A ground-breaking scientific trial is paying farmers to take tonnes of burnt wood and bury it in the ground as part of cutting-edge carbon capture research.
The £31.5m environmental study, led by Nottingham University's Professor Snape, aims to place 200 tonnes of the charcoal-like substance under woodland and farmland in an attempt to improve British soil health and turn waste carbon into a useful nutrient. Biochar is the carbon-rich solid by-product of wood and other materials when burnt at 600 degrees in an oxygen-free environment.
Some small-scale gardening and farming already use biochar and ash as a form of soil fertiliser, but Professor Snape aims to discover if techniques like this can be used to help the UK meet its net-zero carbon goals. Researchers have already ploughed 15 tonnes of the waste carbon into British soil, but will also explore how scattering biochar and using it to create new woodland areas can help reduce and negate the country's carbon footprint.
Manager of the carbon capture project, Genevieve Hodgins, said to NewScientist : “The key thing is that all of these greenhouse gas removal technologies, we need to test their viability.
"We need to figure out how big a slice of the pie biochar is. It’s about not putting all our eggs into one basket, of one magical technology that will save us.”
Professor Snape's team will review how this affects the soil's health over time by measuring everything from worms to crop yields and comparing their results with similar plots of land. However, the majority of this carbon is likely to be placed into forest floors as 10 times as much of the waste product can be placed in non-food-producing land.
It is estimated that the UK will produce 150 million tonnes of biochar by 2050, making finding a purpose for it key to sustainable waste recycling in the future. Professor Snape hopes that it will be easy for the public to wrap their heads around, saying: “It’s something that looks like coal going back into the ground. People understand that coal, oil and gas came out of the ground and created the state we’re in today.”
The engineering professor envisions that, if the idea were scaled up for widespread deployment, the biochar would be made from dried-out food waste and waste products from sawmills. However, to pass regulations, the researchers are using biochar made from just wood.
The first results of this, literally, groundbreaking research will come in Autumn 2023, and could see many more tonnes of biomass waste turned into a useful byproduct to fertilise British fields.
