Biochar and natural farming

Don't let it die yet. How much timber would you need to burn to get 1 tonne of biochar, unless you could use the heat generated from the burn, would the whole exercise not be very wasteful.

TooOldBoots wrote: »

Go peddle your snake oil elsewhere

Why if it is snake oil, are the department of agriculture and university of limerick using considerable resources researching biochar. To quote one senior lecturer and researcher at UL(the use of biochar in tropical soils is now regarded as an effective alternative to conventional fertilisers). Which are a finate resource.

tabby aspreme wrote: »

Don't let it die yet. How much timber would you need to burn to get 1 tonne of biochar, unless you could use the heat generated from the burn, would the whole exercise not be very wasteful.

Well there approximately 200kg of carbon in a tonne of wood, depending on type of wood and moisture content, now if you could use turf, there is 3.7 tonnes of carbon in a tonne of dry turf. Apparently BNM are researching how to use peat to produce biochar. The way biochar is produced has a major impact on how it effects the soil.

148multi wrote: »

Well there approximately 200kg of carbon in a tonne of wood, depending on type of wood and moisture content, now if you could use turf, there is 3.7 tonnes of carbon in a tonne of dry turf. Apparently BNM are researching how to use peat to produce biochar. The way biochar is produced has a major impact on how it effects the soil.

How could something that weighs a tonne have 3.7t in it? Are you talking co2 when burned?

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tim

Would you not just set a few indigenous trees around the field edges. No extra work then . Just let nature work the composter for you. Dead leaves every autumn decaying into the ground, like nature intended.

You don't have to compost any leaves. Nature will do that for you. I see it myself here every spring. A lush growth of grass around the field edges. As for getting the benefit into the middle of the field. The cows will graze this grass and dung all over the field.
I'd be slow to spend any of my hard earned cash on something unproven by Teagasc and the likes.

Say my name wrote: »

This is where it's sketchy.

A lot depends on the raw material type before it's "cooked in the oven".

I've read trials done where they recommended 20t per acre down to incorporating with a conventional fertilizer into a granular form like your bag fertilizer and sowing it down the chute with the seed of a crop and just miniscule amounts used.

Then you've other trials where they incorporate with animal feed and usually the rate is 1% of that animals daily diet.
The animals come along and spread the Biochar in their droppings on the fields or farmer spreads the slurry/dung from the tanks themselves. The big plus in that is a supposedly improvement in animal health , reduction in methane and reduction in nitrogeous oxide emissions by that animal.

There's no hard and fast answer to the question really.
In potted plants a 5% biochar inclusion in the soil seems best.

How many tonnes of timber to get 20t of biochar for spreading ??
To me it doesn’t sound sustainable to grow that much wood to burn.

patsy_mccabe wrote: »

It's a failure straight off, if it's not cost effective.

It’s odd, it comes across as a sort of vegan suggestion to growing enough food for everyone, only it costs the earth to produce and so it’s a zero sum game in the end.

_Brian wrote: »

I watched some videos of lads making biochar online, they were using 40 gallon barrels stuffed with timber and getting maybe 2 gallons of biochar which looked like it weighed maybe 10kg tops.
Scale that up and it’s frightening the amount of standing trees that need to be cut to make 20tones of the stuff. Oh and it’s not that any old wood is ok, good biochar only comes from burning hardwoods.

So, I’d worry about the sustainability of production. Also claims like it lasts “virtually forever” have a hint of snake oil about them.

From an environmental perspective I’d rather see the trees standing and managed to both improve the environment and provide a top class amenity for people.

It definitely doesn't last anywhere near forever. Soil microbes can and do breakdown charcoal. In the soils where regular fires have been producing charcoal for thousands of years there is very little charcoal that has persisted that long.
Would be wary of trace elements being locked up too, it's not recommended for people to take charcoal except for if they took in poison or heavy metals because of that.

Also all the fumes from the pyrolisation if not captured aren't going to be very good for the environment and how much of any benefit would they cancel out

Say my name wrote: »

I don't think you're getting the environmental reason for it.

In the tree's natural life cycle it takes in carbon dioxide and converts it into actual physical carbon. When the tree comes to the end of it's life cycle and falls and rots, all that physical carbon rots breaks down and becomes methane and carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere.
By turning that tree into char you've now taken that carbon completely out of the natural cycle and atmosphere for good.
Unless of course that char is ever burned again.

I can't see how charring is seen as voodoo to understand. Window installers used to regularly char timber windows with a blow torch to prevent rot. Even our ancestors used to char the ends of timber posts for houses for same principle and those same post holes are still found today by a ring of char in the soil.

Keep looking for a negative. I doubt you'll find it.

I’m not saying there isn’t a principle behind what people are saying and the notion of locking carbon down.
But it’s not a case of tue end justifies the means, I’ve not seen anywhere that the volume of trees needed to supply its production is anywhere close to sustainable, you certainly don’t have an answer on that yourself. So your blindly believing YouTube clips etc without trying to frame any practical implementation. That’s the difference between realists and dreamers like vegans, while the principle of something might seem good it doesn’t mean it’s practical to implement, indeed, just because you believe something is good doesn’t mean it’s either true or good.

I would still see the management of forests of living native forests as a better option that slashing down all the quality timber on the country to create biochar.

There’s long term evidence that the planet survived and thrived with large tracts if natural native forests, returning to that seems a natural move, rather than a process that burns them down.

We see countries with larger retained natural native forests have more native wild animal species and better biodiversity than ourselves, I doubt burning down these habitats would improve things for them.

But you still haven't answered the most basic question of all - How Much does it cost?

How much to treat one acre of land?
How many m3 of timber would that require, per acre?

It's a bit like spreading slurry. Slurry works as a fertiliser, but to transport it long distances doesn't make it feasible.

Nobody is disputing that Biochar works. It's whether it is feasible or not?

Say my name wrote: »

I seem to be the only here 'that gets it'.

And that's from scientific papers Brian not YouTube.

On the cost that's a red herring if the poorest farmers in the world can use it why can't the richest? Or why won't they?

Ask yourselves a question though would you like to see your land nutrients leached into your waterways or not.
And that's just one of the many benefits that have been proven by this.

As wrangler says if you're explaining you're loosing.

There's a wealth of information on the web. There's also a seminar coming up in Mayo.

It’s hard to see that you “get it”, your not able to explain exactly what your getting ?

I think your in love with the notion of it, but you also seem blind to the potential problems regarding how feasible it’s use is.

It’s like vegans saying we should give up farming animals and go back to growing our own veg like our ancestors did, while they ignore the fact that until they used manure from farmed animals our ancestors were barely surviving on what they grew and relied on animals they hunted and killed.

Say my name wrote: »

I haven't got all the answers Patsy so I don't know what you're expecting of me.
I started this thread to hopefully get answers myself.

How much does it cost to cut a tree down, dig a pit, make charcoal? I couldn't tell ya.
In the developing countries they use their ag waste, straw, etc.

Ok so first off that method releases huge volumes of co2, other greenhouse gasses and whatever number of toxins. It’s only chance of being carbon neutral is of tue exhaust gasses are scrubbed clean and the excess heat used to generate electricity which is sold to replace co2 emitting generation.

ganmo wrote: »

there are wood gassificcation heating systems but they burn the whole thing so theres nothing left but the ash

Yes, but saying it’s as simple as cutting a tree and digging a pit in the ground isn’t correct.

How much land would 150kg cover?