Biochar is defined as pyrolyzed biomass which is intended to be applied into the soil. As biochar contains high contents of stable carbon, its application to agricultural soils can increase soil carbon sequestration. In addition, biochar amendment is ...
Biochar is defined as pyrolyzed biomass which is intended to be applied into the soil. As biochar contains high contents of stable carbon, its application to agricultural soils can increase soil carbon sequestration. In addition, biochar amendment is also known to improve soil fertility and crop production. However, these benefits are sometimes under debate because production process of biochar requires additional energy and extra greenhouse gases might be emitted during the application process. Hence, overall impacts of biochar utilizing system should be assessed for the entire stages from production to application of biochar. In this study, the feasibility of biochar utilization was evaluated for domestic agricultural system by considering both greenhouse gas emissions and energy balance. Accounting for 10% of crop residues in Korea, the rice hull was selected for feedstock of biochar and the rice hull biochar was assumed to be applied to loamy sand rice paddy soil and Saemangeum reclaimed land soil. We used scenario approach by examining biochar utilization systems in three different scenarios depending on the scale of biomass pyrolysis facility (CHAR_RH small, intermediate, and large). As control scenarios, systems with rice hull biomass application (BIO_RH scenario) and no soil amendment (NO_AMD scenario) were also examined. In every scenario, soil amendments were applied at 2% (w/w) concentration. Three different stages were considered for the overall feasibility assessment and greenhouse gas emissions and energy balance were calculated in each stage. At the first stage, data on the biochar production process were obtained from running the BEAT2 software from UK DEFRA. The second stage was related to biochar application process and soil cultivation. Data were collected from the published reports by the government for the domestic agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption. The last stage considered the effects of biochar application to soil and lab-scale experiment was conducted to produce data for this stage. Data were uniformly converted to ton CO2 eq. ha-1 yr-1 for greenhouse gas emissions and MWh ha-1 for energy balance, respectively. Results showed that greenhouse gas emissions from the CHAR_RH scenarios were -42.09 ~ -21.46 ton CO2 eq. ha-1 yr-1 while those from the BIO_RH and NO_AMD scenarios were +14.00 ~ +19.59 ton CO2 eq. ha-1 yr-1. This indicated that there was no additional emissions of greenhouse gases from the systems on the CHAR_RH scenarios regardless of biochar production scale. The energy balance was estimated as -8.42 ~ +49.39 MWh ha-1 depending on the scenarios. Energy balance was positive for the CHAR_RH intermediate and large scenarios, meaning that the systems are producing the additional energy. Considering both greenhouse gas emissions and energy balance, biochar utilization system was feasible at the CHAR_RH intermediate and large scenarios. In The CHAR_RH small scenario, more energy is needed to sustain the system because the efficiency of biochar producing facility was low. Consequently, the feasibility of biochar application to the domestic agricultural system was dependent on the efficiency of the biochar producing facility. Therefore, improvement in efficiency of pyrolysis technology should be accompanied to ensure the benefit of utilizing biochar.