An interesting (one year old) paper on "Carbon-negative aviation" (terra-preta, char, biofuel)

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20080000860_2007039194.pdf

The 12th International Symposium on Transport Phenomena and
Dynamics of Rotating Machinery
Honolulu, Hawaii, February 17-22, 2008

ISROMAC12–2008–20242

POTENTIAL CARBON NEGATIVE COMMERCIAL AVIATION
THROUGH LAND MANAGEMENT

R.C. Hendricks

NASA Glenn Research Center, 21000 Brookpark Road, Cleveland, Ohio 44135
216–977–7507
[e-mail]

ABSTRACT

Brazilian terra preta soil and char-enhanced soil agricultural systems have demonstrated both enhanced plant biomass and crop yield and functions as a carbon sink. Similar carbon sinking has been demonstrated for both glycophyte and halophyte plants and plant roots.

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For many years our ancestors used ashes to condition garden soils in order to enhance plant productivity to feed their families. This art has been set aside in favor of artificial fertilizers, cleaner fuels as natural gas, and other fossil fuel as petroleum. More recently archeological work in Brazil’s Amazon Basin has theorized that the indigenous people used a technique now termed “slash-and-char,” a process similar to pyrolysis, to condition their soils.*

Theory holds that these nutrient-poor soils were conditioned into rich black fertile soils, called terra preta do Indio or simply terra preta, providing a rich source of natural foods. The process is theorized to be based on a mixture of low-temperature burning of plant and wood matter, pottery chards, bones, manure, and micro-organisms (arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi).¹

Plants and soils represent a sustainable long-term solution for removing CO₂ from our living environment. Pumping it underground or into the ocean only delays the problem as oxygen is also sequestered with it. The carbon needs to be put away and the oxygen recovered. No civilization can maintain itself over long periods without living within its means, including its food and energy supply. While equilibrium is not necessary during periods of “progress,” it is the norm for most of human history. The last 200 years of industrialization is but a drop in the bucket in the history of human civilizations. To sustain our civilization, our global climate, food, and energy life cycle balance needs to be addressed.

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