3 and 0.95% of the 14C input. Biochar-derived C in all lipid fractions was less than 1%. Over 3.5 years, glycolipids and phospholipids were decomposed 1.6 times faster (23% of their initial content per year) compared to neutral lipids (15% year1). Polysaccharides contributed ca. 17% of the 14C activity in biochar. The highest portion of 14C in the initial biochar (87%) was in BPCA decreasing only 7% over 3.5 years. Condensed aromatic moieties were the most stable fraction compared to all other biochar compounds and the high portion of BPCA in biochar explains its very high stability and its contribution to long-term C sequestration in soil. Our new approach for analysis of biochar stability combines 14C-labeled biochar with 14C determination in chemical fractions allowed tracing of transformation products not only in released CO2 and in microbial biomass, but also evaluation of decomposition of various biochar compounds with different chemical properties.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/2643215

ABSTRACT

Biochar is not a structured homogeneous material; rather it possesses a range of chemical structures and a heterogeneous elemental composition. This variability is based on the conditions of pyrolysis and the biomass parent material, with biochar spanning the range of various forms of black carbon. Thereby, this variability induces a broad spectrum in the observed rates of reactivity and, correspondingly, the overall chemical and microbial stability. From evaluating the current biochar and black carbon degradation studies, there is the suggestion of an overall relationship in biochar stability as a function of the molar ratio of oxygen to carbon (O:C) in the resulting black carbon. In general, a molar ratio of O:C lower than 0.2 appears to provide, at minimum, a 1000-year biochar half-life. The O:C ratio is a function of production temperature, but also accounts for other impacts (e.g., parent material and post-production conditioning/oxidation) that are not captured solely with production temperature. Therefore, the O:C ratio could provide a more robust indicator of biochar stability than production parameters (e.g., pyrolysis temperature and biomass type) or volatile matter determinations.