The Charcoal Vision

The Charcoal Vision: A Win–Win–Win Scenario for Simultaneously Producing Bioenergy, Permanently Sequestering Carbon, while Improving Soil and Water Quality
David Laird, USDA, ARS, National Soil Tilth Laboratory, April 12,2008
In, Agronomy Journal • Volume 100, Issue 1 • 2008

ABSTRACT
Processing biomass through a distributed network of fast pyrolyzers may be a sustainable platform for producing energy from biomass. Fast pyrolyzers thermally transform biomass into bio-oil, syngas, and charcoal. The syngas could provide the energy needs of the pyrolyzer. Bio-oil is an energy raw material (∼17 MJ kg−1) that can be burned to generate heat or shipped to a refinery for processing into transportation fuels. Charcoal could also be used to generate energy; however, application of the charcoal co-product to soils may be key to sustainability. Application of charcoal to soils is hypothesized to increase bio-available water, build soil organic matter, enhance nutrient cycling, lower bulk density, act as a liming agent, and reduce leaching of pesticides and nutrients to surface and ground water. Th e half-life of C in soil charcoal is in excess of 1000 yr. Hence, soil-applied charcoal will make both a lasting contribution to soil quality and C in the charcoal will be removed from the atmosphere and sequestered for millennia. Assuming the United States can annually produce 1.1 × 109 Mg of biomass from harvestable forest and crop lands, national implementation of Th e Charcoal Vision would generate enough bio-oil to displace 1.91 billion barrels
of fossil fuel oil per year or about 25% of the current U.S. annual oil consumption. Th e combined C credit for fossil fuel displacement and permanent sequestration, 363 Tg per year, is 10% of the average annual U.S. emissions of CO2–C.