Saturday, February 14, 2009

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biofuels carbon negative: 1-The lesson of ancient Aboriginal Amazon

Illustration - Micrograph of a piece of charcoal (biochar) showing its extreme porosity, smaller by about 1 / 100 of a millimeter. It is an ideal medium to retain water, nutrients and microorganisms, which increase soil fertility. (Source: Best Energies )

past ten years, agronomists and environmentalists are increasingly interested in more Terra preta in the Amazon, an extremely fertile black soil resulting from agricultural practices astonishing ancient Aboriginal .

Their secret was within the charcoal into the soil they , hence the name Terra preta, Portuguese. The appearance of porous charcoal, also called biochar helps retain nutrients, water and microorganisms. These features facilitate plant growth, and reduce the need for fertilizers while reducing over 50% emission nitrous oxide, a gas 300 times more active in global warming than CO2.

To produce biochar, using a thermal decomposition process called pyrolysis of biomass , which involves heating wood or plant residues in a chamber in there scarcer as possible the oxygen. It emerges when combustible gases containing, among other things, hydrogen and methane, which are partly used to produce the heat required by the process. also formed after processing and cooling, bio-oil able to replace oil for heating. can also transform this bio-oil into biofuels more suited to transport as synthetic diesel and gasoline, or ethanol. Then obtained second-generation biofuels.


Now when burying biochar, in addition to fertilize the land, one receiver in soil CO2 from the atmosphere was absorbed by plants . This helps to remove greenhouse gas emissions, particularly sought a bonus these days!. Combining biochar buried and biofuel production therefore gives these biofuels carbon negative , which is even better than a neutral review. The Professor Lehmann of Cornell University estimates that implementing these practices on a large scale, we could both produce biofuels and withdraw annually 9.5 billion tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere by 2100. It's more than we now emits by burning fossil fuels across the planet!

For more information, visit the French site Terra preta , and the English site The International Biochar Initiative (IBI) , where we find an illustration of the pyrolysis process above. In addition, the following video is an excellent documentary on the subject.


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