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Sorry for the delayed response.
Could you give me a eli5 on biochar? I've noticed you refer to it in some other posts/comments, including the fire pits story. I'm guessing char stands for charcoal? If that is the case, how does biochar differ from other charcoals.
Also, how is the kelp related to the biochar?
I mean I guess I could google it, but you seem to have a bit of insight to the whole thing that could help one get an understanding.
In the list of carbon (CO2) drawdown techniques that are available to the human race (IPCC reports), biochar is one of them. It's the burning of organic matter in the absence of oxygen (pyrolysis) which turns it into straight carbon (the recovery rate is about 20% which makes it carbon positive, mulch is in single digits recovery like near 1%, and soil carbon is high if it's at 5%). It's not like cooking charcoal which is a fuel due to the leftover oils and carbon, this is a more inert form of pure carbon (simple explanation).
The bio in bio charcoal is the process of adding to biological processes which function as a home for bacteria (look at electron microscope of good biochar) and an organic coating forms over the surface. When added to soil, it tends to slowly improve the growing of plants and soil life plus water holding, thereby helping store more carbon than is actually present in the biochar itself.
It relates to kelp in the theory that we start farming kelp forests as it's one of the fastest growing plants, high in micronutrients, recovering some of the nutrients that we lose due to soil erosion and poor agricultural practices and water management. It was theorised that pyrolysis machines could be built on water converting some of the farmed seaweed directly into char and dumping it back overboard, for one example, which would store carbon indefinitely in the ocean. But, we can feed it to cows, it can function in animal bedding, water filtration, composting processes, landfill, building etc. https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2019-10-18/wa-farmer-uses-beetles-and-charcoal-to-combat-climate-change/11613846
Biochar doesn't break down like organic matter, it's "locked up" carbon (like oil and coal was) and will persist in soil for hundreds to thousands of years.
It seems crazy to burn something to be green, but the technique creates a stable carbon. Decay, the sun, and other processes keep all organic carbon unstable and flowing through the system (forests temporarily hold it for one example, how long depends on health of forest). Biochar takes it out of that.
And the amazing thing is that most methods need huge scale political change, while most people can make biochar in a hole in the ground in the simplest sense. While it's next to nothing, it's something on the individual level.
I'm just going to see if this works @Wiggles@aussie.zone . I've never seen what an AI says about biochar.
@ChatGPT@lemmings.world
Can you give me an ELI5 about biochar and how it relates to carbon capture and storage.
Thanks for the responses, its interesting stuff and seems like a sensible way of trying to reduce emissions and actually capture carbon from the atmosphere.
It makes me think of research that shows that it would make more sense to try and capture carbon from the ocean rather than the atmosphere, as the concentrations are much higher than in the ocean. If we can do this using the natural process of photosynthesis via kelp farms and bio char it could be a very sustainable process.
This is the source I got that quote from: https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/features/co2-capture-putting-the-sea-into-ccs/
It goes on to talk about how they are working to create tech to capture the carbon, but utilising natural process to achieve the same outcome would be considerably better, though we may need to employ all reasonable methods to decarbonise as quickly as possible.
Interesting reply!
Yeah, it's just one tiny fraction of a piece of the puzzle (and I dont really hold much hope for us engineering out of this one). We are going to have to do absolutely everything but we can't even stop land clearing or topsoil erosion.
Kelp farming could end up using exotic species just to increase survivability in the water, all our systems aren't going to adapt fast enough to the changes coming. If we had our time again, nice train lanes from kelp farming ports to cycle lost nutrients back onto the land maybe could have created some sort of utopia of rich terrestrial systems with abundant marine resources close to shore.
Back to the article, 28% is something, topped up with some biochar, topped up with bacterial implants or something similar would have been nice. Really, the only answer is those things with about 0.5% of the cows. I can see cows being regenerative in some ways to manage some grasslands back into forested systems. The problem is a lot of our grass species aren't even native, they are selected for production which means management is key.