If EVs are in fact burning coal... better do it right!

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Did you forget that I have even lived for 5 years in Amazon when I was a kid?

[freebeard]

I'll admit to being a little hazy on where everyone else lived years ago.

Were the link materials familiar to you? To further the point I was making—biochar (Cool Planet excluded) isn't about fuel so much as sequestering atmospheric carbon faster than it is being replenished.

Edit: ...hence the bolding of '2500 to 500 years ago'.

[redpoint5]

How are plants an effective carbon sink? I know they consume CO2 and capture the carbon to build their structure, but after the plant dies, it decomposes (burning the carbon with oxygen metabolically), or is burned by a fire and releases the CO2 back to the atmosphere.

On average, what percentage of carbon is permanently captured after a plant dies? It must be an extremely small amount, but I have never been able to find an approximation anywhere.

[freebeard]

As it relates to biochar or in general?

The thing is that biochar is produced by burning plant materials in an reductive (oxygen-free) atmosphere. The process drives off the volatile gases and leaves —carbon—. Essentially, charcoal plus some bacterial and fungal amendment—hence the bio- in biochar.

Percentage captured? I'm thinking all of it, but the answer you seek is probably in here:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?&...ar.google.com/

[NeilBlanchard]

Plants do the hard work of splitting the oxygen from the carbon. Native grasslands with large roaming herds of herbivores will act as a massive carbon pump into the ground. Grasslands have higher density carbon per acre than forests - because 80% of grass is in the roots, and the roots go 40-50 feet deep. When they are grazed, they abandon proportional roots and this becomes carbon in the soil.

Biochar stabilizes some of the carbon in the plants, so that it will not return to the air - and acts as a carbon sink.

Biochar is a way to get a lot of energy, and preserve some of the carbon - which vastly multiplies the fertility of the soil. Carbon bonds with everything and soil biology "loves" to live in it, and it cleans water, too. Compost instead of lasting 6-10 years - can last up to 1,000 years, when there is enough carbon in the soil.

A 1% increase in carbon in the top 6" of soil on earth is equivalent to ~40PPM of Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Terra preta is about 20% carbon - and it is fabulously fertile. Plants grow robustly, and they rarely need "help" fighting off pests and fungi.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svNg5w7WY0k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgmssrVInP0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxIyKfWf9kU

[redpoint5]

Thanks for the links and explanation. I'll watch when I get home from work.

People often talk about the capacity of trees to sequester CO2 by capturing the carbon and releasing the oxygen, but I imagine most of the carbon is released back to the atmosphere after the tree dies and decays on the forest floor.

This tangent thought is primarily what I'm curious about, although biochar sounds like something I need to read up on too.

[Grant-53]

Biochar or charcoal was used to produce iron before coal came into use in the 19th century. For rural use expect more plant based biofuels since electric range is limited. Wind and micro hydro power are part of a distributed network not dependent on cloud or snow cover.

[freebeard]

redpoint5 -- Trees dying and rotting on the forest floor are important for non-carbon reasons.

I went back to the Original Post and looked at it again. Coal gasification+fuel cell. I see similarities to biochar production, and recreational vaping. So what is the solid byproduct?

Gas works manufacturing syngas also produce coke as an end product, called gas house coke.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coke_(...ther_processes

I wonder if it is as toxic as pet coke.

Petroleum coke is sometimes a source of fine dust, which can get through the filtering process of the human airway and lodge in the lungs. Once these small dust particles lodge in the lungs they can cause serious health problems.[9]

Petroleum coke can contain vanadium, a toxic metal, in sufficient quantities to poison people. Vanadium was found in the dust, collected in occupied dwelling near the petroleum coke stored next to the Detroit River. Vanadium is toxic in tiny quantities, 0.8 micrograms per cubic meter of air, according to the EPA.[10]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrol...Health_Hazards
__________

Anyhoo, Here's an alternative: Replace the steam turbine with a carbon-dioxide turbine.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/6...-power-a-town/

GE Global Research is testing a desk-size turbine that could power a small town of about 10,000 homes. The unit is driven by “supercritical carbon dioxide,” which is in a state that at very high pressure and up to 700 °C exists as neither a liquid nor a gas. After the carbon dioxide passes through the turbine, it's cooled and then repressurized before returning for another pass.

The unit’s compact size and ability to turn on and off rapidly could make it useful in grid storage. It’s about one-tenth the size of a steam turbine of comparable output, and has the potential to be 50 percent efficient at turning heat into electricity. Steam-based systems are typically in the mid-40 percent range; the improvement is achieved because of the better heat-transfer properties and reduced need for compression in a system that uses supercritical carbon dioxide compared to one that uses steam. The GE prototype is 10 megawatts, but the company hopes to scale it to 33 watts.

Watt?

[spacemanspif]

My issue is with biochar is that you need to burn fuel, to create the next fuel. This process when creating fertilizer makes some sense but when talking about using it for fuel makes it sound a bit bass-ackwards to me. My same confusion stands for the CO2 turbine; how much energy does it take to heat and compress the gas so that it can then create the power?

[IamIan]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

On average, what percentage of carbon is permanently captured after a plant dies?

Nothings permanent ..
In a few hundred million years it might become a fossil fuel .. if not extracted one way or the other .. given enough time (billions of years) eventually tectonic activity will recycle the carbon back out.

We're just concentrating it .. by taking carbon that was going to be locked up in fossil fuels for hundreds of million of years , and instead we're pulling it out much faster , ahead of that 'natural' schedule.