Finger Lakes Biochar

Biochar Decarbonization Roadmap

I tend to prefer carrots over sticks, not just because they taste better, but because I think as a motivational tool, carrots are more effective. Perhaps this is why the notion of a price on carbon doesn’t really make me (and a lot of others) want to jump up and cheer. Punitive measures seem to do a really excellent job of stirring up the opposition to any sort of regulation and a not-so-excellent job of getting anyone motivated to race down the decarbonization path, which is really what is needed. So when I read this article in Yale’s e360 saying that the key recommendation by leading scientists and economists to decarbonize the global economy is to mandate an increasing price on carbon, I was a bit dismayed (no disrespect, these folks all have IQs in the stratosphere). Where I do agree with the authors is when they describe the need for ‘detailed, realistic decarbonization plans’, a sort of Atkins (low carb) Diet for the planet if you will.

Normally I focus on biochar’s ability to recarbonize the soil, but recently I have come to realize that that is actually what happens at the end of the biochar cascade. Sustainable biochar production could actually be a hugely effective decarbonization path for a number of different industries. [It could even be used at a municipal or college campus level as I’ve mentioned previously.]

Let’s take food processing as a fairly straightforward example of how biochar can help decarbonize an industry. I’ll use the example of a cherry juice producer that landfills tons of cherry pits each week. Here’s how on-site biochar production could not only provide a Carbon detox but perhaps more importantly from a motivational perspective, save them beaucoup bucks!

• Reduced fossil fuel energy – on-site pyrolysis can generate significant amounts of heat which can be turned in to electricity which is needed for the production and refrigeration process.  Supplying your own fuel source could translate into huge cost reductions.
• Reduced waste management– paying a waste removal service to transport pits to a landfill is not something companies like doing. As this type of company grows, so does the waste management cost and the GHG emissions related to transportation and methane emissions once this type of waste is landfilled. Who would say no to no tipping fees!
• Increased revenue potential – manufacturers could set up off-take agreements for the biochar produced.  Trash to cash – got to love that!

The biochar decarbonization roadmap can be applied to many, many different types of industries from farming to forestry to food processing. Appropriate scale pyrolysis equipment to serve this market is still in its infancy but the landscape is changing fast. Equipment will need to pass strict emissions regulations (rightly so) which may slow down the adaptation of these technologies, but the biochar decarb pathway is being built. This is one bandwagon I predict many industries will eagerly jump on once the economic benefits are quantified!

One of the properties of biochar that I never gave much thought to until recently is its low thermal conductivity. In fact, I wasn’t even sure what low thermal activity meant in terms of its usefulness for biochar. [Confessions of a non-scientist!] But in just the last week I read two different research papers focused on two completely different end uses for biochar that mentioned it, so I decided it was time to become a little less ignorant on the topic.

The first mention I came across was in a recently translated article on Biochar use as a building material from the Ithaka Institute (full disclosure: I am thrilled to now be working with this organization, but more on that in the future). In this context low thermal conductivity translates to high insulation which is a good thing in the construction industry. All those pockets of air, or pore space within biochar creates a kind of lattice structure that slows down the movement of heat. [Come to think of it slowing down hot air would be really helpful in our current political arena! I’ll have to think how biochar could creatively be used to do that …]

The second mention I found was in a paper called “Biochar in growing media: A sustainability and feasibility assessment” written by some of the gods of biochar research. This paper has some really great info comparing biochar to other growing media, but what caught my eye was this statement: “Charcoal has a heat capacity similar to soil and peat but much lower thermal conductivity that could provide thermal buffering.“ The paper was hypothesizing that this could provide some protection to nursery stock. There has been some intriguing biochar related research on this topic, but not all that much from what I’ve found.

One of the reasons I found this so interesting is that the winter we just experienced in the Finger Lakes was a tad on the brutal side. Very long and very cold. Vineyards suffered and no one is quite sure yet how bad the long term damage will be. This got me wondering if biochar might be able to act as some type of frost buffer for NE vineyards. To be on the safe side many vineyards practice something called ‘hilling up’ in the fall which tills soil up above the graft zone of the vines as a means of protecting them from the cold – some vineyards use straw around the vines as well. In the spring the soil is then ‘hilled down’ to allow air flow around the vines. Given its low thermal conductivity, hilling up with biochar or a biochar + pomace compost could possibly provide a nice thermal blanket which would be tilled down into the soil in the spring. Sadly this year they may end up having to pull out quite a few acres of vines which are often burned to get rid of the biomass. Turning these vines into biochar and then using the char/pomace compost to hill up in the fall might be one way to turn a negative into a positive.

And for NE farmers with annual crops perhaps using biochar might allow seeds to be planted a bit earlier in spring if it helps buffer soil temperatures!

Coming up soon…frost protection techniques are in need of a biochar intervention!

Make biochar out of invasive species

Today I read about how the NY DEC will be doing a controlled burn of 14.5 acres at a wetland to rid the area of phragmites australis (aka the common reed). Apparently this kind of controlled burn, also called a prescribed fire, is pretty common.   Little did I know (till this morning actually) that every year hundreds of thousands of acres are deliberately torched for a variety of reasons, from habitat management to wildfire control.   That’s a whole lotta CO2 going up in smoke, not to mention fine particulate matter which is no doubt aiding & abetting asthma!

I totally get the reasons for doing this, but I can’t help thinking that it’s a bit of a wasted opportunity.  Time for another biochar intervention me thinks!  Yes, charring would be far more labor intensive (read: expensive), but it would also be safer, less polluting in terms of air quality,  AND provide a by-product that could potentially enable increased bio-diversity and improved water quality. Heck maybe they could even sell the standing invading or diseased biomass to a biochar producer for a few bucks and have the biochar companies come in to ‘CHARvest’ the lot.  Seems like a fair trade to me.

There are already a few ways to convert invasive species or forestry slash  into biochar.  One interesting model is from Carbon Cultures, which looks something like a tent but acts like a mobile kiln.  Another option from down under is the CharMaker, made by Earth Systems Bioenergy. The char produced could be used strategically within the area charred to help rejuvenate soils or remediate any toxins.

A third option which offers interesting possibilities for areas that drain down into a body of water, might be do dig a ditch and burn the biomass in the ditch (see great ‘how-to’ post here).  Leaving the char in situ would help keep excess nutrients or toxins from polluting wet lands and other water bodies.

That food versus fuel argument sometimes bandied about to quench the hope for biochar is looking sillier and sillier…

While roaming more than one big box home improvement store this weekend in search of materials for V2 of Terra Pads, I stumbled upon a drain sleeve which is normally used as a fabric sock for perforated drain pipes for French drains.  Perfect for what I was looking for!  Then I noticed these weird things that looked like giant worms which turned out to be Styrofoam peanuts packed around a slotted PVC pipe with a Drain Sleeve around them.  “Perfect” for French drains or so the advertising claimed. [A quick bit of math told me that those packing peanuts didn’t cost peanuts as buying the sleeve + the PVC pipe would have only cost about $15 and the peanut piping was $49 for 10′ of pipe!]

Allow me to bring your thinking down into the gutter for a few minutes…

Of COURSE this got me to thinking about how to detoxify this whole peanut worm solution with, yes, you’ve guessed by now, biochar!  Obviously they are using the Styrofoam as a replacement for heavy gravel.  I don’t have a problem with 98% of that (since that much is air) but the other 2% of Styrofoam is a little off-putting for lots of reasons which you can read about here.  So my initial thinking was  that swapping out the toxic peanuts for biochar would not only provide a similar lightness benefit but it would also help filter the water of many of the toxins that might be found in the ground water from pesticides or other nasties.

Then I was scanning this intriguing little article called ‘The Fallacy of the French Drain’ which points out that geotextiles can suffer from ‘blinding’ once silt & clay particles clog up the nooks & crannies and then water is unable to permeate through it.  So the next round of my thinking is ‘let’s ditch the drain sleeve’.  Just surround the slotted PVC pipe with biochar and add topsoil.

Then I got to wondering how much do you really need that PVC pipe if you have a foot or more of pretty clumpy biochar or maybe varying grades of biochar.  Or perhaps we could create culverts out of carbon instead of cement or plastic?  Imagine how many toxins you could prevent from getting into local water bodies?  Imagine how many fewer chemical products we’d be making and buying?  Imagine how much carbon you could sequester if you did this for all building construction sites?

The planet needs a lot of carbon sinks and this one makes a whole lot of sense!

I was recently introduced to the concept of step wells while reading the latest issue of “The Intelligent Optimist”.  Step wells are magnificent manmade structures most commonly found in India.  These deep water wells sometimes contain thousands of steps and date back more than 2,000 years. Since part of my brain seems to have turned into biochar over the past few years [i.e. high carbon, adsorptive, sequestering all manner of charcoal trivia, etc.] the picture of course reminds me of the cascading uses of biochar concept, first articulated by the Ithaka Institute (download a great presentation on it here).

Cascading information was a familiar concept in my previous life in corporate America, but the idea of cascading uses was new to me.  The gist of the idea is that something can be used multiple times before it finds its ultimate end use or final resting place.  [It’s a bit like the notion of ‘trickle-down economics’ except biochar cascades actually make economic sense ;-)!]

As I’ve delved into the economic impact of using biochar within different agricultural settings, I am increasingly convinced that biochar cascades are the best approach to building a viable biochar market.  The current price of biochar is still relatively high which makes the business case a tough sell if you are ‘just’ using it to increase crop yield.  The math just doesn’t work for many cropping systems.  Let’s take corn and soybeans as a few examples since these crops make up a huge percentage of US farm land.  In a good year these crops will gross less than $1K per acre (e.g. CORN: 2013 average was ~159 bushels per acre * $4 per bushel = $632/acre; SOYBEAN 2013 average was ~43 b/acre * $9.50 per b = $409) after much hard work, increasing expenses plus the stress of watching Mother Nature throw all manner of curve balls year after year. Adding even one ton of biochar would not only wipe out profits, but it would turn profits into losses.  To break even, assuming you were able to find biochar at $600 per ton, you’d need to nearly double corn yields.  [Most studies show that far more than one ton per acre is needed for yields to increase in most soils.]  I wish it were otherwise but yield increase alone is not going to sell biochar, at least for most annual cereal crops in US soils (vegetables might be a very different story as is using biochar in severely depleted soils such as in Africa).

But with the cascade model, the economics of biochar begin to look very, very promising.  There are a growing number of biochar cascades that are only now being identified so this notion of a Biochar Step Well with multiple cascades which all ultimately lead down into the earth might be a great metaphor for creating a successful biochar industry.  Much work needs to be done to validate and quantify the benefits for each of the different cascades, but that is beginning to happen and I’m excited to be a part of it!