Original Research ArticleBiochar – Potential tool to combat climate change and drought
Introduction
Industrial development and increased production of goods and services, as well as modern and intensive agriculture are associated with increased consumption of raw materials and energy and decreased involvement of human labor. So far, the production of energy, as well as various goods and services has always been accompanied by the formation of waste according to the, so called, ‘linear economy’ focused on the production of goods while the waste had been thrown away. The linear economy model has thus nothing to do with sustainable development and it has recently been replaced by a circular economy approach that has emerged as a promising alternative since the circular economy does not waste resources but rather promotes better use of the raw materials. In the circular economy approach a ‘close-to-nature’ model is proposed where the amount of waste is minimized and the waste is recycled and reused. Based on that idea the concept of Circular Bioregions (CB) has been created in Poland. According to the Lodz Declaration, the Bioregions are ‘sustainable and renewable energy systems, including biorefineries and prosumer energy distribution systems, that are focused on achieving a net zero energy balance with simultaneous low emission of CO2 (Lodz Declaration of Bioregions, 2016). The production and application of the biochar fits perfectly to the CB concept that has been briefly mentioned above. The concept of CBs and more sustainable and environmentally-oriented economic development becomes more and more important in the developed countries due to numerous problems associated for instance with the lack of good quality water, overconsumption of artificial fertilizers by agriculture or ‘overproduction’ of waste (Jezierska-Thöle et al., 2016). The awareness of those problems is becoming more common also in Poland where numerous reports (Kędzior and Zawadzki, 2017, Krogulec, 2018, Kundzewicz et al., 2017, Usowicz and Lipiec, 2017) provide data that the country faces problems with soil quality and draught which may become a serious problem for Polish agriculture, particularly in central Poland, where the soils are quite poor and have been facing the lack of water since several years (Krogulec, 2018, Usowicz and Lipiec, 2017).
In the case of Poland significant contribution to climate changes and worsening of water resources for agriculture is made by the power generation sector which requires significant amount of water for the electricity generation and is still based on the combustion of coal thus emitting significant amount of carbon dioxide (greenhouse gas). Poland is therefore forced by other EU Member Countries to decrease the net emission of CO2 and every tool or technology that may help to counteract climate changes and improve country's poor water resources is worth developing. An interesting solution for reaching those goals may be provided by the use of carbonized biomass, the biochar (BC). The BC is carbon-rich solid produced due to thermal treatment (thermolysis, or pyrolysis) of biomass in the absence of oxygen (Antal and Grønli, 2003).
Industrial production of the biochar has recently become an important part of the renewable bioenergy production strategy with simultaneous removal of carbon from the atmosphere, and the manufacture of environmentally beneficial products of biomass origin. During thermolysis, roughly 50–80% of biomass may be converted into combustible liquids and/or vapors that can be then directly used for bioenergy production (Baishali, 2014, Bis and Gajewski, 1994, Kobyłecki, 2014). The remaining 20–50% of the biomass is converted into biochar, i.e. a solid product that retains some properties of the residual feedstock and is essentially composed of amorphous carbon and crystallites of polycondensed aromatics with interspersed voids and ash (Baishali, 2014, Kobyłecki, 2014). Since the BC tends to decompose slowly in the environment it is thus considered as a promising temporal sink for atmospheric CO2 (Baishali, 2014, Kobyłecki, 2014, Lehman and Joseph, 2009). Individual properties of the BCs depend on feedstock and pyrolysis parameters (Kobyłecki, 2014, Lehman and Joseph, 2009, Liu et al., 2013, Sun et al., 2014). By controlling those factors it is possible to create specially-targeted and value-added ‘designed’ BCs for specific environmental applications, e.g. as soil improvers (Liu et al., 2013, McLaren, 2012, Nelissen et al., 2014), heavy metal sorbents (Kobyłecki, 2014), or sorbents for the removal of organic contaminants from water (Mohan et al., 2014).
As briefly presented above, the BC offers significant environmental benefits and its properties depend on the composition of original biomass, as well as the temperature and feedstock residence time in the thermolysis reactor.
In this paper a brief review of the biochar properties and production has been carried out and some chosen promising applications of the biochar are presented. The information is supported by authors’ own experimental data targeted on the use of biochar in Polish conditions, e.g. as coal replacement in smokeless fuels in order to minimize the emission of CO2 and particulate matter from the combustion processes, or the application of the biochar as soil amendment to capture water and increase soil pH. The authors also carried out some field experiments at some low-quality agricultural soils in central Poland i.e. on the area that has been facing serious water shortages since many years. The authors believe that the application of biochar to low-quality Polish soils may be a promising way not only for the improvement of water retentiveness and soil productivity but also for the decrease of country's net emission of CO2 that is currently quite high since Polish power generation facilities are still to a large extend (>80%) based on the combustion of coal (Kuchler and Bridge, 2018).
Section snippets
Biochar as an alternative to Carbon Capture and Storage
Scientific sources dealing with the analysis of the global carbon balance on Earth report that there is a huge imbalance between the emission of carbon to the atmosphere and its absorption by all possible ways. Such imbalance leads to continuous increase of the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the emission is nowadays assumed at roughly 4.1 × 109 Mg/yr (Kobyłecki, 2014, Lehman and Joseph, 2009). Such huge difference between the emission and carbon absorption should put the
Biochar production at the Czestochowa University of Technology
As briefly mentioned in the second paragraph the BC is obtained by thermal treatment of fine biomass particles or biomass waste in oxygen-free atmospheres at least at 280–300 °C. This temperature range is the beginning of thermal decomposition of organic substance in the feedstock. As a result, one obtains gaseous products and the solid residue (the BC). The gaseous products may contain both condensable components, such as water, light hydrocarbons (oil) or tars, and non-condensable gases
Some chosen applications of the biochar in Poland
The technologies of BC production, as well as the properties and possible applications of the BC have been investigated at the Department of Energy Engineering of the Czestochowa University of Technology (DEE CzUT) since 2001 (Bis and Gajewski, 1994, Bis et al., 2015, Kobyłecki, 2014). As a result, numerous technical or practical solutions have appeared, some of the most important ones are briefly outlined below.
Summary
The description of biochar (BC) properties, as well as its application and production technology, that have been presented and discussed in the current paper summarizes some basic information on the subject and presents a promising role the BC can play in the bioeconomy concept development to prevent further climate change, increase carbon sequestration potential and soil ammetioration potential for food production. It in no way limit other perspectives and possibilities of any sophisticated BC
Conflict of interest
None declared.
Ethical statement
Authors state that the research was conducted according to ethical standards.
Acknowledgements
The results presented in this paper were co-financed by the National Centre for Research and Developement (NCBR) within the contract No. BIOSTRATEGG3/345940/7/NCBR/2017 (project acronym: SoilAqChar).
Funding body
None.
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