The Hot Side of Biochar

"The only truly important questions are whether we decide to stop catastrophic climate change and if there is time. "

Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty

Twelve years ago, at our Biochar Stove Camp in Tennessee, Kathleen Draper and I started toying with the idea of a book on the non-agricultural side of biochar. We had a distinguished roster of instructors and guests. We went through the usual slides about the history and physical qualities of biochar, how it is made, and how it has been traditionally used to regenerate the life of soils, improve crop yields, resist pestilence and drought, and boost nutrient density. Of course, we also spoke about its potential to reverse climate change, demonstrated during both the Columbian Encounter in the 16th Century and the Mongol Invasion of Europe three centuries earlier.

Then we went on to explore the wilder side of biochar.

That discussion would eventually become a book for Chelsea Green Publishers—BURN: Using Fire to Cool the Earth—now in several languages and editions. The book focuses on the element carbon, how it originated in the nova of dying stars, how it forms the essential building block of all life on Earth, how it bonds to itself in chains and rings to resist biodegradation for millennia, and how that strength also makes it ideal for a host of new products that can be organic, in the sense of produced by sunlight and living plants, and able to replace fossil hydrocarbons for most things.

BURN, arriving six years ago, was a prescription without any patented medicine to back it up. We could foresee the enormous market potential driven by the growing urgency of cascading weather impacts, but the products we could actually point to—a refrigerator air freshener; the shell of a Formula I race car; an overnight facial cream—were scant and insignificant, economically or climatologically.

Now that is changing. Our dream has started to come true.

Last week the US Biochar Initiative and the US Forest Service hosted a webinar on “Production and Utilization of Biochar: A sustainable and Eco-friendly Approach,” presented by Dr. Cai, Zhiyong. Only a few dozen people attended, but it showed me just how biochar is becoming a real game changer for materials science.

Global Village Institute’s Jason Deptula
tweaks the flame of the LuLu stove
designed by Frank Michael to produce
wood vinegar, or pyroligneous acid,
as a co-product of biochar pyrolysis

As Kathleen and I pointed out in BURN, biochar in agriculture, which is today the principal way you will find it used and where most biochar advocacy originates, can at peak deployment perhaps draw 5 to 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide (GtCO2e) from the atmosphere annually and keep that removed from the short-term carbon cycle long enough (1000 years) to matter if we are trying to reverse climate change this century. Unlike most other forms of CO2 removal (CDR), biochar does its climate work at negative cost, meaning its life cycle produces net energy, returns investment at a respectable profit, and its products and services are safe, shelf-ready and scalable now. Most of the carbon credits issued for biochar—and that is 98% of the carbon credits issued—have already been retired, meaning the contracts were met and the CO2 was removed. The limiting factor, at least for farming with biochar, would seem to be available feedstock, meaning waste products of photosynthetic origin that normally would burn or decay and return to the carbon cycle as greenhouse gases (GHG). 

By contrast, we calculated, the drawdown potential for biochar’s non-agricultural side is 4 to 10 times greater—50 GtCO2e/yr. Human activity presently contributes 40 GtCO2e annually and when you factor in methane that is closer to 50 GtCO2e/y. That means that biochar combined with emissions reductions has the potential to go beyond zero and begin to return the atmosphere from ~425 ppmCO2 concentration to 350 ppm or even 250 ppm (pre-industrial) GHG on human timescales. Summer ice in the Arctic could be restored and the Greenland glaciers regenerated. Antarctica would stop melting.

Agricultural biochar’s limiting factor, the shortage of feedstock—is largely removed as a concern once we start using biochar for non-food purposes. You can pyrolyze all manner of wastes into biochar—plastic, vulcanized rubber, PFAS-contaminated seaweed, algae, sewage, and animal manures. Making it into biochar destroys most of the PFAS, pharmaceuticals, polymeric structures, pathogens and toxins and any still-dangerous residues such as lead and mercury will be entrained in the constructed structure, whether that is a building, sidewalk, road surface, or carbon fiber overpass column wrap. 

In our 2012 stove camp, Kathleen and I showed off roofing tiles and wallboards using biochar in the place of cement, epoxy or aggregates. They were stronger and more durable, but they had other unique features. They killed mold. They absorbed and neutralized indoor smoke and air pollution. They were flame-resistant. They blocked electromagnetic smog. Moreover, they didn’t have to be black. They could be any color your interior decorator or home designer wanted.

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Zhiyong Cai has been experimenting with high-density carbon products for nearly 20 years. Today he is a supervisor for materials research engineers at the Forest Products Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The lab is part of the US Department of Agriculture—one of three such facilities focused on wood research—its companions being the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Fort Collins, Colorado and the International Institute of Tropical Forestry in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Begun as part of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1935, FPL’s 5 emphasis areas are:

• Advanced Composites

• Advanced Structures

• Forest Biorefinery

• Nanotechnology

• Woody Biomass Utilization

Their studies led them to biochar, which is almost pure carbon and comes not from an oil well or coal shaft, but from field and forest. Dr. Cai published on wood-based composite materials, panel products, glued-laminated timber, structural composite lumber, and wood-nonwood composite materials beginning in 2010. He wrote a paper that year on “Selected properties of particleboard panels manufactured from rice straws of different geometries.” More recent papers include:

• Sodium‐Dictated Free‐Standing Lignin‐Carbon Electrode towards Ultrahigh Capacitance

• Production of COx-Free Hydrogen and Few-Layer Graphene Nanoplatelets by Catalytic Decomposition of Methane over Ni-Lignin-Derived Nanoparticles

• A Study of the Key Factors on Production of Graphene Materials from Fe-Lignin Nanocomposites through a Molecular Cracking and Welding (MCW) Method

• Fabrication and characterization of carbon foams using 100% Kraft lignin

• Fabrication and characterization of emulsified and freeze-dried epoxy/cellulose nanofibril nanocomposite foam

• Efficient conversion of lignin waste to high-value bio-graphene oxide nanomaterials

• Impact performance of two bamboo-based laminated composites

He also co-wrote an Evolutionary History of Oriented Strandboard (OSB) as a downloadable pamphlet. One of the takeaways from that booklet is how quickly OSB became the standard for North American homebuilders, leaping from 751 million square feet in 1980 to 7.6 billion square feet in 1990 and worldwide today covers more than one quintillion (18 zeros) square feet every year. By turning forestry waste products into buildings, the world not only saved trees but sequestered vast amounts of treetops, sawdust, and other waste from becoming greenhouse gases, as had been the case before.

Cai said there was 20 million tons of pulp and paper mill waste that gets disposed of by incineration each year that could instead be making biochar-lignin composite OSB.

When Max Himmelheber first started implementing his ideas for particleboard manufacture in the 1930s, the product yield from harvested trees in Germany was only about 40%. Today, with increased use of wood chips and sawdust, logging residues have been reduced to less than 10%, with little to no processing residues to dispose of.

 

Flameproof biochar/lignin structural insulated 

panel at Forest Products Lab

Cai said he was inspired to research biochar building SIPs (Structural Insulated Panels) by scenes from a 1990 wildfire. In a destroyed neighborhood, one building was left untouched. It was made with fireproof SIPs and roofing tiles. Cai’s experiments with biochar have shown him now how to make flameproof panels inexpensively from forestry wastes turned into biochar. Along the rows of devastated homes in places like Paradise California or Jasper Alberta, you may notice the melted aluminum wheels and hubcaps leaking from cars and pickup trucks. Aluminum melts at 500°C. Cai’s biochar/ligninboard SIPs survive fire and remain dimensionally stable at greater than 700°C (1,292°F). Not only that, they lose no mass, do not smoke, and actually become stronger. Lightweight, with good insulation qualities, able to arrest mold and odors, FPL’s fireproof SIPS for roofing and siding need to become standard, not just for homes and businesses in wooded areas, but for high-rise buildings.

This is what we should be building cities from.

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#RestorationGeneration.

當人類被關在籠内，地球持續美好，所以，給我們的教訓是:
人類毫不重要，空氣，土壤，天空和流水没有你們依然美好。
所以當你們走出籠子的時候，請記得你們是地球的客人，不是主人。

When humans are locked in a cage, the earth continues to be beautiful. Therefore, the lesson for us is: Human beings are not important. The air, soil, sky and water are still beautiful without you. So, when you step out of the cage, please remember that you are guests of the Earth, not its hosts.

We have a complete solution. We can restore whales to the ocean and bison to the plains. We can recover all the great old-growth forests. We possess the knowledge and tools to rebuild savannah and wetland ecosystems. It is not too late. All of these great works are recoverable. We can have a human population sized to harmonize, not destabilize. We can have an atmosphere that heats and cools just the right amount, is easy on our lungs and sweet to our nostrils with the scent of ten thousand flowers. All of that beckons. All of that is within reach.