[Terrapreta] Durability of charcoal as carbon sink?

[Duane Pendergast]

Sean et al.

 

I believe there is a lot of valid evidence that samples of charcoal can last
a very long time. Archeologists have been using charcoal for many decades to
date their digs from the amount of radioactive isotope Carbon 14 left in the
samples.  

 

I suppose methods could be devised to accelerate tests too. There is one
example posted on the 2004 Georgia conference website based on accelerating
waging with ozone. 

 

http://www.georgiaitp.org/carbon/PDF%20Files/kawamoto_oral_ozone.pdf

 

However the techniques people are using to grind it up for application and
the possibility "wee beasties" can do something more to it might well make
some testing of the sort you describe, perhaps with more thought on
accelerating decomposition processes, necessary. Maybe someone is already
doing it.

 

I'm quoting your full message for the sake of quick access to context.
Hopefully that won't blow too much  bandwidth or exceed anyone's  file size
limits.

 

          Duane

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Sean K. Barry [mailto:sean.barry at juno.com] 
Sent: June 2, 2007 10:29 AM
To: still.thinking at computare.org; terrapreta at bioenergylists.org; 'Christoph
Steiner'; 'Ron Larson'
Subject: Durability of charcoal as carbon sink?

 

Hi Duane and All,

 

Thanks for your review of my post.  Only the last of your comments, Duane,
is below (care of Kurt)  As for the resilience or durability of charcoal in
soil?  I need to believe that someone can devise an experiment around the
hypothesis that it is quite durable.

 

Here is my attempt at designing such an experiment (any comments are
welcome?)

 

1) We could seal some newly seeded plants and charcoal amended soil into a
green house chamber, having made a proximate analysis (carbon, ash, and
moisture content) and weight measurement of the amended soil.

 

2) Then, operating it like a green house, measure the gas composition and
flows in/out, plant growth, and other water and material inputs and outputs
of the chamber for a single growing season.

 

3) Weigh the soil plus plants at the end of the growing season, subtract the
net inputs, and perform another proximate analysis and weight measurement of
the soil.

 

4) From this we can extrapolate the changes over time.

 

5) We can continue to follow the plot and compare it to our predictions as
long a we would want.

 

Perhaps we could ignore continuous flow and composition measurements of the
gas in the chamber, if we could compare just the proximate analysis and
weight numbers for the soil.

 

Regards,

 

SKB

 

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