Sunday, March 27, 2011
Thursday, March 3, 2011
What is BioChar and Why It Holds So much Potential
BioChar is charcoal that is tilled into the ground. That is to say, the only thing that makes it different from charcoal is what you do with it.
Once it is tilled into the ground it will not burn, and this is the really fabulous thing about it - it is very stable. Charcoal tilled into the ground will last for 50 thousand years, or even to more than 300,000 years. In human terms - that is forever.
So, if you till regular organic matter into the ground it will decompose in 3 to 5 years about. The carbon returns to the atmosphere. BioChar does not. It stays in the soil, increases the water holding capacity of the soil while also increasing the aeration of the soil.
Biochar does one more remarkable thing. The texture of charcoal/biochar has many
many many little holes and crevices, much like a coral reef, combine this with the water holding capacity and aeration biochar in the soil creates billions of little micro habitats for very diverse microorganisms to find shelter in. You will not likely see much change in your gardening results until those micro organisms set up shop in the charcoal/biochar.
Once these micro organisms set up camp in their biochar homes they soak up and hold on to the nutrients that come their way and keep recycling it into the living biology of the whole system. So you will not need nearly the fertilizer and much less or none of the nutrients which are brought into or are trapped by the system will leach away as pollution into the water systems. It is a carbon filter that filters out the nutrients and holds them in place.
BioChar or charcoal is made by heating organic matter in the absence of oxygen. If you carefully vent it the gases that are given off can be distilled or used to fuel the process. It takes about 1/6th of the energy in organic matter to fuel the creation of the char. 2/6ths of the total energy is then still available to use for other purposes - such as heating your house, or running an engine. About 3/6th of the energy then remains as charcoal which you can burn as charcoal or till into the ground as biochar. So instead of burning a log for all its energy, you harvest the wood gas from the log and get half the energy, and put the rest of that collected solar energy as char back into the soil.
The interesting thing is that crops give off greenhouse gases "naturally". But it seems that because of the micro organisms that colonize the char those lands that have incorporated biochar into the soil release very little or no greenhouse gases. So not only are you sequestering carbon for 50 thousand plus years, you are reducing the amount of greenhouse gases released in commercial agriculture production.
Many unsustainable societies have harvested living plants to supply charcoal for cooking and industry, and stripped the land bare depleting their resource base. The trick to being ecologically sustainable is to use only waste, plant matter to create biochar. Tilling it into the soil increases the efficiency of the ecosystem to support and cycle living plant matter.
Once it is tilled into the ground it will not burn, and this is the really fabulous thing about it - it is very stable. Charcoal tilled into the ground will last for 50 thousand years, or even to more than 300,000 years. In human terms - that is forever.
So, if you till regular organic matter into the ground it will decompose in 3 to 5 years about. The carbon returns to the atmosphere. BioChar does not. It stays in the soil, increases the water holding capacity of the soil while also increasing the aeration of the soil.
Biochar does one more remarkable thing. The texture of charcoal/biochar has many
many many little holes and crevices, much like a coral reef, combine this with the water holding capacity and aeration biochar in the soil creates billions of little micro habitats for very diverse microorganisms to find shelter in. You will not likely see much change in your gardening results until those micro organisms set up shop in the charcoal/biochar.
Once these micro organisms set up camp in their biochar homes they soak up and hold on to the nutrients that come their way and keep recycling it into the living biology of the whole system. So you will not need nearly the fertilizer and much less or none of the nutrients which are brought into or are trapped by the system will leach away as pollution into the water systems. It is a carbon filter that filters out the nutrients and holds them in place.
BioChar or charcoal is made by heating organic matter in the absence of oxygen. If you carefully vent it the gases that are given off can be distilled or used to fuel the process. It takes about 1/6th of the energy in organic matter to fuel the creation of the char. 2/6ths of the total energy is then still available to use for other purposes - such as heating your house, or running an engine. About 3/6th of the energy then remains as charcoal which you can burn as charcoal or till into the ground as biochar. So instead of burning a log for all its energy, you harvest the wood gas from the log and get half the energy, and put the rest of that collected solar energy as char back into the soil.
Here are a series of little videos I created to demonstrate the process.
The interesting thing is that crops give off greenhouse gases "naturally". But it seems that because of the micro organisms that colonize the char those lands that have incorporated biochar into the soil release very little or no greenhouse gases. So not only are you sequestering carbon for 50 thousand plus years, you are reducing the amount of greenhouse gases released in commercial agriculture production.
Many unsustainable societies have harvested living plants to supply charcoal for cooking and industry, and stripped the land bare depleting their resource base. The trick to being ecologically sustainable is to use only waste, plant matter to create biochar. Tilling it into the soil increases the efficiency of the ecosystem to support and cycle living plant matter.
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