Removing carbon from air - Discovery Channel

Professor David Keith of the University of Calgary is working on a device that removes carbon dioxide directly from ambient air.

Keith has built a tower, 4 feet wide and 20 feet tall, with a fan at the bottom that sucks air in. Keith expects the air coming out at the top to have approximately 50% less carbon dioxide than the air coming in.

The tower features in an episode of Discovery Channel’s new “Project Earth” series on TV. The series has the largest budget of any in Discovery Channel’s history, and it may eventually attract a global viewership of more than 100 million.

The episode on Keith’s research has already aired in the U.S. - if you're missed it, you can watch it on Discovery Channel’s website, at: http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/project-earth/project-earth.html - click on “Episodes.”

If the program hasn't aired in your country, you may not get access to the online episode, but you can read more at: http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/project-earth/lab-books/fixing-carbon/guide1.html - also click on the links under "MORE CARBON".

The picture below describes the Big Picture of recycling, in which I envisage aviation to fund CO2 air capture. When talking about recycling, most people think about recycling of industrial products only. They may also see composting of organic waste as a (second) way of recycling. Instead of composting, I actually envisage organic waste to be burned by means of pyrolysis, in order to produce agrichar and hydrogen. I also envisage a third way of recycling that includes removing CO2 from the air. This CO2 could also be used for the production of agrichar and for commercial purposes such as to enrich greenhouses and for the production of building material, carbon fiber, etc. Furthermore, this CO2 could be used as fuel for aviation.

To tackle emissions by aviation, we can switch to airplanes and helicopters that are powered by batteries and hydrogen, or switch to fuels other than fossil fuel. Growth of algae could be assisted by such captured CO2, which could also be turned directly into fuel.

By financially supporting air capture of CO2 and the use of such CO2 to produce fuel, aviation could close the circle of this third way of recycling. This could make aviation environmentally sustainable. Since government is such a large user of aviation (both the military and civil parts of government), it makes sense for the government to start funding such air capture as soon as possible. An international agreement, to be reached in Copenhagen in 2009, could further arrange for the proceeds of environmental fees on commercial flights to fund such air capture and its use for fuel.



Further links:
http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/project-earth/explores/carbon.html - Discovery Channel

http://www.ucalgary.ca/news/september2008/keith-carboncapture - David Keith

http://www.ucalgary.ca/~keith/AirCapture.html - David Keith

http://www.ucalgary.ca/~keith/Misc/AC%20talk%20MIT%20Sept%202008.pdf - M.I.T.

views.blogspot.com - by Sam Carana

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The post below is added for archival purposes. It was originally posted by Sam Carana at knol in 2009, which has meanwhile been discontinued by Google. The post received 4513 views at knol.

Funding of Carbon Air Capture

HOW CAN CO2 CAPTURE FROM AMBIENT AIR BEST BE FUNDED?

FEES ON JET FUEL CAN HELP FUND THE DEVELOPMENT OF CARBON CAPTURE FROM AMBIENT AIR.

AIR CAPTURE of CO2 (carbon dioxide) is an essential part of the blueprint to reduce carbon dioxide to acceptable levels. Fees on conventional jet fuel seems the most appropriate way to raise funding to help with the development of air capture technology.

Why target jet fuel? In most other industries, there are ready alternatives to the use of fossil fuel. Electricity can be produced by wind turbines or by solar or geothermal facilities with little or no emissions of greenhouse gases. In the case of aviation, though, the best we can aim for, in the near future at least, is biofuel or synthetic fuel, produced from CO2 captured from ambient air. As discussed below, development of these two forms of renewable energy can go hand in hand. 

Carbon air capture and production of synthetic fuel and bio fuel can go hand in hand

Technically, there seems to be no problem in powering aircraft with bio fuel. Back in Jan 7, 2009, a Continental Airlines commercial aircraft (a Boeing 737-800) was powered in part by algae oil, supplied by Sapphire Energy. The main hurdle appears to be that algae oil is not perceived as price-competitive with fossil fuel-based jet fuel.

Additionally, the aviation industry can offset emissions, e.g. by funding air capture of carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide thus captured could be partly used to produce fuel, which could in turn be used by the aviation industry, as pictured on the top right image. The carbon dioxide could also be used to assist growth of biofuel, e.g. in greenhouses and in algae bags, as described below.

Algae can grow 20 to 30 times faster than food crops. As the CNN video on the right mentions, Vertigro claims to be able to grow 100,000 gallons of algae oil per acre per year by growing algae in clear plastic bags suspended vertically in a greenhouse. Given the right temperature and sufficient supply of light, water and nutrients, algae seem able to supply an almost limitless amount of biofuel.

The potential of algae has been known for decades. As another CNN report describes, the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) had a program for nearly two decades, to study the potential of algae as a renewable fuel. The program was run by the DoE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and was terminated by 1996. At that time, a NREL report concluded that an area around the size of the U.S. state of Maryland could cultivate algae to produce enough biofuel to satisfy the entire transportation needs of the U.S.

Apart from growing algae in greenhouses, we should also consider growing them in bags. NASA scientists are proposing algae bags as a way to produce renewable energy that does not compete with agriculture for land or fresh water. It uses algae to produce biofuel from sewage, using nutrients from waste water that would otherwise be dumped and contribute to pollution and dead zones in the sea.

The NASA article conservatively mentions that some types of algae can produce over 2,000 gallons of oil per acre per year. In fact, most of the oil we are now getting out of the ground comes from algae that lived millions of years ago. Algae still are the best source of oil we know.

In the NASA proposal, there's no need for land, water, fertilizers and other nutrients. As the NASA article describes, the bags are made of inexpensive plastic. The infrastructure to pump sewage to the sea is already in place. Economically, the proposal looks sound, even before taking into account environmental benefits.

Jonathan Trent, lead research scientist on the Spaceship Earth project at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, envisages large plastic bags floating on the ocean. The bags are filled with sewage on which the algae feed. The transparent bags collect sunlight that is used by the algae to produce oxygen by means of photosynthesis. The ocean water helps maintain the temperature inside the bags at acceptable levels, while the ocean's waves also keep the system mixed and active.

The bags will be made of “forward-osmosis membranes”, i.e. semi-permeable membranes that allow fresh water to flow out into the ocean, while preventing salt from entering and diluting the fresh water inside the bag. Making the water run one way will retain the algae and nutrients inside the bags. Through osmosis, the bags will also absorb carbon dioxide from the air, while releasing oxygen. NASA is testing these membranes for recycling dirty water on future long-duration space missions.

As the sewage is processed, the algae grow rich, fatty cells that are loaded with oil. The oil can be harvested and used, e.g., to power airplanes.

In case a bag breaks, it won’t contaminate the local environment, i.e. leakage won't cause any worse pollution than when sewage is directly dumped into the ocean, as happens now. Exposed to salt, the fresh water algae will quickly die in the ocean.

The bags are expected to last two years, and will be recycled afterwards. The plastic material may be used as plastic mulch, or possibly as a solid amendment in fields to retain moisture.

A 2007 Bloomberg report estimated that the Gulf of Mexico's Dead Zone would reach more than half the size of Maryland that year and stretch into waters off Texas. The Dead Zone endangers a $2.6 billion-a-year fishing industry. The number of shrimp fishermen licensed in Louisiana has declined 40% since 2001. Meanwhile, U.S. farmers in the 2007 spring planted the most acreage with corn since 1944, due to demand for ethanol. As the report further describes, the Dead Zone is fueled by nitrogen and other nutrients pouring into the Gulf of Mexico, and corn in particular contributes to this as it uses more nitrogen-based fertilizer than crops such as soybeans.

The Louisiana coast seems like a good place to start growing algae in bags floating in the sea, filled with sewage that would otherwise be dumped there. It does seem a much better way to produce biofuel than by subsidizing corn ethanol.

Not Millions, but Billions of Dollars!

Carbon air capture could produce a form of renewable synthetic fuel that could be used to power aviation. Carbon air capture could also help produce biofuel to power aviation. It would therefore make sense to encourage development in carbon air capture by imposing fees on conventional jet fuel and by using the proceeds of those fees to help fund air capture of carbon dioxide.

According to zFacts.com, corn ethanol subsidies totaled $7.0 billion in 2006 for 4.9 billion gallons of ethanol. That's $1.45 per gallon of ethanol (or $2.21 per gallon of gas replaced). As zFacts.com explains, besides failing to help with greenhouse gases and having serious environmental problems, corn ethanol subsidies are very expensive, and the political backlash in the next few years, as production and subsidies double, will damage the effort to curb global warming.

On 15 May, 2009, U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced that $2.4 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will be used to expand and accelerate the commercial deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

At UN climate talks in Bonn, the world's poorest nations proposed a levy of about $6 on every flight to help them adapt to climate change. Benito Müller, environment director of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies and author of the proposal, said that air freight was deliberately not included. The levy could raise up to $10 billion per year and would increase the average price of an international long-haul fare by less than 1% for standard class passengers, but up to $62 for people traveling first class.

In the light of those amounts, it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect that fees imposed on conventional jet fuel could raise billions per year. Proceeds could then be used to fund rebates on air capture of carbon dioxide, which could be pumped into the bags on location to enhance algae growth. Air capture devices could be powered by surplus energy from offshore wind turbines. With the help of such funding, the entire infrastructure could be set up quickly, helping the environment, creating job opportunities, making the US less dependent on oil imports, while leaving us with more land and water to grow food, resulting in lower food prices.

Cost of Carbon Air Capture

As to the cost of carbon air capture, GRT puts the current cost to harvest one ton of CO2 at $200 andestimates that, 2-3 years from now, it will cost about $150, while the price will come down to $30 to $20 as the technology is fully mature. 

Currently, carbon air capture isn't more expensive than to capture CO2 from smokestacks. The coal industry wants politicians to subsidize "clean coal", but current cost of capture (i.e. excluding transport and storage) is estimated at $100-150/tCO2 initially, possibly reducing to one third of that as the technology matures. That would price coal out of the market, while it doesn't even cover the cost of transporting the CO2 away from the plant and the subsequent sequestration, policing and monitoring all this over many years, etc.

Carbon air capture can be done at off-peak hours when cost of electricity needed for capture is low. Carbon capture from ambient air can also be done anywhere, meaning that it can take place on location, i.e. where the carbon is to be sequestered, which would save on the cost of transport. Or, even better, carbon capture can take place where the carbon is to be used for industrial or agricultural purposes, such as in greenhouses, algae bags or as soil supplements. By mixing carbon with hydrogen, the carbon can also be used to produce carbohydrates, i.e. synthetic fuel that could be used to power shipping and aviation. Such usage can help pay for the cost of carbon air capture.

Professor David Keith (left) of the University of Calgary is working on a tower, 4 feet wide and 20 feet tall, with a fan at the bottom that sucks air in. The tower looks like it's made mainly of plastic, which could be made with carbon produced by such a tower. Inside the tower, limestone or a similar agent is used to bind the CO2 and to split CO2 off by heating it up. The limestone is recycled within the tower, although it does need to be resupplied at some stage. Anyway, the main cost appears to be the electricity to run it. Keith and his team showed they could capture CO2 directly from the air with less than 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity per ton of CO2. At $0.10/kWh, that would put the electricity cost at $10 per ton.

In the U.S., each person emits about 20 tons of CO2 annually. In other words, each person in the U.S. could remove as much CO2 from the air with such a device, with annual operational costs of $200 for 2 Megawatt-hours of electricity. By comparison, a refrigerator consumes about 1.2 Megawatt-hours annually [2001 figures]. Of course, the additional cost of carbon disposal will make it more attractive to use large facilities at places where there's demand for carbon and where the associated economies of scale would facilitate lower operational costs. 

The following comments were posted by Sam Carana under this knol:

Jul 19, 2010

There are several efforts under development to produce a carbon-neutral fuel. Two of them were recently described in article in New Scientist, entitled: Green machine: Cars could run on sunlight and CO2.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18993-green-machine-cars-could-run-on-sunlight-and-co2.html
See also Sandia
https://share.sandia.gov/news/resources/releases/2007/sunshine.html

Whereas many may think that this is a good way to power cars, I agree with you that it makes more sense to have electric cars. However, aviation is a bit more difficult to clean up, that's why aviation in particular can benefit from such technology, and that would justify that aviation made financial contributions to fund such developments.

As air capture technology matures with financial assistance funded by fees on aviation, it will be in a better position to develop into a more general technology used to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere to more acceptable levels.

Jul 19, 2010

In my above reply, I referred to the use of concentrating solar power (CSP) plants to produce temperatures high enough to split water vapor into hydrogen and oxygen, and ambient carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide and oxygen. A team led by Athanasios Konstandopoulos has successfully managed to also split carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide and oxygen in this way. The hydrogen and carbon monoxide can subsequently be combined into hydrocarbons, i.e. synthetic oil.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19308-the-next-best-thing-to-oil.html

Aug 27, 2010

An article in Nature describes the use of a solar cavity-receiver reactor to heat up non-stoichiometric cerium oxide to a temperature at over 1,500 °C, forcing the release of oxygen. Then, to re-oxidize it with H2O and CO2 at below 900 °C to produce H2 and CO – known as syngas, the precursor of liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6012/1797

Jan 28, 2011

Milking algae

Instead of harvesting algae for processing into biofuel, there is prospect for "milking" the algae, i.e. extracting oil from the algae without killing them.

This method is followed by Joule Unlimited.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/a-brave-new-world-of-fossil-fuels-on-demand/article1871149/

And also by Algenol, Synthetic Genomics (Craig Venter’s venture) and BioCee
http://theenergycollective.com/tyhamilton/50300/joule-cool-not-alone-quest-sunlight-fuel-game-changer

Jul 5, 2011

British company set to make renewable jetfuel

British company Air Fuel Synthesis plans to capture carbon dioxide from the air, and mix it with hydrogen extracted from water through electrolysis, in order to make liquid hydrocarbon fuels for transport, including for aviation.
http://www.airfuelsynthesis.com/technology.html
http://www.airfuelsynthesis.com/technology/technical-review.html
http://www.airfuelsynthesis.com/faqs.html

Crop that stores carbon

under construction 

Technorati Profile 

 

Scientists split CO2 into CO and hydrogen

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico have designed a a solar reactor to recycle carbon dioxide and produce fuels like methanol or gasoline.

The solar reactor contains 14 cobalt ferrite rings, each about one foot in diameter and turning at one revolution per minute. As an 88-square meter solar furnace blast sunlight into the unit, the rings heat up to about 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit. At that temperature, cobalt ferrite releases oxygen. The rings subsequently cool to about 2,000 degrees and are exposed to CO2. The cobalt ferrite, which is now missing oxygen, will take oxygen from the CO2. So, the reactor divides carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide and oxygen, leaving behind just carbon monoxide. With the cobalt ferrite restored to its original state, the reactor is ready for another cycle.

That carbon monoxide can then be used to make methanol or gasoline, which are essentially just combinations of hydrogen and carbon.

Scientists Use Sunlight to Make Fuel From CO2
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/S2P

Cheers!
Sam Carana

Venus' runaway greenhouse effect a warning for Earth

Venus was transformed from a haven for water to a fiery hell by an runaway greenhouse effect, concludes the European Space Agency (ESA), after studying data from the Venus Express, which has been orbiting Venus since April 2006.

Venus today is a hellish place with surface temperatures of over 400°C (752°Fahrenheit), winds blowing at speeds of over 100 m/s (224 mph) and pressure a hundred times that on Earth, a pressure equivalent, on Earth, to being one km (0.62 miles) under the sea. 

Hakan Svedhem, ESA scientist and lead author of one of eight studies published on Wednesday in the British journal Nature, says that Earth and Venus have nearly the same mass, size and density, and have about the same amount of carbon dioxide (CO2). In the past, Venus was much more Earth-like and was partially covered with water, like oceans, the ESA scientists believe. 

How could a world so similar to Earth have turned into such a noxious and inhospitable place? The answer is planetary warming. At some point, atmospheric carbon triggered a runaway warming on Venus that boiled away the oceans. As water vapour is a greenhouse gas, this further trapped solar heat, causing the planet to heat up even more. So, more surface water evaporated, and eventually dissipated into space. It was a "positive feedback" -- a vicious circle of self-reinforcing warming which slowly dessicated the planet. 

"Eventually the oceans began to boil," said David Grinspoon, a Venus Express interdisciplinary scientist from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Colorado, USA. "You wound up with what we call a runaway greenhouse effect," Hakan Svedhem says. Venus Express found hydrogen and oxygen ions escaping in a two to one ratio, meaning that water vapour in the atmosphere — the little that is left of what they believe were once oceans — is still disappearing. 

While most of Earth's carbon store remained locked up in the soil, rocks and oceans, on Venus it went into the atmosphere, resulting in Venus' atmosphere now consisting of about 95% carbon dioxide. 

“Earth is moving along the curve that connects it to Venus,” warns Dmitry Titov, science coordinator of the Venus Express mission. 

References: 

Venus Express - European Space Agency (ESA) 

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Venus_Express/SEMGK373R8F_0.html 

Venus inferno due to 'runaway greenhouse effect', say scientists 

http://www.physorg.com/news115477239.html 

Probe likens young Venus to Earth 

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/32018 

European mission reports from Venus 

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v437/n7062/full/4371071a.html

Combat Global Warming with Evaporative Cooling

Combat Global Warming with Evaporative Cooling - by Sam Carana

To combat global warming, wind turbines along the coastline could be used for the dual purposes of generating electricity at times when there is wind and evaporating water at times when there is no wind. Just a small breeze over the water can give the top water molecules enough kinetic energy to overcome their mutual attraction, resulting in evaporation of water and associated cooling of both water and air.

Such dual use of wind turbines can be implemented at many places where turbines overlook water; evaporation will work most effectively in hot and dry areas, such as where deserts or dry areas meet the sea or lakes. Evaporative cooling will add humidity to the air, which can also cause some extra rain and thus increase fertility of such dry areas as a beneficial side effect.

The energy needed to run the turbines can be obtained and stored in a number of clean, safe and renewable ways. ]

At times when there is plenty of wind, surplus energy from the turbines could be used to convert Water into hydrogen by means of electrolysis. Alternatively, bio-waste could be burned by means of pyrolysis to create both hydrogen and agrichar, which could be used to enrich soils. The hydrogen could be kept stored either in either compressed or liquid form, ready to power fuel cells that can drive the turbines at any time, day or night.

Another alternative is to run the turbines on electricity from concentrated solar thermal power plants in the desert. A desert area of 254 km² would theoretically suffice to meet the entire 2004 global demand for electricity. Ausra offers a solar thermal technology that uses the sun's heat to generate steam, which can then be stored for up to 20 hours, thus providing electricity on demand, day and night. Ausra points out that just 92 square miles of solar thermal power facilities could provide enough electricity to satisfy all current US demand.

Finally, there are some environmental concerns about wind turbines. There are concerns about carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in the process of making the concrete for the turbines. To overcome this, turbines could be made using alternative manufacturing processes, which can be carbon-negative. Furthermore, a recently completed Danish study using infrared monitoring found that seabirds steer clear of offshore wind turbines and are remarkably adept at avoiding the rotors.

In conclusion, wind turbines have a tremendous potential. They can potentially generate 72 TW, or over fifteen times the world's current energy use and 40 times the world's current electricity use. Offshore and near-shore turbines can make seawater evaporate and thus cool the planet, at times when they are not used to generate electricity.

References:

Ausra
http://ausra.com/

Wind power - Wikipedia 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power

Evaluation of global wind power 

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/global_winds.html

Solar power and electric cars, a winning combination! 

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977115548

Agrichar 

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977139103

Alternative method of manufacturing concrete 

http://www.tececo.com/

Massive Offshore Wind Turbines Safe for Birds 

http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18167/


Footnote: This article was written by Sam Carana; it can be freely copied and published elsewhere, as long as the autor's name is retained in the article.

The FeeBate policy: a combination of a fee that funds a rebate

Below, I posted articles on areas ranging from urban planning, agriculture, waste treatment and transport to energy. These articles form part of a wider vision, a package of policies recommended for global adoption, all aiming to curb emissions of greenhouse gases; in each case, a FeeBate is proposed, which constitutes the most effective way to deal with global warming. Furthermore, the FeeBate policy is ideology- and budget-neutral and has the least risk of feeding a wasteful bureaucracy. 

In essence, the idea of the FeeBate policy is that a fee is imposed on products that cause emissions of greenhouse gases, while the proceeds of these fees in each case are used to help better alternatives. Items that should attract fees include fossil fuel, fertilizers, meat and polluting concrete. The proceeds of fees on these items should pay for rebates on clean alternatives in energy, such as solar and wind power, respectively supply of agrichar, alternative food (my personal favorite is vegan-organic food served in restaurants in communities without roads) and clean concrete. 

This approach constitutes the most effective way to reduce the three major greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane and mitrous oxide. In many respects, markets are best suited to work out which products and technologies should get support - the main criteria should be that they are replacements for items that attracted fees, that they are safe and that they cause little or no emissions of greenhouse gases, or - even better - that they are greenhouse gas negative. Fees can be collected locally as long as each community is serious about reducing greenhouse gases; importantly, the proceeds should fund rebates on local supply of better alternatives. As an example, rebates on supply of clean and renewable energy can be funded by fees on coal that is burned to supply electricity in the area. Similarly, agrichar can be produced by means of pyrolysis from various forms of biowaste - rebates on sales of agrichar can be funded by fees on fertilizers. 

The concept should be adopted globally, but implemented locally; levels of fees and rebates can be adjusted on an annual basis, depending on how successfully the shift takes place. This FeeBate policy can be regarded as a form of geo-engineering; it will change the shape of urban planning, agriculture, waste treatment, transport and energy supply around the world; moreover, it will transform politics and the very socio-economic fabric of society on a global scale. 

In conclusion, the FeeBate policy that I proposed includes:

• a fee of 10% on sales of new cars with internal combustion engines, with proceeds used to fund rebates for electric cars
• a fee of 10% on sales of gasoline, with proceeds used to fund rebates on purchases and installation of facilities that produce renewable energy
• a fee of 10% on sales of coal, with rebates given when electricity suppliers install facilities that produce electricity from renewable sources
• a fee of 10% on building and construction work using concrete that contributes to global warming, with proceeds used to fund rebates on buildings that used clean concrete
• a fee of 10% on sales of fertilizers, with rebates on sales of agrichar
• a fee of 10% on sales of meat, with rebates and vouchers for vegan-organic foo

Agrichar

Most households only use one or at most two different rubbish bins, one for recyclables (paper & packaging) and one for general waste. It makes a lot of sense to add a third type of rubbish bin, for biowaste, i.e. kitchen waste, soil and garden waste.

Many people already compost such biowaste in the garden, but all too often such biowaste disappears along with the general waste in the rubbish bin. As displayed on the picture below, analysis in Waikato, New Zealand, shows that about half of household waste can consist of kitchen waste, soil and garden waste. Such waste ends up on rubbish tips, where the decomposing process leads to greenhouse gases, such as methane. And all too often, farmers burn crop residues on the land, resulting in huge emissions of greenhouse gases.

All such biowaste could deliver affordable energy by using the slow burning process of pyrolysis to produce agrichar or bio-char, a form of charcoal that is totally black. Organic material, when burnt with air, will normally turn into white ash, while the carbon contained in the biowaste goes up into the air as carbon dioxide (CO2). In case of pyrolysis, by contrast, biowaste is heated up while starved of oxygen, resulting in this black form of charcoal.

This agrichar was at first glance regarded as a useless byproduct when producing hydrogen from biowaste, but it is increasingly recognized for its qualities as a soil supplement. Agrichar makes the soil better retain water and nutrients for plants, thus reducing losses of nutrients and reducing the CO2 that goes out of the soil, while enhancing soil productivity and making it store more carbon.

When biowaste is normally added to soil, the carbon contained in crop residue, mulch and compost is likely to stay there for only two or three years. By contrast, the more stable carbon in agrichar can stay in the soil for hundreds of years. Adding agrichar just once could be equivalent to composting the same weight every year for decades.

Agrichar appears to be the best way to bury carbon in topsoil, resulting in soil restoration and improved agriculture. Agrichar has the potential to remove substantial amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere, as it both buries carbon in the soil and gets more CO2 out of the atmosphere through better growth of vegetation. Agrichar restores soils and increases fertility. It results in plants taking more CO2 out of the atmosphere, which ends up in the soil and in the vegetation. Agrichar feeds new life in the soil and increases respiration, leading to improvements in soil structure, specifically its capacity to retain water and nutrients. Agrichar makes the soil structure more porous, with lots of surface area for water and nutrients to hold onto, so that both water and nutrients are better retained in the soil.

In conclusion, recycling biowaste in the above way is an excellent method to produce hydrogen (e.g. for cars) and to bury carbon in the soil and improve production of food. Agrichar is now produced for soil enrichment at a growing number of places. The top photo shows agrichar in pellet form from Eprida. Australian-based BEST Energies has built a demonstration pyrolysis plant with a capacity to process 300 kilograms of biowaste per hour. It accepts biowaste such as dry green waste, wood waste, rice hulls, cow and poultry manure or paper mill waste. The plant cooks the biomass without oxygen, producing syngas, a flammable mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. The agrichar thus produced retains about half the carbon of the original biowaste (the other half was burned in the process of producing the syngas).

Also important is to compare different farming practices. Carbon is important for holding the soil together. Farmers now typically plough the soil to plant the seeds and add fertilizers. This ploughing causes oxygen to mix with the carbon in the soil, resulting in oxidation, which releases CO2 into the atmosphere. Ploughing leads to a looser soil structure, prone to erosion under the destructive impact of heavy rains, flooding, thunderstorms, wind and animal traffic. Given the more extreme weather that can be expected due to global warming, we should reconsider practices such as ploughing.

Furthermore, the huge monocultures of modern farming have become dependent on fertilizers and pesticides. The separation of farming and urban areas has in part become necessary due to the practice of spraying chemicals and pesticides. Instead, we should consider growing more food on smaller-scale farms, in gardens and greenhouses within areas currently designated for urban usage. Vegan-organic farming can increase bio-diversity; by carefully selecting complementary vegetation to grow close together, diseases and pests can be minimized while the nutritional value, taste and other qualities of the food can be increased.

An issue of growing concern is nitrous oxide (N2O), which is 310 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas when released in the atmosphere. Much release of N2O is related to the practices of ploughing and adding fertilizers to the soil. Microbes subsequently convert the nitrogen in these fertilisers into N2O. A recent study led by Nobel prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen indicates that the current ways of growing and burning biofuel actually raise rather than lower greenhouse gas emissions. The study concludes that growing some of the most commonly used biofuel crops (rapeseed biodiesel and corn bioethanol) releases twice the amount of N2O, compared to what the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates for farming. The findings follow a recent OECD report that concluded that growing biofuel crops threatens to cause food shortages and damage biodiversity, with only limted benefits in terms of global warming.

All this is no trivial matter. Soils contain more carbon than all vegetation and the atmosphere combined. Therefore, soil is the obvious place to look at when trying to solve problems associated with global warming. By changing agricultural practices, we can add carbon to the soil and can minimize release of greenhouse gases.

References:

- Soils offer new hope as carbon sink
http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/research/updates/issues/may-2007/soils-offer-new-hope/

- Surprise: less oxygen could be just the trick
http://tinyurl.com/ywalt4

- What we throw away
http://www.waikato.govt.nz/enviroinfo/waste/whatwethrowaway.htm

- The Carbon Farmers
http://www.abc.net.au/science/features/soilcarbon/

- Living Soil
http://www.championtrees.org/topsoil/

- BEST Pyrolysis, Inc.
http://www.bestenergies.com/companies/bestpyrolysis.html

- Eprida, Inc.
http://eprida.com/hydro/

- Biofuels could boost global warming, finds studyhttp://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2007/September/21090701.asp

- Biofuels: is the cure worse than the disease?
http://tinyurl.com/yq9t8o

Companies producing agrichar:
- terra preta at bioenergylists.org
http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/company

Communities without Roads

Communities without roads is an exciting concept that allows people to live within walking distances of colleages, customers, friends, medical and educational facilities, shops, restaurants, etc. The sedentary lifestyle of many people is a result of the way cities are currently designed. Instead, we should facilitate the opposite, i.e. people coming out of their houses, offices, and especially their cars, in order to meet other people, getting better food and becoming more healthy in the process.

The car has come to dominate the urban landscape, resulting in a metropolitan conglomeration of suburbs, stringed together along highways. Our most fertile land is now used for roads and cars, and the industries needed to support them. About half the urban area is for buildings, mainly three-bedroom homes on small blocks of land. The other half is used for roads, parks and grassland between roads. A large part of roads, buildings and gardens is also used to park cars.

Ever less fertile land is available food. Global warming forces us to rethink all this. As prices of oil skyrocket, more land is being dedicated to grow bio-fuel, resulting in less land available for food. Also, more extreme weather conditions can be expected, resulting in increasing crop loss.

We need more land to grow fruit and vegetables, in ways as was once the case in traditional gardens and on smaller farms. One place to find such land is by converting roads and office blocks into gardens. This doesn't mean a return to those ‘good-old-days’ of small towns and villages. Instead, we should consider an entirely new type of urban design: communities without roads. Technological progress is not the enemy here. Better security and communication systems can help get such communities off the ground. Electric vehicles can be instrumental in getting such communities off the ground.

What I propose are communities with footpaths and bike-paths instead of roads. Houses would be built close together, around a local center of shops and restaurants. In communities without roads, houses could be smaller, since there's no need to park cars in front or in garages. Building houses close together itself reduces travel distances between them. Pathways to a nearby center could suffice for further daily travel, leading to shops, markets, restaurants, lecture and meeting rooms.

In such a center, people would conveniently eat in restaurants, without traffic and parking hassle and noise - just a short stroll by foot or ride on a bike or in an electric scooter. Eating out means less shopping, since food makes up most of our shopping. It also saves a lot of time - no more shopping, cooking, dishwashing and cleaning, no rubbish to get rid of. Walking more would be good for our health as well.

Living closer together means people could see each other more often, both at home or at such a nearby restaurant. Why travel to an office or University, when you can work or follow courses online? Homeschooling has long proven to be much more effective than school. Why should people be institutionalized, kids packed away into school, the elderly people into ‘homes’ and the sick in hospitals? Instead, we should encourage families to stay together as much as possible and as long as possible in communities without roads.

This would result in huge savings on the current cost of cars, roads, office buildings, car parks, garages, gasoline stations, etc. How much time and money could we save by reducing our daily travel between home and work? And how many lives would be saved if we had less car-accidents? Because of the shared walls between them, townhouses save on the cost of heating in winter and cooling in summer.

To start it off, a University campus could be transformed into a community without roads, where people live and come to learn and work. Anyone who would like to nominate one?

Tax the sale of meat!

There are many ethical objections one can have against slaughtering animals and eating them. Vegetarian lifestyles have been around for ages, just like animal rights activists have long and very publicly protested against animals being used in tests of new cosmetics in laboratoria.

Consumption of red meat from cattle, sheep, goats and other ruminants has long been linked to heart disease, colorectal cancer and further diseases.
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/70/3/525S
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/148/8/761.pdf

The link between meat and obesity has only recently received much media attention, with a focus on the fat and sugar content of fast food.

Similarly, environmentalists have long protested against the loss of biodiversity, as rainforests are cleared to make room for cattle or for soy plantations to feed cattle, all to satisfy global demand for meat.

Now meat has also been linked to global warming in various ways. As the impact of global warming starts to bite, many crops are at risk, due to more extreme weather conditions such as floods, drouhts, storms, heavy rain and moisture. It takes a lot of fertile land to put meat on the table, land that could otherwise be used to grow crops top feed the poor and hungry. At the same time, energy suppliers are increasingly looking at using bio-mass as a replacement for fossil fuel, so food is increasingly competing with energy in agriculture.

Finally, animals like cows and pigs release huge amounts of methane gas, which is twenty times more potent than greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide. A recent study led by Anthony McMichael, professor at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University, Canberra, provides some figures. It points out that 22 per cent of the world's total greenhouse gases emissions come from agriculture, as much as industry and more than what transport emits. Production and transport of livestock and their feed accounts for nearly 80 per cent of these agricultural emissions, through release of gases such as nitro-oxide and carbon dioxide, but mainly in the form of methane. A cow can belch up to 300 pounds of methane per day. The study was published by the Lancet, at:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673600025642/abstract

Before you try and find more details, note that the Lancet has an elaborate registration process demanding that you name your medical speciality and probably at some point your blood type, so if you prefer to bypass such things, you can try BugMeNot, at:
http://www.bugmenot.com/view/www.thelancet.com

In conclusion, a tax on the sale of meat therefore makes most sense. We could leave it up to politics to work out how high such a tax should be, but a flat 10% tax on all sales of meat looks like a good start. The tax could be higher the more methane was released, which would go hand in hand with compulsory disclosure on products of the amount of greenhouse gases that was needed to produce and ship them. Once we've got a good system in place that displays how many greenhouse gases were released in production, we could tax accordingly. There could be different tax rates, even a gliding scale proportional to the emissions. This would encourage research into different diets for cows or somehow replacing the methane-producing bacteria inside a cow's gut.

If the proceeds of such a tax merely used to help the poor pay rising prices for food, then little will be achieved for the environment. Instead, the proceeds of such a tax should be used to create communities without roads, where people can have vegetable gardens close to their homes. We should start building such communities without roads on university campuses, designing small houses for staff and students to live around shops and restaurants. Small houses need less heating and air-conditioning. If we leave out roads, garages and other car-parking spaces, they can be built closely together, so anyone can easily walk or bike their way around. That would be more healthy as well!

Anyway, it makes a lot of sense to turn vegetarian, or even better vegan. Even if you didn't have ethical problems with eating meat and if you lacked compassion for the poor and hungry, you still would help the environment by becoming a vegetarian and thus yourself!

The Hydrogen Economy

Hydrogen fuel cells constitute an efficient way to store energy and as such they form an important component in our struggle to contain global warming. Hydrogen fuel cells are a convenient and clean way to power cars and supply electricity on demand virtually everywhere. 

The importance of hydrogen as a technology is huge, as it constitutes the clean and renewable storage compliment to clean and renewable ways to capture energy, such as solar, wind, geothermal, wave and hydro-power.

The Hydrogen Economy is much more than that; it promises to change the fabric of our society. Hydrogen, holds the promise to break up the current cartel of energy suppliers that works hand-in-glove with a military-industrial complex that holds the entire world in a suffocating stranglehold. Hydrogen can clean things up and set the economy free. Hydrogen is the elixir that can remedy our polluting habits to create a better society, without the monopolies, the pollution, the taxes, regulations and the military controls that come with the current ways of supplying energy. Currently, energy is largely obtained from sources that centralize the economy around a single supplier, such as a huge nuclear plant or coal-powered plant. Similarly, oil is pumped up under monopoly conditions and transported in huge tankers, which has created these almighty oil companies that extend their grip over society through services stations and political lobbying to keep cars polluting the world.

We should look forward to a world in which anyone can capture energy for free in their backyards, from renewable power sources such as solar, wind, geothermal and hydro-power. This energy can be directly stored in fuel cells that are built into heating and cooling systems of buildings, lights, TV-sets, stereo equipment, computers, cars, mowers, scooters, power tools, etc. Wherever you now see rechargeable Lithium batteries used, such as in mobile phones, think hydrogen and you'll get a preview of the bright future that awaits us. Hydrogen fuel cells will enable us to cut the wires through which the puppetmaster controls us now. Hydrogen fuel cells hold the promise to set us free. Let's take a serious effort to give this technology a chance!

References:

- The Hydrogen Economy

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977120122

- Hydrogen Efficiency

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977121475