Welcom to the world of BIO-CHAR

This burnt offering is a breakthrough that can buy time by getting carbon dioxide from rotting plants out of the air and into the ground.

Over the last two decades, biochar – using charcoal as a soil conditioner and fertility-enhancer instead of as a fuel for the home barbeque or stove – has intrigued a group of biologists, soil scientists and archeologists fascinated by the soil building practices of the first human inhabitants of the Amazon

Here’s how the cycle works, Waste from logging (sawdust, twigs and bark) or crops (straw, manure, cornstalks, nutshells for example) are baked at low temperatures with minimal access to oxygen – a process sometimes called smoldering but more accurately called “pyrolysis.” The slow bake produces off-gases, which can be trapped and converted to bio-fuels that substitute for fossil fuels; about half is left over as char. So far, so carbon-neutral good; part of the carbon drawn from the atmosphere is returned to the atmosphere as smoke, while part produces fuel.

Then the carbon strut begins. Carbon is very stable. It can remain intact for as long as 9000 years, locking in the carbon drawn down by plants. That’s a lifeline in terms of slowing down the pace of the carbon cycle, since plants absorb carbon dioxide as they grow and then give it back as they rot or burn – the way things worked to keep everything in balance until the burning of coal, oil and gas spewed off carbon that had been locked underground over millions of years.

Stable carbon is good, but the nooks and crannies in char are even better. They provide surface area for what’s called cation exchange capacity — CEC, in case you’re at a cocktail party with soil nerds. All these openings give biochar a huge surface area to bind to both water and other soil elements and keep them in place, as well as hiding places for bacteria that break down nutrients in the soil. The combination of
breaks down nutrients and makes them readily available to plants.

Read more at Missouri Organic Blog post.