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Re: BIOCHAR NEED NOT APPLY (RE: Frontier) FW: I am considering applying
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Paul & Joe, I've come across a small group in the US calling themselves Unfracking that are looking into filling abandoned gas and oil wells with biochar and utilizing biochar in the cement used to cap the wells. The biochar / cement combination is intended to prevent the cement caps from cracking and leaking methane, which occurs in at least 25% of the well caps put in place. I've seen figures from this group indicating that between 80 and 400 tonnes of biochar would be needed to fill these wells. The goal of the Unfracking project seems to be 3 fold 1) lobby for legislation, beginning in the US in particular, to ensure that orphaned gas and oil wells are 2) utilize biochar to fill orphaned wells, which at a minimum will provide a 1000 +++ year storage location, and depending on how the biochar is made, (particle size and degree of carbonization), this may help to both plug the well and sorb methane and other gases leaking 3) fund and/or catalyze research to optimize the above scheme Comparing the durability of biochar, exposed to oxygen and microbes, and the geological storage of CO2 underground or as calcium carbonate, is of course not a "fair fight". A fair comparison would put biochar in a storage location where oxygen cannot get to it. CO2 cannot form without oxygen; the incontrovertible evidence is in the chemical formula. Underground storage of CO2 may leak, particularly in the 1000 year time frame if nobody is maintaining the cap on the well. Biochar cannot leak, and oxygen will not penetrate more than about 30 cm from the surface if biochar loaded into underground storage is compared to the depth to which oxygen is able to penetrate into top soil, if there is no cap. I could be missing something, but I see a simple argument here that biochar stored underground is much more reliably durable than underground CO2 storage. I suspect it is very likely to last as a carbon sink for as long as the earth lasts. Storage location matters. Biochar is very likely to be a much more reliable carbon store underground compared to CO2, and it certainly is a vastly more reliable carbon store in soil compared to injecting CO2 into soil. On a practical basis, maybe we need a methodology on Puro.earth for the geological storage of biochar. Joe, I'm not the person to take that forward, so I'm looking for advice from you on how this might practically be accomplished, particularly because of my involvement with the nascent Unfracking group. I was completely shocked to learn last week that there are 200,000 orphaned gas wells in Pennsylvania alone, and again, that in certain US states, a small company can drill a gas well on private land, find it is not sufficiently productive, and just abandon it to leak methane into the atmosphere. The scope of this issue is very large, as this Guardian article highlights. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/06/revealed-1000-super-emitting-methane-leaks-risk-triggering-climate-tipping-points My thought is that if we can bring attention to this issue and get it addressed in our backyard, there is a better chance to get it addressed worldwide. My thought is that a biochar methodology for underground storage on Puro.earth might help bring attention and solutions to this issue. Personally, I would rather see biochar utilized in soil, particularly if it is made from a feedstock that contains meaningful amounts of phosphorus. I think it makes more sense to replenish depleted soil organic carbon from a sustainability perspective. But as the Guardian article linked above points out, getting methane emissions under control is probably the most urgent task at the moment to prevent runaway global heating. On Fri, Mar 17, 2023 at 5:34 AM Paul S Anderson <psanders@...> wrote:
-- Nando Breiter http://biochar.info CarbonZero Sagl Astano, Switzerland |