Regarding biochar, I would like Ron or others to provide a total estimate of the total amount of carbon that could be sequestered globally in agricultural soils only, not including any forest soils, with peer reviewed citations please.
BECCS carbon analysis depends on whether efficient and practical use of crop residues requires co-burning with coal (in which case the carbon balance falls well below 100%), or whether CR can be burnt efficiently and practically alone, without co-combustion. And whether CO2 sequestration underground will be accepted by the public in high agriculture productive societies. = Stuart = Stuart E. Strand 490 Ben Hall IDR Bldg. Box 355014, Univ. Washington Seattle, WA 98195 voice 206-543-5350, fax 206-685-9996 skype: stuartestrand http://faculty.washington.edu/sstrand/ From: geoengineering@googlegroups.com [mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of rongretlar...@comcast.net Sent: Saturday, December 15, 2012 12:58 PM To: bhaskarmv 64 Cc: joshic...@gmail.com; geoengineering@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [geo] Re: New Research on OIF Bhaskar and list: 1. a. The original Strand and Benford paper that you are asking about today (and cited by Joshua Jacobs yesterday) is available without fee at: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es8015556 b. Shortly thereafter (in 2009, same journal, no fee) there was a pretty strong negative reaction against their C.R.O.P.S. approach. This objection was based mostly on the need to retain all crop residues for the benefit of the soil. See http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1021/es9011004 This paper's lead author was Douglas Karlen, with nine co-authors. The cite is Environ. Sci. Technol. 2009, 43, 8011-8015 c. Their final four sentences (emphasis added) were: "We conclude that although ocean sequestration may have a role in mitigating atmospheric CO2 concentrations, humankind should not risk the future productivity of our soils by drowning crop residues. Perhaps the CROPS concept could be coupled with the use of a thermochemical platform for production of biofuel where the biochar coproduct could be used not only for CCS but also to remove phosphorus and other aqueous contaminants moving through the soil. The crucial question is whether this can be done without creating unintended environmental consequences. All in all, minimizing environmental changes will require careful study, a balanced approach, and full accounting for all intended and nonintended consequences. d. I emphasized the "biochar" part above because I had not seen this article until today and because biochar was also not being compared in the original paper by Professors Strand and Benford. Neither paper mentioned BECCS, but I think Karlen etal would have similarly been concerned about a failure to address soil improvement. Soil improvement is a (the?) big part of biochar, as shown in bold above. It is this last aspect that I have been anxious to talk further with you about as I wondered whether biochar could be made from fertilized ocean based resources. e. I hope that Professors Strand and Benford can take this opportunity to reply to both you and Karlen, etal. I also hope they can compare CROPS with the biomass options they did not originally consider: biochar, BECCS ,and local burial of biomass. 2. a. Since you are really asking about CDR costs - presumably to compare with your approach for sequestering in oceans, I have to extend this response to include the citation in the Thursday message below from Wil Burns. He gave a PR release to a still-forthcoming paper by Australian Daniel Harrison, whose abstract I found at this site: http://interceder.net/latest_news/Daniel-Harrison b. The Paper abstract: A method for estimating the cost to sequester carbon dioxide by delivering iron to the ocean [Order a copy of this article] <mailto:s...@inderscience.com> by Daniel Harrison Abstract: If society wishes to limit the contribution of anthropogenic carbon dioxide to global warming then the need to find economical methods of CO2 sequestration is now urgent. Ocean iron fertilisation has been suggested as a low cost mitigation option to capture and store carbon. However previous methods of estimating the cost fail to account for many of the losses and offsets occurring over the storage period. A method for calculating the net carbon stored from iron fertilisation of high nutrient low chlorophyll (HNLC) regions is provided here. The method involves first calculating the direct cost to create phytoplankton biomass in the surface ocean. The net amount of carbon stored is then calculated by considering the fraction of this carbon exported as deep as the permanent thermocline and subtracting losses due to: ventilation, nutrient stealing, greenhouse gas production, and CO2 emitted by the sequestration operation for a given storage period. Commonly available iron fertiliser delivered by ship to the Southern Ocean is considered as a case study using parameters derived from previous fertilisation experiments and modelling studies. On average, a single fertilisation is found to result in a net sequestration of 0.01 t C km-2 sequestered for 100 years or more at a cost of US$457 per tonne CO2. Iron fertilisation experiments show high variability in the amount of biomass created and the fraction exported to depth, the range of uncertainty provides a risk of more carbon released to the atmosphere than sequestered for 100 years, or alternatively, reduced cost if optimistic parameters are assumed. Previous estimates of cost fail to recognise the economic challenge of distributing low concentrations of iron over large areas of the ocean surface and the subsequent loss processes that result in only a small net storage of carbon per km2 fertilised. The cost could be lowered by the use of more energy efficient means to distribute the small amounts of iron required over large regions of remote ocean surface, by improving the performance of the iron fertiliser, or potentially by conducting fertilisation activities only under ideal oceanographic conditions. Keywords: Ocean Iron Fertilisation; Cost; Ship Delivery; Carbon Storage; Carbon Sequestration; Ocean Fertilisation; Nutrient Stealing; Nitrous Oxide Production; Biological Carbon Pump. Acceptance Date: 03 Dec 2012 c. I found this $457/tonne CO2 estimate to be amazingly high - clearly one may be growing more biomass because of IOF, but not getting much sequestration. This figure would translate to more than $1300/tonne of biochar and approaching $1700/tonne carbon. Farmers the world over would do most anything for such prices. 3. I hope we can have discussion on what these two papers are telling us for the world of CDR. I have just also read the latest draft 2 IPCC comparisons we learned about yesterday (saving that for another message). I find the same failure there to compare CDR techniques based on all their attributes. Here mainly I am talking of continuing out-year CDR benefits, but also we/they should be talking about carbon neutral energy benefits. All CDR/geoengineering analyses should be based on more than sequestration and its cost. Ron ________________________________ From: "M V Bhaskar" <bhaskarmv...@gmail.com<mailto:bhaskarmv...@gmail.com>> To: geoengineering@googlegroups.com<mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com> Cc: joshic...@gmail.com<mailto:joshic...@gmail.com> Sent: Saturday, December 15, 2012 4:08:15 AM Subject: [geo] Re: New Research on OIF Joshua How is Ocean Sequestration of Crop Residue related to OIF - Ocean Iron Fertilization. I wonder how Ocean Sequestration of crop residue is regarded as economical. Farm land is generally deep inland - US Midwest, etc., the cost of transporting the crop residue to deep ocean for sequestration would be very high. How would you put it into the depths of the ocean? regards Bhaskar On Friday, 14 December 2012 23:30:30 UTC+5:30, Joshua Jacobs wrote: Despite its shortcomings, OIF may have a role. I don't know if the following research has been followed up on: Ocean Sequestration of Crop Residue Carbon: Recycling Fossil Fuel Carbon Back to Deep Sediments Stuard E. Strand, Gregory Benford For significant impact any method to remove CO2 from the atmosphere must process large amounts of carbon efficiently, be repeatable, sequester carbon for thousands of years, be practical, economical and be implemented soon. The only method that meets these criteria is removal of crop residues and burial in the deep ocean. We show here that this method is 92% efficient in sequestration of crop residue carbon while cellulosic ethanol production is only 32% and soil sequestration is about 14% efficient. Deep ocean sequestration can potentially capture 15% of the current global CO2 annual increase, returning that carbon back to deep sediments, confining the carbon for millennia, while using existing capital infrastructure and technology. Because of these clear advantages, we recommend enhanced research into permanent sequestration of crop residues in the deep ocean. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es8015556 On Thursday, December 13, 2012 2:35:53 PM UTC-8, Wil Burns wrote: FYI. Wil http://sydney.edu.au/news/84.html?newscategoryid=2&newsstoryid=10740&utm_source=console&utm_medium=news&utm_campaign=cws -- Dr. Wil Burns, Associate Director Master of Science - Energy Policy & Climate Program Johns Hopkins University 1717 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Room 104J Washington, DC 20036 202.663.5976 (Office phone) 650.281.9126 (Mobile) wbu...@jhu.edu<mailto:wbu...@jhu.edu> http://advanced.jhu.edu/academic/environmental/master-of-science-in-energy-policy-and-climate/index.html SSRN site (selected publications): http://ssrn.com/author=240348 Skype ID: Wil.Burns Teaching Climate/Energy Law & Policy Blog: http://www.teachingclimatelaw.org -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/geoengineering/-/vQTjOyxGAd8J. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com<mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com>. 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