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Beginning with biochar
Researchers and their interns used precious hours of sunshine this week as the Rodale Institute kicked off its exploration of biochar as a carbon-sequestering practice, applying at the rate of 5,000 pounds per to selected plots. By charring biomass (say nitrogen-fixing trees) under controlled conditions (pyrolysis), farms could generate power by capturing released syngas while transforming half of the incoming carbon into the super-stable charcoal form. The application rate was chosen for study because it’s an order of magnitude (10 times) greater than carbon sequestered (per acre per year) by a good cover crop stand.
