The Guardian writes:
There has been a huge effort to phase out the use of peat by both amateur and professional gardeners. Defra has been at the forefront, with support from B&Q. So it is surprising that B&Q is increasing the use of peat this year and more so given that it is a member of the Horticultural Trades Association's Growing Media Initiative and ran its own peat-free campaign last year.

From PR Web: Worm condos. Terra Preta. Black Gold. Whatever it’s called, healthy soil is the most important tool in successful gardening. With the new Soil Reef™ blend being launched this spring, gardeners can create a healthy, organic and permanent home for beneficial organisms living in the soil.

The new blend combines OMRI-listed compost and worm castings from Organic Mechanics® with biochar, adding a unique porous carbon to the soil to create a habitat for life to thrive. How does it work? Soil Reef creates a network of nearly permanent, natural carbon structures throughout your soil, which hold onto water and nutrients, and create homes for microorganisms.

Marc Gunther from GreenBiz.com writes:
So says Robert Brown, a professor of engineering at Iowa State University and a leader of the university’s Initiative for a Carbon Negative Economy and its Bioeconomy Institute. Those are interdisciplinary campus efforts to develop ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by growing plants or algae, making them into fuels and burying their carbon residues in soil -- and make money doing it.

The notion that we can generate wealth and remove CO2 from the air is obviously appealing. As atmospheric concentrations of CO2 rise and climate risks grow, so does the need for carbon-negative technologies that pull CO2 from the air, as plants do, and then store it underground or deep in the ocean.

Historians tell us that the ancient gladiators consumed barley for energy. Now, in the best tradition of "everything old is new again," some scientists with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) are turning to barley as an energy source — but they're not eating it, and they're not even using the grain.

Instead, they're utilizing the byproducts of barley—the straw and hulls, as well as dried distillers grains (DDGS) made from barley — to produce an energy-rich oil called bio-oil. This bio-oil could be used either for transportation fuels or for producing heat and power needed for the conversion of barley grain to ethanol.

The straw, hulls and DDGS are leftovers from the fermentation of barley grain for ethanol, a biofuel option that's slowly gaining ground in the Mid-Atlantic States and in the Southeast, where farmers could cash in on the production of winter barley crops while continuing to raise corn and other food crops in the summer.

Not only would this give farmers a chance to boost their income from their acreage, but it also could help reduce soil erosion and nitrogen leaching in the soil, which is a major concern for farmers in some areas, including the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. So there's a definite agricultural advantage to using barley in this way.

But would it work with our current fuel infrastructure? The scientists say yes, that bio-oil from barley leftovers could potentially be refined, stored and distributed with the same infrastructure that's already in place for the petroleum fuel industry.

So how, precisely, does one go about turning seemingly worthless barley straw and hulls in energy-rich oil?

The ARS scientists used a process called "fast pyrolysis," an intense burst of heat delivered in the absence of oxygen. With this method, they say a kilogram of barley straw and hulls will yield about half a kilogram of bio-oil with an energy content about half that of Number 2 fuel oil.

The energy content of bio-oil made from barley DDGS (including DDGS contaminated with mycotoxins, which means those DDGS can't even be used for livestock feed) was even higher, about two-thirds that of Number 2 fuel oil. But the barley DDGS bio-oil is a bit more problematic, because it's more viscous and has a shorter shelf-life than the bio-oils made from the straw or hulls.

The fast pyrolysis process also produces a solid substance called "biochar." A familiar example of biochar is the activated charcoal used in aquarium filters. The biochar from fast pyrolysis of barley byproducts could be added to soils to improve their nutrient content and water-holding capacity.

And there's another advantage as well: Soils with biochar added can sequester carbon from the atmosphere for centuries, slowing the accumulation of greenhouse gases and thus mitigating global warming.

Where do we go next? The scientists suggest that co-locating fast-pyrolysis units in commercial barley grain ethanol plants could be a win-win proposition for farmers in the Mid-Atlantic and the Southeast. It sounds to me like putting this ancient crop to work as an energy source could be a win-win proposition for the rest of us, too!

Read more http://www.swnewsherald.com/online_contentcrf/escience/es020711jan4biooil.php

The 19th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition (EU BC&E), the leading platform for the world’s biomass specialists, will take place in Berlin, Germany (Conference 6-10 June 2011 - Exhibition 6-9 June 2011). This event is hosting more than 800 presentations in plenary, oral and visual sessions. The 18th European Biomass Conference with 1,500 participants, experts and visitors from over 70 countries took place in Lyon, France, in May 2010.

The 19th EU BC&E this year in Berlin receives institutional support from BMU, the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, in the frame of the programme 'Research and Development for the Optimization of Energetic use of Biomass' (www.energetische-biomassenutzung.de). The EU BC&E offers the best platform to share and compare results with similar targeted research and development results of EU countries and beyond.

Call for Papers 19th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition: From Research to Industry and Markets ICC Berlin, International Congress Center, Berlin - Germany

3-SAT: Forscher der Fachhochschule Bingen haben ein Verfahren entwickelt, mit dem sie Biokohle erzeugen. Sie bindet Kohlendioxid und kann als mineralienhaltiger Dünger der Natur wieder zugeführt werden.

http://stream-tv.de/sendung/1286690/nano-biokohle-zum-duengen-und-kohlendioxid-binden

In the fairy tale “Rumpelstiltskin,” a captive girl is saved from death by a little man who can spin straw into gold. He asks for her firstborn son in return, of course, but in the end things turn out OK for almost everyone. Except the little man. But he did have an anger management problem.

We're hoping the eventual price of an idea to turn Douglas County's woody waste into oil isn't quite as high. And we're intrigued by the possibilities, although admittedly the actual economic benefits — costs versus return — have yet to be penciled out.