No, but it might help a little. Bay Journal, Can the age-old use of
biochar help solve modern pollution problems?
Biochar, created from an ancient practice that turns organic waste into a
charcoal-like substance, is getting a closer look for its potential to help
address modern-day problems such as climate change and nutrient-laden
runoff.
The material has been lauded over the past decade, with
advocates calling it a simple and important tool to capture carbon from the
air, soak up stormwater runoff and build up healthier soils in agricultural
and urban settings.
But it has not become widespread in
either production or use.
That may be changing. A major push by
government agencies and other organizations seeks to close research gaps,
set quality standards, scale up production — likely with federal aid — and
better promote biochar through demonstrations sites in Chesapeake Bay states
and beyond.
Advocates hope to see its widespread use within a
decade.
In simple terms, biochar is created by turning plant and
animal waste into a carbon-rich product by heating them at high temperatures
without oxygen. The process is called pyrolysis.
Biochar has been used
as a soil amendment in some places around the world for more than a thousand
years. Recent research shows that it can suck carbon from the air and store
it in the ground, where it can enrich soil for hundreds of years — some call
it a biological carbon battery.
The latest Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change report praises biochar as an important climate
change mitigation technique.
It also retains nutrients in the
soil, keeping them close to plant roots where they can stimulate both crop
growth and the production of microbes that improve soil health.
Farmers
in the Bay states could add biochar to not only crop fields, but also to
feedlots where it would absorb nutrients and other contaminants, as well as
to passtures to improve productivity.
But except for scattered experimental
uses, biochar is not widely used in the Bay states. Pennsylvania only has
three biochar suppliers or manufacturers. New York has two, while Maryland
and Virginia each have one.
In large part, this is because
questions remain about its effectiveness, which can change with various soil
types and the climate of the application site, as well as the application
methods.
To answer those questions, the bipartisan Biochar
Research Network Act has been introduced in both houses of Congress. If
passed as part of the next Farm Bill, it would allocate $50 million annually
to establish a network of up to 20 research facilities across the nation to
test the effectiveness of biochar.
Those research gaps are
the biggest obstacles to greater use of biochar, according to the December
findings from a summit of government agencies, nonprofits organizations,
conservation groups and biochar producers.
A paper generated from
the gathering seeks to have sustainable and widespread commercial production
of biochar available in the next five years.
Biochar “is not a
silver bullet, but it is part of a natural climate solution and a tool in
soil health,” said Rachel Seman-Varner, senior soil health and biochar
scientist in the American Farmland Trust’s climate initiative. The Trust
organized the summit, along with the Foundation for Food & Agriculture
Research and the National Center for Appropriate Technology.
Georgia and I were involved in a study of whether or not biochar could be used to inhibit the formation of methylmercury in anaerobic wetland soils. Methylmercury is the form that is primarily accumulated by fish, and presents the greatest threat of mercury poisoning to man for widespread mercury pollution from coal burning and concrete production. As far as I can remember, (and this was not really my project) the biochar strongly inhibited the formation of methylmercury from inorganic mercury.
The ancient Amazonian natives used charcoal (among other things) to improve the jungle soils for farming, forming a black soil called "terra preta" which persist to this day.
