Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Amrita Chaudhury <seheli@yahoo.com>]

I had attended a talk by Tim Flannery, author of The Weather Makers, last year and there heard of pyrolysis for the first time in relation to climate change mitigation. Flannery ranked pyrolysis very highly as one of the ways to save the planet, because it converts crop waste to fuel and char to enhance soil fertility and store carbon ... and it does not need extensive govt subsidies and policies to implement.

I did not have the perspective to question the efficacy of this method, and have been since considering buying a pyrolysis kiln from ARTI (http://www.arti-india.org/content/view/42/52/). I am eagerly following this discussion to get inputs from both angles. Now this kiln apparently will use some of the pyrolysis gases to run the combustion. It would be interesting to know if this really sequesters carbon more efficiently than mulching.

On Nov 9, 2009, at 10:58 PM, Tradingpost wrote:

> If that biogas was a practical substitute for petroleum it would 
> still be widely used. It can't be anywhere near as efficient as 
> refined petroleum, plus it takes energy to make biogas, which 
> further lowers the throughput efficiency. It's been around since 
> before WW II and I still don't see any corporations jumping on it.   
> But biogas production isn't about biochar. We don't know how much 
> energy it takes to make biochar - and no one can verify that doing 
> it is better than just putting the organic matter into the soil in 
> the first place.