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Originally Posted by malcolmf
This is a key point in relation to your beasties, Michael. Models of the soil carbon cycle (e.g. Colorado Uni's Century) usually allow for such pools as fast (1 year), slow (decades) and stable (centuries / millennia) turnover rates. However, even these are approximations: some papers on mycorrhizae suggest their turnover time can be as little as five days, as compared to the glomalin they produce which seems to join the slow pool.
The headline is that, once creatures get hold of carbon, it is as good as gone, back to the air. This implies a trade-off between the two main goals of carbon burial, namely removal from the air and agricultural productivity. The former does not want creatures to access the carbon, the latter does. We have to examine our motivations for making terra preta, and the two camps might choose very different methods as a result. I suggest that atmospheric goals might require high-tech, high-volume, highly recalcitrant carbon while soil goals might require something much closer to Amazonian practices or RBlack's carbon-compost approach.
Your history is in compost, isn't it? How do you feel about the potential conflict of goals between atmosphere and soil?
M
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Still thinking.
Unless Tera preta/pyrolysis businesses can show how long the charcoal they put in the soil stays there; they will be hard pressed to get carbon credits.
carbon credits will help fund the whole (needs to be massive) programme.
A little work has been done (posted somewhere her?) but a lot more needs to be done
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Your history is in compost, isn't it? How do you feel about the potential conflict of goals between atmosphere and soil?
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No my history is in Industrial psychology. I have never made half decent compost despite many, many tries.
I
think I know what you are getting at here but could you please explain more fully?
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high-tech, high-volume, highly recalcitrant carbon while soil
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A good pyrolisis unit such as BEST Energies and the Oz CSIRO unit should be able to give a range of carbon outcomes from low temp high resin char to high temp (650C) and also partially activate it as well if wanted.
You can buy rice hull Char from the Philippines for around $750 a tonne.
(This from a pyrolysis unit with the potential to produce 20+ tonne a day. )
(The environmental balance is good hear as farmers used to just burn the char by the side of the road)
I think char needs to be cheaper than this if it is going to be shipped around the planet and packaged and sold retail or to farmers.
I would like to see char produced and sold from mobile pyrolysis units.
I believe BEST in Oz did investigate this but there were so many government regulations in the way. Also how do you sell or store the energy/electricity you produce?
I have seen a mobile pyrolysis unit for sale in Canada and have emailed them for information. It looks like it can be hooked up to the tow bar of a car.
I am not sure where the backyard operator sits environmentally yet.
Certainly he/she has the potential to do more damage to the environment making the char than benefits in using it in the soil.
