Finger Lakes Biochar

For no apparent reason, I seem to have a perverse fascination with sink holes.  I’ve never seen one up close nor do I live in an area of the world where they are common.  But it seems to me that both the frequency and the parts of the world where they are occurring are on the increase.

Every time I see a new story on the latest sink hole, I spend a few minutes flirting with Master Google to learn more about them.  Regions with cavities in the earth’s surface are usually where sinkholes are most likely to occur, be they from Mother Nature (e.g. caves or aquifers) or from mankind (e.g. abandoned mines or sewage lines).  Changes to these cavities resulting from downpours, droughts and fracking are often the cause and there seems to be a lot more of all three of those these days!

What to do with a giant hole in the ground?  In ancient times sinkholes were often used as a sort of landfill which could lead to polluting of groundwater.  Nowadays there are different solutions to sinkholes from converting them into lakes, to filling them with cement or grout.  In extreme cases, communities have been forced to flee the area or risk being swallowed up!

How to go from sinkhole to carbon sink – to turn the abyss into something better if not quite bliss? With biochar of course!  I’m really treading on shaky ground here from a science perspective, but it seems to me that instead of drilling & filling with grout or concrete, a better solution might be filling up the nooks & crannies with biochar.  Not only would this probably allow water to filter down to recharge aquifers more quickly, it would likely help filter toxins and thus keep them out of the groundwater or in the case of the ever expanding Louisiana sinkhole, it might help mitigate some of the H2S or methane that seems to be percolating up from the ground.  And the silver lining?  LOTS of carbon sequestered!

Just how much CO2 could be sequestered in this manner is a little hard to calculate.  But considering just this one hole in Guatemala was 100’ deep and gobbled up 6,500 square feet of concrete in an attempt to put a band-aide on the gash, there seems to be a plenty of room to bury this highly stable form of carbon in the ever growing number of sinkholes.

It might be interesting to explore this idea with old oil wells too.  Texas sure needs some help recharging their aquifers these days and they have a heck of a lot of old oil wells dotting their landscape.

Such are my latest musings from the latest rabbit hole I stumbled down…

Few things are as exciting or exhausting as a new puppy.   In my life I can only think of two: raising children and being on the ground floor of the nascent biochar industry.  Not satisfied with only two of these in my life, I’ve decided that three exciting, exhausting outlets is really what I need to make my life complete(ly crazy).

Enter a 2.5 lb Pugzu puppy who has yet to be named (I’m a pushing for Preta but my daughter is not yet convinced).  In an effort to housebreak (interesting word for it) the puplette I’ve been researching all sorts of ridiculous inventions such as the elegantly named ‘wee wee pads’.  It’s bad enough that we send zillions of tons of baby diapers to landfills but the thought of adding doggie diapers to garbage mountains was keeping me up at night (of course that could have just been the puppy).

Then this morning at 3am, the solution hit me.  I really need to make a reusable or recyclable version of a wee wee pad with biochar inside.  I’ve dubbed this world-changing idea the ‘Terra Pee’ Pad.  While you might think this is a tad crazy, there are already variations on this theme.  The CH’artist has a biochar pillow and he tells me it brings quite the peaceful slumber.  And the notion of using charcoal inserts in diapers is apparently gaining steam and hiding odors! Although the current inserts use an actual fabric made out of charcoal, I figure why not try loose char in some kind of pillowcase?  Once a certain amount of ‘business’ has been conducted on the Terra Pee pads, I can just empty the nitrogen filled char into the compost bin or the garden (which is under a foot of snow at the moment).  I am sure I will sleep much better tonight after having figured out how to combine two of the three exciting yet exhausting things in my life.  The hunt for washable, biodegradable fabric is on! (Recommendations welcome.)

The notion of ‘waste’ is so last century.  In the new century this stuff is pure gold and I believe it could be the cornerstone for making urban areas more sustainable and even regenerative.  Waste optimization could also spur innumerable entrepreneurial ventures.

Waste conversion technologies are not new but next generation variants are gaining steam – some are even producing steam!  Historically many have focused on how to convert waste into some type of energy which is obviously better than shipping it off to landfills.  However newer versions of older technologies, such as thermochemical conversion (TC) create multiple end products including: heat, liquid biofuels and biochar, a highly stable form of carbon used as a soil amendment (also referred to as ‘char’ when not used in the soil). Multiple end-products allow for a more holistic approach to optimizing organic ‘waste’.

Here is a view on how cities can more closely mimic nature when it comes to managing their organics using TC technology.

Large scale TC equipment could be utilized at recycling centers where landscapers drop off tree debris which then generates heat & electricity for the recycling center, biogas to run the equipment, and biochar which could be added to compost to speed decomposition or used to reduce odors and control toxic leachate at local landfills or sold to generate income.

Smaller scale TC equipment could be used directly at the source of ‘waste’ generation such as food processors, restaurants, etc. where the heat & electricity could be used on-site to reduce costs and carbon footprints.  Char could be sold to a third party where, depending on the characteristics of the char and the needs & priorities of the region, it could be made into a wide variety of locally made products including:

Building materials: Char-clay plaster could be sprayed over walls to retrofit buildings with poor insulation, humidity issues (possibly after floods to prevent mold) or lead paint concerns.  Replacing cement with this highly sustainable product in new construction would materially improve the building’s carbon footprint.

Water filtration devices: Char filters could be used in food processing plants where organics are filtered out of the effluent.  Once absorbed in char filters these nutrients could be recycled back to the soil.

Remediation: Urban brownfields render otherwise valuable land useless. Biochar can be used to economically revitalize these areas.  Other cities ban growing food within city limits due to lead paint concerns in their soils.  As some biochars can neutralize lead, this would allow more urban gardening and improve local food security.

Growing medium: Roof gardens, greenhouses, garden walls could all benefit from a lightweight, locally produced soil amendment, especially if it were boosted with nutrients from the food processing plant’s effluent!  Biochar can also reduce the amount of water needed for growing plants.

Battery Storage: Early research shows potential for certain chars to be able to effectively replace rare earth metals in super capacitors & microbial fuel cell batteries.

Pet Products: Adding char to pet food improves health by removing pesticides used to grow much of the food found in animal feed. [Humans have ingested charcoal since ancient times as a means of detoxification!]  Kitty litter char would be highly sustainable and would actually be beneficial when sent to a landfill.

If cities take a more holistic approach to waste optimization they can create a more vibrant entrepreneurial environment while simultaneously improving clean water availability, producing renewable energy and creating green jobs. The added bonus is that biochar can safely help rebalance atmospheric carbon levels.

[This blog post is part of Masdar’s 2014 Engage Blogging Contest.]

I am a complete and udder (cows roaming around in my brain!) utter newbie to the world of hydroponics so when I toured a hydroponics facility in Western New York this week I was like a kid in a candy store: all new stuff to learn and touch and taste (including the yummiest arugula I have ever tasted!).

My naïve assumption was that the biggest opportunity for biochar in the greenhouse world might be as a growing medium.  It still might be, but I learned that the ideal pH for plants in this particular greenhouse is between 5.5 – 5.8 which is lower than the average pH for most chars so we’ll have to figure out a process for lowering it.  However the farm manager actually pointed out a much more interesting opportunity for biochar within the context of hydroponics that has to do with the greenhouse effluent.  Apparently this stuff is loaded with phosphorous and nitrates.  In excess these nutrients can harm local ecosystems and even lead to eutrophication (which can turn lovely blue water into nasty green algae laden, oxygen starved cesspools).

Now I’m thinking that we need to first use the biochar as a filtration medium for the effluent.  Not only would this mitigate the damage to the local ecosystems but most likely the biochar will adsorb the nutrients and effectively charge the biochar with valuable macronutrients.  Then the grower will probably have a great little fertilizer that can be used in the hoop houses where they grow directly in the soil.

Recently I spoke with a local organic dairy farmer that is interested in testing biochar as a component of the total mixed rations (TMR) that she feeds her lactating ladies.  I learned a lot in speaking with her and this got me started ruminating about some recent biochar research that has caused quite a stir in the biochar community (check it out here)

According to this study adding small amounts of biochar to livestock feed can lead to increased feed conversion rates (cows get fatter on less food), but it can also lead to substantial methane (CH4) emission reductions.  Bovines are notorious sources for CH4 which has recently been found to be even MORE lethal to climate change than had been previously thought.  (When this topic comes up at your next dinner party, make sure to make everyone aware that you know that these bovine emissions mostly come the front end of the cow and not the other end, as is commonly believed!)  Since CH4 only hangs out in the atmosphere for a few decades, reducing it could really help mitigate global warming potential.  While I would think most of us would like to see these cow related emission rates reduced, an entrepreneurial bunch of Argentine scientists have figured out an ingenious, if rather unwieldy way to convert the CH4 into something useful.  I can’t quite picture cows sporting these gadgets …but I think I may be digressing.

The main point here is that cows emit methane.  Lots of methane.  Up to 300 liters every day per cow!  Some of that is attributable to the diet that we humans make them eat which is often a far cry from their traditional diet.  This has the unfortunate side effect of upsetting all four of their delicate tummies and so they have gas which needs to be gotten rid of!  And according to this study biochar, kind of like an antacid, helps calm the tummies and reduce the gas (that is my non-scientific interpretation!).

All of this is all well and good EXCEPT that that benefit on its own, is not going to get farmers to dash out and buy biochar since we don’t currently have any kind of incentive to reduce methane no matter the source (i.e. fracking is another BIG source). The other benefit, more efficient weight gain, is far more compelling at least for certain livestock populations (I can’t say too many women would want to take it for that reason though!).

Weight gain for a dairy herd is really only important for the first two years of life for replacement heifers (young lady cows).  After that, they try to maintain their girlish figures for the most part.  So for dairy cows and brood cows in the beef world, the efficient weight gain angle probably won’t work.  There are indications of other positive impacts that I’ll get into in future posts which could still make adding biochar to feed for dairy worthwhile from an economic perspective.  I would imagine those livestock farmers that would be most interested in the improved feed conversion aspect would be  those that are finishing steers into burgers, those raising hogs or those in the meat poultry world.

Tons more research is needed but I’d like to see if by adding biochar, farmers could eliminate bentonite clay or sodium bicarbonate (think baking soda) or probiotics from the TMR thereby offsetting the cost of biochar.   I’m still learning about the costs and environmental impacts of these products as well as all of the benefits they are supposed to provide to see how biochar stacks up as an alternative.

If you have any ruminations of your own on this topic, please share!