Sequestering Carbon Dioxide–Essential to Mitigating Climate Change
I just received an email that began: I have a hunch that carbon can be removed from the atmosphere by biology. But the devil is in the details and it is really hard work to figure out what a given piece of land is doing as far as carbon (inflow and outflow).
I respond:
I hope your hunch turns out to be correct, but I think the devil will ask you to nail down the broad strokes before he starts worrying about the details.
I can help you with a few basics, though.
The most important thing to know about sustainable land management is that large grazing animals are essential to soil fertility. There is no doubt (in fact, it’s been proven) that the presence of cows, horses, buffalo, etc. reduces desertification and promotes a healthy environment. Btw, if factory farms were eliminated and cows were permitted to roam free before being turned into hamburger late in an otherwise pleasant life, I wouldn’t object to eating them.
But regardless of how fertile the land is, the net result of plant life in terms of carbon in the atmosphere is zero. Green plants photosynthesize (taking in CO2), but regardless of what happens to them during their lives (respiring and growing) or at the end of their lives (decomposing, getting eaten, or burned), the sugar that was created in photosynthesis is broken back down into CO2 which is returned to the atmosphere. There are many excellent reasons to stop the mass destruction of the Amazon rain forest, but CO2 absorption isn’t one of them.
Nature has its own way of sequestering CO2 (shown here, thanks to Dr. Alex Cannara) but today, our consumption of fossil fuels is totally overwhelming it; we’re sending 9 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere each year, while nature is sequestering 0.3 gigatons, creating a factor of 30:1 in the wrong direction.
There are other means of sequestering CO2, the most practical of which appears to be helping along the development of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) in the ocean which is then subducted under a tectonic plate.
Interestingly, it appears that ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC, which uses the temperature differential between the warm surface waters and the cold waters on the seabed) will also help here, and for the exact same reason. As I reported here: the upwelling of nutrients in the cold water pipe will likely increase biological activity at the surface, and this will chew up more CO2. As I wrote last summer:
The hot layer at the top of a tropical ocean tends to lock the mineral/nutrient-rich water below a thermocline, i.e., a thermal “front” or boundary. If we can bring that to the surface (which would happen via the cold-water pipe during the OTEC process), we would mimic what happens in natural up-wellings, e.g, the coast of Peru, where there is 100 times more biological activity than there is on average at the surface of the ocean. Obviously, this promotes CO2 sequestration, in the form of plant life, and the creation of small critters with carbonate shells. When the critters die, bacteria eat the hydrocarbons, but what’s left sinks to the bottom of the ocean and is subducted under tectonic plates.
There you go. I’ll let you get back to your hunch. 🙂
The premise that “Sequestering Carbon Dioxide is Essential to Mitigating Climate Change” is correct.
Biochar offers huge possibilities both through its capacity to sequester carbon and also its benefits for soil health and crop yield. However, these will only be realized if & when biochar production can be made commercially viable. Key issues to be addressed include access to sustainable feedstocks, the economics of biochar production at various scales, the creation of a viable market for biochar and other outputs and the broad acceptability of biochar.
There is only one technology that can take biochar production to the wide feedstock resource availability and make it available to the soils of the world in a practical manner. That novel new technology is not yet in production and unless and until I can find a financial backer who has the mental capacity to understand what I’m talking about it may never be put into wide use.
Here is a notice being posted on Linkedin and elsewhere.
STRATEGIC ALLIANCE OR INVESTMENT NEEDED FOR NEW CONCEPT WORLD REPOWERING TECH ONLY SIX MONTHS TO ONE YEAR FROM MARKET ENTRY.
Advanced Alternative Energy Corp. (AAEC) has developed technology designed to allow towns, cities and counties to go completely to renewable energy. AAEC.com is for those who understand that distributed alternative/renewable energy derived from solar, wind, biomass and waste is a viable pathway to stall global warming and produce a better future for our descendants, and for our communities and for humanity. AAEC offers a viable way for environmental organizations and activists to move beyond talk. Fossil Fuel firms and utilities on the other hand oppose what AAEC offers and want to maintain their monopoly positions as sole energy providers and pass unlimited costs in cleaning up their operations to their customers, even if better options are available.
AAEC has invented, patented, tested and further developed a new concept low-carbon energy technology we’ve designed for serving as the core technology for far cleaner renewable energy production systems and energy efficiency improvements across the North American landscape and around the world. AAEC’s novel new concept technology consists of a biomass, fossil fuel, and municipal waste combustion, gasification and pyrolysis conversion technology that can provide scalable heat and power requirements as well as both biofuel and biochar production for stand-alone use or for backup for alternative energy systems that depend on solar, wind or other intermittent sources of energy, and in this way it will help enable a doubling of the deployment of alternative energy projects around the world in coming decades.
AAEC management believes we will do better and be much safer in the long run if we can deploy a practical way to power human society on extraction of greenhouse gases that have already been emitted into the atmosphere while also reducing ongoing greenhouse emissions and begin protecting our communities and electric power grids. We are claiming to be the inventor of one of the “tools” needed to enable humanity to overhaul the power delivery system, in the USA and elsewhere, and help get us out of the box fossil fuels and governmental inaction have humanity boxed up in. We propose to do this through deployment of advanced alternative energy projects at the village, community and county scale, and because good paying infrastructure jobs are also needed. Thus AAEC is seeking support from all that may care to support this project.
AAEC’s product lines can be manufactured in the US and in most any locality on any continent for the local and regional market. This we believe will create licensing opportunities and many thousands of good paying jobs, and these are among the things we are offering to an alternative energy hungry world.
For further details please contact:
Les Blevins, President Advanced Alternative Energy
1207 N 1800 Rd., Lawrence, KS 66049
Phone 785-842-1943 – Email LBlevins@aaecorp.com
For more info see
http://aaecorp.com
http://advancedalternativeenergy.com
https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=45587557
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Advanced-Alternative-Energy/277213435730720
Hi Craig,
OTEC is a great solution indeed. I deeply hope a first commercial asset to come true by 2020. As to the OTEC upwelling, local ocean conditions shall dictate whether good (nutrient-rich water from the deep) or not (eutrophication). If not, CO2 from the deep water might go to the atmosphere, but that would be much less than from a gas-fired power plant.
Another concept is to have a total subsea OTEC plant, with a HWP instead (hot water pipe) to bring warm water from the surface downwards the plant at the bottom. Technology does exist (deep sea oil drilling…). CO2 would then be captured from the surface ocean water downwards the sea bottom.
Best,
Vicente Fachina
Craig:
Very interesting article. We all know that biomass is a well known vehicle for generating Energy but it requires burning. Combustion produces CARBON DIOXIDE AND ADDED TO FOSSIL FUEL BURNING we create the problem. The best way to reduce Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere is not to produce it.
We have been telling you that we have a way but it does not seem to grab your attention. We are beginning to wonder if you are really concerned or if you just like publishing. No one source is going to solve the problem but every little contribution can help.
If you are really interested we have one of the solutions and we need help. Let’s work together and contribute to the solution. nsreef@cs.com
Oh, I like solutions. I’m all about solutions. You may recall our conversations about your invention, i.e., a small modular waste-to-energy machine the size and shape of a hot water heater (about 7 cubic feet) that accepts any all all forms of biomass or hydrocarbon fuel and produces 3 – 5 million BTUs/hour (~1 MW), the equivalent of about 200 fair-sized wood burning stoves. Per our talk, please send me a few case studies, i.e., happy customers whom I can reach by phone. If what you claim is true, I’ll happily help you promote it. As I’ve told you, however, I’ve looked at many dozens of WTE devices and I’m highly skeptical.
Whoever thinks the really hard work is to figure out what a given piece of land is doing as far as carbon inflow and outflow is, isn’t focused on solutions and doesn’t really want the climate issue to be resolved and I can only assume that is because they want to continue to focus on the numerous side issues rather than focus on viable solutions and be a contributor to finding solutions. Entrepreneurs provide solutions not bean counters.
Whoever thinks the best way to reduce Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere is not to produce it is not facing facts. Science tells us carbon is not produced by man nor by his activities since man cannot produce nor destroy anything, we can change it and move it around (like taking it from under ground and releasing it in the atmosphere) but we can not and do not produce it.
Craig, I’m not sure I agree with you on this one. There has been a significant amount of carbon sequestered in forests and deep prairie soils. When we cut the forests and plow the prairies, this carbon gets oxidized into carbon dioxide. Reestablishing forests and deep soils is one way to work at the problem. How about moving toward a more sustainable agriculture system that rejuvenates the soil and sequesters carbon and reduces our food system’s reliance on petroleum? From my perspective, we don’t really have a choice on this once the full impact of peak oil hits. People are doing this very successfully right now. And of course we need to stop pumping it out of the ground.
I certainly hope that we will not wait for peak oil before taking effective action. Peak oil has been delayed by improved exploration and drilling techniques. It has to come eventually, but for all we know, it could be delayed by 100 years or more by advanced technology for finding and extracting oil. Perhaps there will be robotic drilling through ocean floors where the ocean is more than 12,000 feet deep. Advanced techniques could even find and extract coal from places where doing so would be impossible now. Who knows?
A timely article Craig especially after I recently read a somewhat damning article in “Grist” that looked at the math of “Carbon Sequestering” at the new Kemper Coal Power station. http://grist.org/climate-energy/we-did-the-math-on-clean-coal-and-it-doesnt-add-up/ They also have an article that looked at the human consequences of building the plant and who is paying for the huge cost overruns. In fairness however we have put such an analysis in perspective. It is a starting point for a new technology. It allows us to see the mistakes and decide if they are correctable or if such concept is just smoke and mirrors. Unfortunately the ratepayers will be paying for what could have been a more intelligent consideration of the concept. If it is a mistake it will be a costly one.
Somewhere deep in the core of my being I feel that the answer for carbon must be to find a use for it. If carbon becomes a useful consumer and/or industrial product then dumping it in the atmosphere would be to ignore a revenue stream. I am seeing some possibilities for this. Batteries and other materials are being made with the newly created material graphene. This is a pure form of carbon. Also there are recent articles that suggest carbon fiber could become a very important manufacturing material for automobiles: http://www.electric-vehiclenews.com/2015/02/carbon-fiber-to-go-mainstream-in.html But if we can replace steel and body parts with carbon fiber couldn’t we also replace concrete and steel I beams with the same material. Perhaps you know someone who could calculate how much carbon we could potentially bury in our cars and buildings. Maybe we could also replace cardboard boxes and plastic bags with carbon created products. At least then we could also feel smug about burying our garbage in landfills.
As a bit of an aside Bucky balls are another of the many interesting allotropes of Carbon. Perhaps instead of asking how we can hide carbon we should be asking what we can make with it. If carbon producers had to put money into a fund to help subsidize some of the initial tech and manufacturing we would create an industry and spur the economy. It may be at least a reasonable and practical approach rather than our present panic attack way of thinking.
That’s an interesting idea. Maybe it will eventually become practical. Who knows?
Good points, as always. There is no question that we can take point sources of CO2, e.g., coal and cement plants, and process the effluent into something of value: building products or carbon-neutral synthetic fuels. More here: http://2greenenergy.com/2015/02/22/capturing-carbon/.
Saying that “the net result of plant life in terms of carbon in the atmosphere is zero” is very simplistic. It is how these plannts are used is the critical factor. I believe that we can store CO2 in the soil quite easily and cheaply, and thus reduce the CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Very intensive controlled grazing by ruminants, as advocated and practiced by several prominant institutions and individuals e.g. Rodale Institution, Savory Institute, James Elizondo etc., have demonstrated that the result is a build up of soil organic matter (circa 50% carbon) of industrial -chemical farming soils now at levels as low as 1.5% to previous historical levels which are minimally 4% to even 20% for most soil-types. Sometimes this type of grazing is called “holistic” grazing, or the practice is labelled Holistic Farm Management or Integrated Farm Management. The Rodale Institute has researched the global possibilities of all beef and dairy farming adopting these practices, and it is quite radical in effect, yet “free” or very cheap compared to so called high-tech methods. Professor Altieri of Berkeley, California has done much to show that current chemical-industrial farming practices will see a complete collapse in food-yields ii much of the corn-belt USA, arable-crop areas of Canada, south-Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Brazil, Argentina etc., within 20 years maximum as a result the consequent depletion of Soil Organic Matter ( and therefore carbon) in that type of farming. Of course pyrolosis and bio-char, and its use in agriculture would also be a far better use of biomass than the practice of burning it as a fuel, and that too would reduce the co2 in the atmosphere.
In conclusion, there is no need for expensive technological solutions, but a cheap clean farming practice that we call holistic grazing, and a solution that requires no special training or expereince to learn and use.
Thanks for this, Liam. Interesting. Please send along a few case studies that illustrate this point. Thanks.
We’ve known of a very suitable use for carbon for centuries – it’s agrichar and we can use it as a soil amendment to increase soil fertility and water retention and it can be produced as a byproduct of using the AAEC Sequential Grates ™ fuels conversion system.
Craig,
I have a workable plan for a really amazing project that I think you will like. It involves writers like J.K. Rowling and Julian Fellows to work together over the next several years and draw upon their writing skills and the power of the written story to rouse and inspire people around the planet to join and work together to save the planet’s environment for future generations.
I’m suggesting an online meeting of the minds about using this concept for saving the planet’s environment. I have been working on the story line needed as a basis for this project. I have it pinned down. I’ll explain more in future emails if you agree to hear me out. I’ll leave you now with these thoughts.
“Humanity has pushed the world’s climate system to the brink, leaving itself only scant time to act. We are at about five minutes before midnight.”
— Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2013
If you’re like me, you are feeling a strong sense of responsibility to empower a big fix for the global warming issue before it is too late. Scientists report that we only have a few years left to transform our society to a renewable energy (zero-carbon) economy if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change. So what should our role be in creating the needed transformation? Who among us would just wait and see what happens? Not I. – Les Blevins
Production and use of Biochar from clean biomass waste sources is the one technology which is readily available at various scales now. To have a significant impact the key issue is the education and training of land owners, farmers, estates and gardeners to purchase and use biochar. The increase of market demand is then likely to drive the greatly needed increase supply. The biochar sector is well aware of the enormous potential for biochar as a carbon sequestration technology with for example Australian calculations on how to mitigate their huge carbon footprint by biochar in Australian farmlands and the UK Parliamentary Select Committee inquiry into carbon capture and storage also recently accepting evidence on the potential for biochar in the UK as a carbon sequestration option at the large scale.
Pyrolysis technologies of several sorts are already on the market and produce around one third gas for energy purposes and up to 50% as biochar for sequestering and soil improvement purposes. Gasification and other combustion technologies are not really helping to sequester carbon as most of the biomass carbon goes to CO2. Waste materials for pyrolysis need screening to ensure they are clean wastes or we increase the contamination of our soils on which we depend for all our food and many building materials etc.
Though growing plants take CO2 from the air and fix it in their cells, the carbon is only borrowed: 99% of that carbon ends up back in the atmosphere as the plant is eventually burned or consumed by animals, termites, fungi, nematodes or worms, which then return the carbon to the atmosphere. Pyrolysis is a way to grab the carbon in plants before it can become a meal for these creatures and return it to the soil as pure carbon biochar.
Pyrolysis mimics the natural process that turned ancient plants into coal: When biomass is heated up with no oxygen supply it melts into carbon, syngas and biooil. Pyrolysis was used thousands of years ago by the natives of Brazil to enrich their poor, acidic soil into Terra Preta, one of the richest, most productive soils known to man.
Terra Preta still contains as much as 9% carbon. It is always found with pottery shards and other evidence that it was man made. It is so productive that it is bagged up and sold today as potting soil. We’re still trying to match their superb results. If we succeed, we will solve world hunger, global warming and our energy shortage in one stroke.
The Amazon culture that made these soils was killed by conquest and disease. The primitive people in the area today practice slash and burn agriculture, which quickly depletes the soil and spews CO2 and pollutants into the atmosphere. The Terra Preta was created by slash and char, which involves cutting off oxygen to the burning biomass. Without oxygen, little CO2 is produced and the biomass melts into carbon with a very fine structure called biochar. The hydrogen in the plant molecules produces heat, syngas and biooil as the plant molecules are reshuffled.
The buried biochar retains some of the micro-cellular structure of the plant. It is activated charcoal with very high surface area. It can hold water and nutrients and gradually release them as needed. The nanoscale structure of biochar, like a coral reef, hosts a whole ecosystem of soil fungi and bacteria that feed the roots of plants and hold soil together. This part of the terra preta story is still not fully understood. It takes some time for this microscopic biological culture to develop and produce the amazing increases in yield for the soil.
Les Bevins, are are only partially correct, as the soil can also store CO2 and do so in a fashion to improve / regenerate it with higher yields of crops/ foods. Pyrolosis is fine but is relatively expensive and inefficient compared to holistic grazing, though it is much better than typical biomass incendiary-plants. Please check the Rodhale Institute for data on using ruminants as grazers to store CO2 increasingly in the soil.
Giant trees would sequester the major amounts within a century and decay a thousand years later, when we have the means to use it or permanently sink it. Thus turning the “net result is zero truth” upside down.
Olivine extraction is another way. Its industrial CO2 cost is about 1/20th of what it “fixes” into carbonates, thus diesel fuel could be used right now, to create a whole new industry which serves also as a soil amendment and possibly, a benign remedy to ocean acidification.
A third is the two forms of OTEC. One is based on common refrigeration principles that move NO water, just heat via a working fluid – down to the mid depths where it supposedly doesn’t matter, cooling the surface which is now melting glaciers. The other is direct which provides cool nutrient rich waters necessary for aquaculture.
Along this line of reasoning is the “grow and sink” solutions.
So, instead of continuing to search for trees like the giant sequoia, redwood and dawn redwood, I searched for the fastest growing plants. Sure enough, one of them is a very small plant called duckweed. If given proper conditions, it would grow to a mass that outweighs the planet in like 2 months (I forgot exactly, but something like that).
Expend a little CO2 emission (and clean energy) in to sink a lot of CO2, like for just nutrients, allotted area and, especially, containment. The nutrients MUST be the boundary such as that it (or its GM seawater version) dies readily in the natural world.
I would hope that we could “know” that it couldn’t mutate (to thrive off the land without special man made nutrient) and just as importantly, that it would be made so that it couldn’t be decomposed easily when it sinks to the bottom of the cold ocean.
However, I fear anaerobic processes that could possibly cause methane or hydrogen sulfide from such large amounts of non decaying matter. (I don’t know). Better just stick with the clean energy, OTEC, the big trees (and lots of water) and the biochar of such duckweed.
Whatever the solutions, they have to sequester 2.2 trillion tons of excess CO2 out of the air to get back below 300 ppm!
There must be other CDR solutions as well – such as doing what you suggest and letting the cows roam free!
I meant to emphasize biochar the duckweed, and stop after “2.2 TT of CO2 – especially after reading the comment before mine!
In response to the comment; “Pyrolosis (I think he meant Pyrolysis) is fine but is relatively expensive and inefficient compared to holistic grazing.” I don’t oppose holistic grazing but it’s difficult for me to see how it would apply to the millions of acres of beetle killed pines. AAEC technology can be taken to the resource and used to convert the millions of tons of decaying wood into biochar which can then be transported to and scattered upon and then plowed into depleted farm soils during winter by farmers who have time on their hands and are willing to invest some of their time (or hire help).The transporting can be done by using coal train cars that are no longer needed so much as the coal plants are shut .
I wasn’t referring to millions of acres of beetle-killed pines, but rather “thinking big” in the sense that if public and private funds are to be used globally to sequester carbon then lets do so with the most effective means i.e. the results of say 1 dollar spent on holistic grazing will have a far greater impact than an equal amount spent on pyrolysis/ pyrolosis. The biggest cost of activitating more holistic grazing would be a publicity / awareness campaign aimed at farmers/ ranchers of its benefits to the bottom line and for their soils; society would then benefit as a consequence. I am not about to earn a single cent by promoting holistic grazing, so I have no bias in that regard.
In fact I support pyrolosis, as a technology, but found it cost -prohibitive to use as a farmer to fertilise my soil when I researched it a few years ago. I know that a lot of public and private research was being devoted to it; so If there is a newer and cheaper technology now please tell us about it.
Think big people.