Advantages And Disadvantages Of Biochar

Climate change effects all countries and is something that many people today worry about because it effects the future generations. There are many methods that are used to adapt to the climate change and also not stop global warming but to slow it down. The geo-engineering strategy that this paper will focus on is Biochar, which is a method that has been around for 2,000 years. Biochar converts agricultural waste into a soil enhancer (International Biochar Initiative). It is naturally fine-grained, highly porous form of charcoal and is derived from the process of baking biomass (ScheerRoddy, MossDoug). It is a solid material obtained from thermochemical conversion of biomass in an oxygen-limited environment (StefanJirka, ThayerTomlinson, InitiativeInternational)Biochar

One disadvantage is that some soils don’t demonstrate broader improvements, and not all crops behave the same way with biochar (SaranyaKuppusamy, PalanisamiThavamani, MallavarapuMegharaj). According to Kuppusamy, depending on the farming system being used, biochar may also bind and reduce the efficacy of agrochemicals. There are studies that show that biochar has negative and even neutral effects on agricultural systems. A problem that can arise if biochar is used is that erosion could remove biochar from the surface soils even in steeper lands and it demonstrates that the stability of biochar in soils is attributed to its feedstock source (SaranyaKuppusamy, PalanisamiThavamani, MallavarapuMegharaj). So there would have to be alternatives for countries or people who don’t have a tropical

Some benefits to using biochar are that it reduces leaching of soil nutrients, enhances nutrient availability for plants, increases water quality of runoff, reduces dependency on artificial fertilizers, reduces toxicity of aluminum to plant roots and microbiota, increase soil structure and pH, thus works as bioremediation and decreases N_2 O and CH_4 emissions from soils, thus further reducing GHG emissions (MaraseniTek). To maximize the benefits of biochar the quality of feed-stock biomass has to be more nutrient-rich because the more nutrient rich the organic waste is the greater benefits from biochar (MaraseniTek). Biochar is unique because it is deployed as a “carbon-negative” technology at the scale of 1 Gt C 〖year〗^(-1), which is equivalent to expanding the natural cycle of fire-derived charcoal storage in geographic terms and increasing its global magnitude by a factor of 4-20