[Terrapreta] NZ leading the way

[naomi luckett]

News from New Zealand,

Published today in the New Zealand Herald...

RESEARCH
Roles focus on charcoal's benefits

Two professorships at Massey University have won Government funding for
wide-ranging research of "biochar".
Studies overseas have shown that turning wood or other plant material into
charcoal and burying it in soils can not only keep carbon dioxide from
reaching the atmosphere, but also help soil organisms extract more carbon
from the atmosphere.
And the economic viability of the process can be improved if the biochar is
made as a by-product of biofuels from forestry "slash" and other waste.
The concept of improving soils with charcoal is ancient - there are theories
that it was used for centuries to improve soils in the Amazon -  but it has
been revived in modern times, partly because of the potential to claim soil
resevoirs of carbon as "sinks" in climate change mitigation schemes.
The New Zealand research was announced last week by  Forestry Minister Jim
Anderton, who said the establishment of the two professorships was an
important step on the path towards New Zealand becoming a low-carbon nation.
One will focus on biochar and it's behaviour in New Zealand soils and the
other processing of biomass feedstock into biochar.
Pyrolysis - burning wood in the absence of oxygen - can turn material such
as wood chips and crop waste into three main components : gas (methane and
hydrogen), a renewable "bio-oil" that can be used as fuel or for "green"
chemical production, and a char that contains roughly 60 per cent of the
carbon contained in the biomass.

-- 
"Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances of survival of
life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."

- Albert Einstein
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /attachments/20071217/4e53a5f6/attachment.html