Title:
Soil Organic Carbon Enrichment and Carbon Sequestration from Residual Biomass through Pyrolysis and Bio-Char Application to Soils: Preliminary Assessment in the Ravenna Province Countryside
Author(s):
Benini, L., Torri, C.
Document(s):
Paper
Abstract:
Ravenna province is characterized by a large amount of available agricultural residues (4.10 ·105 tons usually not managed or mulched) that could be used for energy production in order to reduce GHGs emission of the area. Nevertheless, when the biomass is removed from the system, soil organic carbon depletion could play an important role in GHGs emission and, in some case, can impair the benefits from energetic use of agricultural residue. For this reason three strategies (bio-charring, mulching, and open-burning) have been evaluated. The BEGGE-LCA approach has been integrated with soil carbon modeling in order to evaluate effect on soil carbon and GHGs emission. As expected, open-burning strategy has the effect of rapidly decreasing both the total soil carbon (TC) and the humic soil carbon (HUM) content. Mulching strategy involves slight reduction of the TC and HUM loss, with loss of 30-50% of TC and stabilization. The “bio-charring” strategy has the net effect of storing carbon in soils, increasing the soil TC, with different trends that are function of the initial soil carbon content, residues yield and temperature. Considering all the GHGs emissions, the “bio-charring” strategy leads to an diminished yearly net absolute emission of GHGs, where mulching strategy resulted largely ineffective. In relative terms the estimated GHGs abatement potential of bio-char systems, (difference between bio-charring and open burning management) is equal to the 13% of the total CO2 emissions of the Ravenna province in 2006.
Keywords:
agriculture, biochar, CO2 emission, residues, soil modeling
Topic:
Policies and ensuring sustainability
Subtopic:
Agro-environmental assessments
Event:
18th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition
Session:
OC11.1
Pages:
2075 - 2081
ISBN-13:
978-88-89407-56-1
ISBN-10:
88-89407-56-5
Paper DOI:
10.5071/18thEUBCE2010-OC11.1
Price:
FREE
