Opinion: What are the challenges of Terra Preta

[Taildragerdriver]

This is great discussion:

David:

It is good you are working on getting the folks in suburbia interested we all can do our part. I hope if we are sucessful in getting a charcoal plant going in my town we can start to make bags of good charcoal available to suburban folks at the garden store, as one of the members of the previous terra preta forum suggested, with some good documentation on how to use it. I think it could be pretty cheep and could help your cause as well.

I for one am glad I have never had to suffer the consequeses of what seems to me to be the "loss of freedom" you folks who live in urban areas have to put up with. I try to be a good neighbor by keeping noxious weeds down in my pastures and keeping my fences in pretty good shape but there is no enforcement of that kind of stuff in the world I live in. I'm not sure I would be able to restrain myself if somebody came along and told me to trim my bushes.

As for winners and loosers. One of the great things about terra preta vs golobal warming is that there are few loosers and lots of winners it seems to me. The only real loosers I can figure out are the chemical fertilizer companies because there is likely to be less demand for their products. But it turns out that they are really oil companies in large part and the oil companies benift from the carbon credits farmers sequestering carbon would produce so even they may not be too opposed.


Michaelangelica:

I have made some small amounts of charcoal from wood and I find I get about 40% by weight of the weight of the original dry wood. That is also what I read in the literature. I would be interested in any reference that describes getting a higher return. For our purposes the more the better. We will be documenting our experience for large scale operations this summer as we crank up bigger production.

As for your point about the need for fire, we need it too in our forests and range lands we just need it with less fuels so the fires are valuable not destructive. Removing this excess fuel could be useful for you as well.

RBlack:

I agree with your point about making terra preta cheep and easy to use. For farmers and gardners alike that is one of the reasons we have the proposal of producing this computer program that will help guide the user through what amendments to put in their soil.

The idea would be to take a soil sample, send it to your state extension service (at least in Oregon, may be different elsewhere) and have it tested. When you get the report back you type the results into the program and it will tell you what to add to the soil. How much charcaol etc.
This would probably be up on the web and be an instant return.

As for people making their own char I'm kind of skeptical that many people would really want to do that. My idea is that you could collect all the yard waist seperately and the garbage collector would deliver it to an urban charcoal plant and they would sell the product at low cost to the public. Seems more likely to work to me. I think that would work mostly because there seems to be a good chance we could produce energy from the charcoal making process so the charcoal production could be subsidized by the value of the energy and the saving of landfill space.

I want to give some positive feedback to the folks on the forum:

It is a great time for us all to explore ideas of how we can all make this work. This is an exciting time to bring back a very old idea and make it work in the modern world to solve our problems today. Exciting stuff for me, my work is all about science and ideas. I beleve we should make work and life fun. I hope you all enjoy this opportunity and feel good that we are working to benifit the planet and mankind all at once. Makes me feel good, hope it does for you all too.

Thanks

Taildragerdriver

[erich]

RIGHT ON.............Trail!!
The most Gratifying advocation of my life, and all you guys to thank for it.
Even as Spring (and my bank account) is calling me back to my vocation, TP will remain my soul moonlighting occupation.

A Tribute to You All

Erich

[InfiniteNow]

It appears that one of the challenges of Terra Preta is making good friends and inspiring others while talking about it.

Each of your efforts are to be commended.



So, what are the obstacles? What are the issues requiring solutions? Let's get our collective intelligence working to identify and resolve any issues and push forward.


Cheers.

[Taildragerdriver]

InfinityNow:

The answer to your two questions are pretty simple. Every farmer I talk about terra preta says. "It sounds good to me but I need the science to demonstrate what you say will work." That will take two or three years and that is what we are working on now. All the rest will follow once the farmers can depend on terra preta producing the results we think it will.

Thanks

Taildragerdriver

[Michaelangelica]

Here is a potential Challenger

The chemists among you can tell me if you think its feasible (and will last) or is he is 'talking through his hat'.

Apparently there are numerous chemicals that bind with carbon dioxide and therefore can be captured and sequestered.
Lackner is proposing the use of calcium hydroxide— also called portlandite because of its frequent use in portland cement.
This “slaked lime” apparently is available in ample quantities from limestone. However, Lackner is not committed to this particular chemical and says that probably other substances would work equally well or even better.

The point of his paper is to show mathematically that the carbon dioxide capture from natural airflow is technically feasible at a rate far above the rate at which trees capture it.

Removing CO2 from one cubic meter of air and disposing of it will offset the effects of generating 10,000 joules of heat from gasoline anywhere in the world. Is this economically viable? Lackner says yes.

Metta Spencer's weblog: Two New Anti-Global Warming Inventions

[erich]

Hi Michael,

Metta Spencer's weblog got me looking around the government labs more, Here are some new finds:

CSiTE -- A Distributed Consortium
Consortium research will address four broad management strategies that have potential for C sequestration at a particular location. These are (1) fertilization of managed forests; (2) conversion of cropland to native grassland (restoration); (3) conversion of conventional crop management to cropping systems based on legumes, reduced tillage, and/or cover crops; and (4) introduction of agroforestry to croplands. The overall net C storage, including externalities involving C fluxes associated with management activities per se are considered in part 5 of this proposal.

CSiTE Research -- A Distributed Consortium



Session 3C. Terrestrial Sequestration I - Ecosystem Behavior

Carbon Sequestration in Terrestrial Ecosystems: A Status Report on R&D Progress [PDF-41KB]
Gary K. Jacobs, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Fertilization Increases Below-Ground Carbon Sequestration of Loblolly Pine Plantations [PDF-185KB]
Kurt H. Johnsen, USDA Forest Service

Assessing Carbon Dynamics in Semiarid Ecosystems: Balancing Potential Gains with Potential Large Rapid Losses[PDF-29KB]
David D. Breshears, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Soil Organic Carbon Dynamics for Different Land Uses and Soil Management Practices at the North Appalachian Experimental Watersheds in Ohio [PDF-79KB]
R. Cesar Izaurralde, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

NETL: First National Conference on Carbon Sequestration



At first glance Lacker's work looks like a lot of infrastructure costs, like 250,000 of these giant units for worldwide CO2emissions, I wonder what each one cost to build and run?
http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications...ia/Lackner.pdf

Erich

[Taildragerdriver]

Michaelangelica:

Interesting post from Metta Spencer but the first one SOLAREK is not really what you would call a competing technology to Terra Preta it is infact on the other side of the equation. That is a carbon neuteral source of energy. That would be great but we still need to get rid of the carbon we have. (by the way the vast majority of the research that goes on at Los Alamos has nothing to do with bombs or nuclear technology.)

His second example "Luckner" as he refernces may easily be able to grab a lot of carbon. That is part of the equation alright but as near as I can tell the sequestered carbon still has to be disposed of in some way. In other words the results are to get the carbon sequested into a waist product that needs to be disposed of. We have seen lots of energy schemes that produce alright but waist is always the problem.

The great thing about Terra Preta as near as I can tell is that the sequestration is a useful product and the entire system produces positive economics at every stage.

erich:

The interesting thing about the CSiTE references you make is that I have worked closely with some of the people involved with a couple of these methods. They do infact sequester small amounts of carbon per acre. All 5 of them are on the order of 200 to 400 pounds per acre. They all take useful land and take it out of production or at least in to a low production state in a time when the world needs to keep our productive land in production.

Our Terra Preta ideas on the other hand make farm land more productive, improve marginal lands and may bring unusable lands into production. Also we estimate the sequestration to be on the order of 6 to 10 tons per acre (40 times as much as these other methods). In addition if any of the 5 methods above are plowed up or soil stirred up the majority of the sequestered carbon is lost. Not the case with Terra Preta everything I read seems to indicate the charcoal is vertually perminent in the soil.

For me at least I have looked at lots of schemes that are being proposed to solve the carbon problem. In my oppinion many are just crazy. Like pumping Carbon Dioxide into the ground in old oil wells. Isn't it just going to come back out by purculating up through the ground. After reading alot my thought is Terra Preta seems like the best there is. I will be interested to see what else pops up though.

Thanks

Taildragerdriver

[erich]

Yes Trail, This is not Competition to TP once all costs and consequences are taken into account.
I imagine the maintenance/construction costs of these "CO2 Catchers" ALONE would end up at over $130/Ton of CO2 (or $36/Ton of Carbon)
Here's more on this;

Capturing CO2 from ambient air: a feasibility assessment, Thesis by
Joshuah K. Stolaroff

Abstract
In order to mitigate climate change, deep reductions in CO2 emissions will be required in the coming
decades. Carbon capture and storage will likely play an important role in these reductions. As a compliment
to capturing CO2 from point sources, CO2 can be captured from ambient air (“air capture”), offsetting
emissions from distributed sources or reducing atmospheric concentrations when emissions have already
been constrained. In this thesis, we show that CO2 capture from air is physically and thermodynamically
feasible, discuss the various routes available, and explain why NaOH solution is a viable sorbent for largescale
capture. An example system using NaOH spray is presented. With experimental data and a variety
of numerical techniques, the use of NaOH spray for air capture is assessed and an example contacting
system developed. The cost and energy requirements of the example contacting system are estimated.
Contactor estimates are combined with estimates from industry and other research to estimate the cost of
a complete air capture system. We find that the cost of capturing CO2 with the complete system would
fall between 80 and 250 $/t-CO2, and improvements are suggested which reduce the upper-bound cost to
130 $/t-CO2. Even at the high calculated cost, air capture has implications for climate policy, however
dedicated engineering and technological innovation have potential to produce much lower-cost systems.
vi

http://wpweb2k.gsia.cmu.edu/ceic/the...hesis_2006.pdf


Erich

[Taildragerdriver]

I though it might be of interest and some might have suggestions as to what I am doing on the operational test of Terra Preta we are doing in Oregon.

I am using my original thread:

My First Post "Terra Preta"

to chronicle my work and you can follow it if you like. I will try to put in all the details of what I am doing. The reason for this is partly to have a detailed record of the steps and what worked and what didn't for later use. I though I might at well make it here as just on my own computer.

Thanks

Taildragerdriver

[erich]

Hi All,

April 12th, 2007 :: 12:14 PM


This week’s announcement by ConocoPhillips of a $22.5 M contract with Iowa State is significicant not only because of the magnitude of the grant, but also because of the company’s statement that it is interested in pursuing pyrolysis as a biomass conversion technology

DesMoinesRegister.com Blogs » Blog Archive » ConocoPhillips’ Interest in Pyrolysis