Karl et al, This is turning into quite the debate. I don't have the time to keep sending out emails. Suffice to say, I agree with you more than disagree. I'm certainly in favor of natural C management otherwise I wouldn't be studying the things I do. You a certainly right referring to any agricultural residual materials (such as corn stover, wheat straw, or rice hulls) as "waste" is certainly a misnomer. And you are certainly right, they won't be there in the future when the current industrial agricultural paradigm is likely to struggle.
Couple points however: 1. The stable organic carbon pool of which you speak is humic substrates which are certainly resistant to breakdown but far less so that biochar. They may have a mean residence time on the matter of decades maybe a century. Biochar is an order of magnitude longer than this. 2. Equating bio-oil from french fry grease to biochar from pyrolysis is about the silliest thing I have heard considering that practically any dry carbonaceous material can be pyrolyzed... don't need to go to McDonals to get it, in other words. 3. It is possible to produce food and fodder simultaneously. Forest gardens (which have become all the rage in the permaculture community but have been used by 10,000's of thousands of years by indigenous cultures the world over) have been capable of producing food, fiber, fodder, dye, medicines, poisons, resins, timber, etc. for quite some time. This, of course, requires the ditching of the typical monoculture row crop vision we all get when we think of energy crops. Imagine this scenario. You've got your paddocks where you let your ewes graze. You plant edible fruit and nut trees and berries and edible vegetables. But you also plant extensive fast growing N-fixing trees such as acacia and black locust. As the hedgerow matures you can selectively harvest the fast-growing N-fixing trees which are starting to compete for light and space. As you harvest these, you take them with you draft horses to your on-farm pyrolyzer which heats your house, greenhouse, and even gives a little heat to your horses so they're warm and cozy during the coldest months. Having a system capable of heating multiple areas at once thereby replacing other less efficient systems (such as heating oil, or wood [you're probably already doing that now, I'd imagine]) If connected in with a gas generator, you could use the syngas from the process to turn a turbine and generate heat for the farm. The end-product of your home, greenhouse and barn heating is a super-stable biochar which can be used in a number of ways. It can be added to your composting toilet to better mitigate smells than saw-dust or peat. You can soak it in human or animal urine--you could use it as the bedding for your horses much in the way that the Danish did to make their anthropogenically created "Plaggen" soils. Eventually you'll want to incorporate it into your soils... perhaps even the same place it was removed. At this point it would be a highly stable, nutrient rich, moisture retaining substrate in which you could innoculate mycorrhizal fungi and rhizobia. You incorporate it back into your soils and you're likely to see fairly significant increases in plant productivity. As you sustainably manage the farm you keep planting patches of fast growing nitrogen fixing trees, perhaps sectioning off a small piece of a field to plant low-input high diversity perennial energy crops... perhaps there could be a polyculture capable of both feed and energy. Invasives, as another writer mentioned, could go into the pyrolyzer. You'd have a incredibly local source of heat and power, you'd be helping to mitigate climate change, you'd be improving the producitivity of the farm, and the systems would be thorouhgly connected. Some of the plants in the hedgerow would be used for human consumptions... others would droop over the fence dropping their fruits for the grazers. Perennial crops would be popping up year after year. Your intensive grazing and manuring C farming would keep-on-keeping on simulaneously with biochar C sequestration. It all works together. Ok. That's it for now.... Except: >And it [biochar production] means local manufacturing and local jobs... Oh please, this is the superficial level of thinking I would expect from my local congress critter... What's the matter with local produces of pyrolysis equipment? You don't think this could be some meaningful work for some people, Karl? I know you think farming's going to be the line of work for most people in the future whether they know it or not and I tend to agree... but you really think this is that bad to be cut down to the level of "local congress critter?" ;) Ok. You guys over there in Ithaca are so smart and up on things... it's hard not to get in good discussion like this when I mention something on this list... Let me what you think of the farm plan, Karl... Best, Ryan On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 3:38 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > Ryan, > > On Thu, 6 Aug 2009 07:46:18 -0400 Ryan Hottle <[email protected]> > writes: > > I seriously recommend looking into it before simply > > giving the > > "knee-jerk" anti biofuel reaction. > > I have read a lot of the online papers and conference products, including > Lehmann's, and discussed the question with him in his office. He was much > more cautious than any of the online stuff when he realized that I, like > anyone who has studied soil carbon pool dynamics, knew that there are > effective farm soil organic matter building practices that produce the > same results as the effects attributed to biochar. And at the same time > produce food! Which the use of land to produce biomass for biochar does > not do. > > biochar > > is > > special in that it is a highly recalcitrant C that is not easily > > mineralized. > > The eventual effect of the aforementioned practices over time is to build > a soil pool of carbon that is just as recalcitrant (meaning stable) as > biochar. A fact that Lehman acknowledged. What do you think makes highly > productive muckland black? > > > biochar to > > sequester C for centennial to millennial time scales can be > > sustainably > > harvested from all sorts of sustainably managed and harvested crops. > > Short > > rotation willow coppice, saw dust, saw ends, nut shells, storm > > debris, urban > > lawn debris, low-input high diversity energy crops > > Using willow or other energy crops does not answer the question, What is > the trade-off? What crop is being sacrificed to grow biofuel on that > acreage? How important is the alternative crop compared to the biofuel or > biochar? In the post-hydrocarbon age, biomass again will become a main > way energy enters our world. Its uses need to be considered carefully. > The other sources you cite - like saw dust - are byproducts that 1) are > simply too small to scale up, or 2) will become valuable for other more > purposes. Like biofuel from french fry oil, they don't amount to a hill > of beans. A Vermont farmer had to collect all the used cooking oil from > as far as he could economically transport it, just to power one small > farm. Hawthorne Valley farm, another producer of biodiesel for farm use > from cooking oil, found that China had cornered the market on cooking > oil from all the local fast food outlets. China! Because of steadily the > rising price of sawdust, our farm will soon be unable to purchase the > sawdust we use, first as horse bedding, then to beef up the C/N ratio of > our farm-scale composting. As the oil age wanes, these are bellwethers of > change in the way all sorts of biomass is valued in the marketplace. > > In time, unholistic approaches to all questions like how we use of > biomass will be revealed as frivolous. Every problem needs to be studied > in its proper context. Light talk of energy production using the "wastes" > that currently litter our extravagant agro-, residential and industrial > landscapes will soon be brought to heel by nature's law: > waste=food=waste=food... ...and as food becomes more expensive, what > will waste be used for, biochar or food? Biochar or winter heat? > > >And it [biochar production] means local manufacturing and local jobs... > > Oh please, this is the superficial level of thinking I would expect from > my local congress critter... > > Karl > > > > > Karl: > Yeah...Pyrolysis certainly generates CO2. It's 50% of so of that of > > the > > total carbon content of the biochar (WHICH IS CARBON NEUTRAL). > > The other 30-50% is locked up as biochar for 100-1000s of years. > > (WHICH IS > > CARBON NEGATIVE). > > > > Of course this requires a sustainable biomass harvesting system, > > which > > generally means small scale, distributed CHP systems that do not > > require > > significant hauling distances. This also requires not competing > > with land > > for food crops. And it means local manufacturing and local jobs... > > something much needed in Western New York and here where I live in > > Ohio. > > Solar panel manufacturing doesn't have that benefit. > > > > Good rotational grazing, organic no-till, mulching, manuring, cover > > crops... > > there are a lot of ways to get good C into the ground, but biochar > > is > > special in that it is a highly recalcitrant C that is not easily > > mineralized. I seriously recommend looking into it before simply > > giving the > > "knee-jerk" anti biofuel reaction. I'm no fan of corn ethanol but > > pyrolysis > > is something entirely different > > > > Best, > > Ryan > > ____________________________________________________________ > Workers Compensation Legal Advice. Click here > > http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTOcqEMZ7QYZS7meDMdhii7rNp2sNnSG7g959WE0qITyTRIFx3qzQU/ > _______________________________________________ > For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, > please visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/ > > RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: > [email protected] > http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins > Questions about the list? ask > [email protected] > free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org > -- Ryan Darrell Hottle LEED-AP Environmental Science, PhD Student Carbon Management and Sequestration Center The Ohio State University Rm. 454 Kottman Hall 2021 Coffey Road Columbus, OH 43210 C: (740) 258 8450 NOTE: This e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential and privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail, delete this e-mail and destroy any copies. Any dissemination or use of this information by a person other than the intended recipient is unauthorized and may be illegal. _______________________________________________ For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins Questions about the list? ask [email protected] free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
