This ingenious approach not only binds CO2, but also improves the soil

[sue4e3]

If 4,000 Norwegian farms and nurseries produced biochar and mixed it with the soil, we could halve CO2 emissions from the agricultural sector. This entirely natural approach also produces more robust and healthy plants.

There is a new addition among the greenhouses at the Skjærgaarden nursery – Norway's first biochar plant. Biochar is identical to charcoal (or barbecue coal), but can be manufactured not only from wood, but also from other kinds of organic material. The nursery is hosting the first biochar demo plant in Norway, which has been installed in collaboration with the cross-disciplinary research project CAPTURE+.
"Our motivation for starting biochar production is to improve the soil," says Kristin Stenersen, who runs the Skjærgaarden nursery together with her husband Bjørge Madsen. "We want more robust and healthier plants, and to reduce our use of synthetic pesticides and artificial fertilisers. Of course, the fact that biochar also binds CO2 is an added benefit," she says.
"People are welcome to come and see for themselves how it works in practice," says Maria Kollberg Thomassen, who is a Senior Researcher at SINTEF and Project Manager for CAPTURE+.


Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-10-ingenious-approach-co2-soil.html#jCp

[Sanity Claws]

1. Thanks for introducing me to that site

I read the article and think this is great.
In a caption to a photo, it said that biochar can remove heavy metals from soil but I didn't see any explanation of that in the article. Did you?
I understand that organic matter in general can bind heavy metals and prevent their uptake by plants but that it doesn't remove the heavy metals. Do you think this what the writer meant?

[sue4e3]

2. you're welcome

I didn't find it either. but on other reading I've done biochar immobilizes, complexes and stabilizes heavy metal . . So I believe your assumption is probably closer to right. here's a link . That has a little more detail https://cfpub.epa.gov/si/si_public_record_report.cfm?dirEntryId=309488

[NCjack]

3. A properly proportioned mix of charcoal, clay, and fine sand were the starting ingredients

Chinese famers used 6000(?) years ago for making soil. Add some organic rot (compost) to the mix and it is soil. An important function of the charcoal is to provide "inkwell" pores with entrance dia = about 10 micrometers and well dia = about 50 micrometers. The "inkwells provide safe haven for microbes important to plant roots against hunter . (Please don't ask why I know that -- I have forgotten the source of the information.)

Charcoal has the ability to bind heavy metals through the process of chemisorption -- which makes them non-leachable. Earthworms provide more protection against heavy metals by incorporating them into the worms' castings. The castings make heavy metals non-leachable for centuries.

It appears to me that biochar is the modernization of the ancient Chinese process. Feels good to see the ancients validated.