Coal as a soil amendment?!

[Michaelangelica]

Use of brown coal in agriculture Excerpt from Science Show ABC

Alternative uses of coal - Science Show - 31 October 2009

Another use of brown coal could offer the exciting prospect of improving soil conditions and agricultural yield while at the same time actually helping to sequester carbon. John White works with LawrieCo on a system called BioLogic, which uses Victorian brown coal mixed with soil beneficial bacteria and fungi. He explains the scale of the problem and how this new system could help.

 

John White: It's been estimated by a number of soil scientists that across the whole 500 million hectares of Australia's agricultural lands, which is about two-thirds of the Australian continent, the average soil carbon content since European settlement has been reduced from around 3% or 4% down to probably around 1%.

That is the equivalent of losing between 150 and 200 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent from the soils as soil carbon.

Not all of that has been oxidised into the atmosphere, much of it has simply been washed down the rivers and into the lakes and the oceans, but it has been lost to the soil.

And so, for example, in Australia, if we rebuilt over the next 100 years soil carbon by catalysing grasses and the plants and the crops to suck the CO₂ down and deposit it in the soil through the root structures, we could offset the entirety of Australia's current fossil fuel greenhouse gas emissions for the next 50 to 100 years.

 

Sarah Castor-Perry: That's equivalent to over a billion tonnes of CO₂ being taken out of the atmosphere into the soil every year.

But Dr Michael Crawford from the Department of Primary Industries in Victoria believes caution is needed with the use of brown coal in agriculture and that we need a better understanding of whether there is truly a net benefit.

He makes the point that it does seem counterintuitive to dig up carbon as coal in one place, then spread it over fields in another and call it carbon sequestration.

But John White argues that the main motivation for the farmers already involved in the project was to improve their soils and their yields whilst reducing their costs.

Many had found the recent droughts combined with years of intensive farming has stripped their soils and made their businesses unviable.

The brown coal mixtures, combined with a change in farming techniques, such as not burning crop stubble and not deep ploughing the soil, have improved water retention, decreased salinity and the need for fungicides and pesticides.

He says the increase in soil carbon, and so the carbon sequestering benefits, was many welcome side effects.

 

John White, along with others, wants to see the soil carbon credits included in the government's carbon pollution reduction scheme, or CPRS. He argues that there's a huge potential using the brown coal system to provide cheap carbon credits and what he calls a carbon bridge to help reduce Australia's overall CO₂ emissions while new renewable energy sources are developed.

Both the Obama government in the US and the UN are calling for soil carbon to be included in the upcoming Copenhagen negotiations.

The UN's food and agriculture organisation has expressed concern that falling global carbon soil levels will pose problems for food production.

. . ..

A bit of a scatty and confused report but the message is slowly seeping though.

 

Here is a bit more about Dr John White & LawrieCo

 

Biological Farming Systems

Soil Carbon Tour (BFSSCT)

11‐12 May 2009

Tour Booklet

Revised Version 25 May 2009

The tour was hosted by

Ignite Energy Resources Director, Dr John White & LawrieCo Managing Director, Adrian Lawrie.

. . .

The BFSSCT highlighted the potential contribution of agriculture, using biological farming systems (BFS), to reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide into soil organic carbon (SOC), providing the

option to offset Australia’s emissions over the next 40 years.

Estimates are that a 1% increase in soil carbon in just 10% of Australia’s farmland could remove 10 years’ worth of Australia’s carbon emissions while a 4% increase in soil carbon could remove 40 years’ worth.

In addition, increasing soil carbon levels has economic benefits ‐ the potential to increase productivity, improve drought and salinity resistance, and to reduce the need for costly inputs (chemical fertilisers, insecticides/ pesticides and animal

drenches, et al – which will yield healthier food and fibre).

Currently there are over 300,000 hectares in Australia using BFS, indicating the additional benefits to agricultural

production over and above building SOC and CO2 sequestration.

These benefits reduce the cost of the carbon offsets, thus providing Australia with a low cost, environmentally beneficial

pathway to a low carbon economy – a ‘Carbon Bridge’

 

Key Points from BFS Properties Visited*

• 1. Reduced fertiliser use
  
• ‐ Up to 85% reduction in use of Nitrogenous fertiliser, reducing relative Nitrous Oxide (GHG)emissions
  
• ‐ Over 70% reduction in use of chemically treated phosphate fertiliser
  
• 2. Reduced incidence of pest and disease and subsequent use of insecticide/ fungicide sprays
  
• 3. Soil Organic Carbon increases up to 1.2% over 3 years and maintained with continuous cropping
  
• 4. Healthier stock (requiring less veterinary attention and mineral supplementation)
  
• 5. Pasture quality improvements, including species mix and resistance to dry periods
  
• 6. Soil water infiltration and holding capacity improved ‐ drought proofing in dry years
  
• 7. Building soil fertility index – mineral balance, biological activity and physical structure and friability
  
• 8. Return of natural soil biota – dung beetles, earthworms, beneficial bacteria and fungi et al
  
• 9. Higher quality produce with maintained or greater production levels
  

Biological Farming Systems Soil Carbon Tour (BFSSCT) Tour Booklet

Welcome to LawrieCo

LawrieCo has developed the most advanced BioLogic Farming Systems (BFS) for Australian Agriculture. The LawrieCo BFS delivers practical solutions to raise profits in farming, reduce chemical and synthetic fertiliser use and build soil chemical, biological and physical fertility (including carbon). LawrieCo offer specialist advice, inputs, on-farm consultation and networking with BioLogic Discussion Groups.

 

Established in 1998 LawrieCo has been built on a passion for improved farming techniques and commitment to working closely with farmers to enhance soil and crop output and reduce chemical usage.

The passion and the mission for LawrieCo BFS continues!

http://www.lawrieco.com.au/

 

 

ISTM that part of the resitance to this new concept of soil fertility comes from the simplistic thinking of chemists.

All seem just to want to play with reactions; Urea in = bread out.

When in fact soil, plant, biological systems are for more complex than what Chemists want to believe. It is like a kind of fundamentalism.

Chemist Justus von Liebig contributed greatly to the advancement in the understanding of plant nutrition. His influential works first denounced the vitalist theory of humus, arguing first the importance of ammonia, and later the importance of inorganic minerals. Primarily his work succeeded in setting out questions for agricultural science to address over the next 50 years. In England he attempted to implement his theories commercially through a fertilizer created by treating phosphate of lime in bone meal with sulphuric acid. Although it was much less expensive than the guano that was used at the time, it failed because it was not able to be properly absorbed by crops.

 

At that time in England Sir John Bennet Lawes was experimenting with crops and manures at his farm at Harpenden and was able to produce a practical superphosphate in 1842 from the phosphates in rock and coprolites, which are the fossilized excrement of dinosaurs. Encouraged, he employed Sir Joseph Henry Gilbert, who had studied under Liebig at the University of Giessen, as director of research. To this day, the Rothamsted research station that they founded still investigates the impact of inorganic and organic fertilizers on crop yields.

 

In France, Jean Baptiste Boussingault pointed out that the amount of nitrogen in various kinds of fertilizers is important.

 

Metallurgists Percy Gilchrist and Sidney Gilchrist Thomas invented the Thomas-Gilchrist converter, which enabled the use of high phosphorus acidic Continental ores on steelmaking. The dolomite lime lining of the converter turned in time into calcium phosphate, which could be used as fertilizer known as Thomas-phosphate.

 

In the early decades of the twentieth century the Nobel prize-winning chemists Carl Bosch of IG Farben and Fritz Haber developed the process[1] that enabled nitrogen to be cheaply synthesised into ammonia, for subsequent oxidization into nitrates and nitrites.

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Fertilizer#History

NPK in = Food out = BS (pure and unadulterated).

[maikeru]

If I follow their line of thinking correctly from what you've posted Michaelangelica, by applying lignite to farmland, essentially we are spreading million-year-old humus or something very similar? And by adding mass amounts of humus, we can quickly and cheaply rehabilitate and enhance farmland? Are there any worries about contamination with heavy metals or radioactivity from lignite use, as with other grades of coal? What is the stability of lignite in agricultural soils, though? Or compared to other forms of soil carbon?

[Michaelangelica]

If I follow their line of thinking correctly from what you've posted Michaelangelica, by applying lignite to farmland, essentially we are spreading million-year-old humus or something very similar? And by adding mass amounts of humus, we can quickly and cheaply rehabilitate and enhance farmland?

Yes, I guess so

Are there any worries about contamination with heavy metals or radioactivity from lignite use, as with other grades of coal?

What is the stability of lignite in agricultural soils, though?

Or compared to other forms of soil carbon?

I don;t know.

I don't know enough about Victorian Brown Coal, or Coal chemistry stat.

I do know it is VBC is full of water, and therefore possibly(?) not the best coal to burn.

[Larv]

I grew up in "Coal Country" the hills of West Virginia (USA) the amount of ecological damage done by coal is difficult to quantify. Coal is full of very acidic sulfates and leaching of this and other chemicals from coal has killed entire water sheds of lakes, streams, and rivers. Almost nothing grows in theses areas. Anywhere coal is stored or processed suffers from the same effects. Coal contains lots of radio-nucleotides. Spreading coal around also spreads these elements around and coal releases radon gas as well. I have no desire to spread coal in any form in my garden or even my neighborhood. Even if you can somehow neutralize the damage of the chemicals in coal the damage done by the process of mining the coal makes it not worth the effort.

Good analysis. I used to work as a field biologist for the TVA. We went up into the Clinch River tributaries in VA to investigate the sources of various contaminations. Lots of evidence of damage to aquatic habitats form the disposal of 55-gal drums containing every kind of hazardous liquid. Didn't see any coal-mine tailings, though. But once we investigated a catastrophic dike failure of a massive fly-ash lagoon at some coal-fired plant up there. Made a very big mess of the Clinch River and its aquatic life.

 

But I'm not convinced that coal could not be used safely and wisely as a soil amendment. I like the concept. I had never thought of this before.

[Michaelangelica]

I have noticed a few "soil improvers' sold in nurseries that claim to contain coal.

 

I guess where the coal comes from, and what it is made of that matters.

[Essay]

Good analysis. I used to work as a field biologist for the TVA. We went up into the Clinch River tributaries in VA to investigate the sources of various contaminations. Lots of evidence of damage to aquatic habitats form the disposal of 55-gal drums containing every kind of hazardous liquid. Didn't see any coal-mine tailings, though. But once we investigated a catastrophic dike failure of a massive fly-ash lagoon at some coal-fired plant up there. Made a very big mess of the Clinch River and its aquatic life.

 

But I'm not convinced that coal could not be used safely and wisely as a soil amendment. I like the concept. I had never thought of this before.

 

Larv, I've been wondering about the TVA's recent catastrophic dike failure of a massive fly-ash lagoon at some coal-fired plant, and I was wondering why they don't just turn that flyash back into soil. I'd think mixing flyash, sewage, and biochar would generate a fairly good soil eventually. I'm sure they could find a succession of things to grow on it and turn it into rich soil; ultimately growing trees to be turned into more biochar--to be added to more sewage and flyash.

 

All the biomass from such a "soil field" should go into biochar production, as any bio-incorporated heavy metals stay in the char--sort of like being glassified or vitrified--and will not be released into the air during biochar production, or into the water table during biochar aging.

I think they already use it as an asphalt filler and non-agricultural soil amendment (now that strikes me as unwise, but...).

 

Got any advice? ~ ;)

 

p.s. Lehmann's "Biochar..." book says that coke and biochar are essentially the same thing (but I think they mean: ...except for impurities and contaminating heavy metals).

I think it's because both are formed by the hot C-vapors "condensing" onto the carbon structure and building it up into a larger--fairly amorphous, but somewhat graphitic and graphenic--carbon structure; biochar ...or coke!

[JMJones0424]

Fly ash is already being used a soil amendment in Texas, where we have an abundance of coal-fired power plants. It is typically used to lighten heavy clay soils. I have experimented with using it in clay soils myself, but did not find any noticeable benefit beyond those observed by adding high amounts of composted organic matter. This is a link to one of the ongoing Texas A&M studies.

 

Another common use for fly ash is to replace a portion of the portland cement required in concrete. It is a well developed technology and has been in use for more than half a century.

 

The ash used in both of these situations is a portion of the resultant ash from burning lignite coal (Class C fly ash), not bituminous coal. This may indicate that lignite or brown coal as referenced in all of the above studies contains significantly less heavy metals than bituminous coal, but I am by no means qualified to actually back up that statement. I do know that Class F fly ash which results from burning bituminous coal is not used for either application as a soil amendment or in concrete production.