Biochar has been promoted as a solution for energy, agriculture, and climate for some time now. Get ready to add yet another critical solution to the mix of benefits from biochar.
By Josh Kearns
The US-based NGO Aqueous Solutions has partnered with the Belgian NGO Biochar Fund to explore the applicability of robust, low-cost drinking water filter systems using biochar for rural communities in Cameroon.
Biochar Fund works with Key Farmers Cameroon, an NGO promoting sustainable agriculture among villagers and in cooperation with autonomous farmers’ groups throughout the region to address issues of food insecurity, soil depletion, and small-scale energy generation.
The communities served by the collaboration between Aqueous, Biochar Fund and Key Farmers are among the poorest in the world: community members often experience periods of hunger and insufficient nutrition, their livelihoods depend on less than $0.75 per day, and they have no access to safe drinking water sources or adequate sanitation facilities.
In this collaboration, Biochar Fund will introduce simple and efficient techniques for converting waste agricultural and forestry biomass to charcoal or “biochar.” Farmers will be instructed in the use of this material as a soil amendment.
Adding biochar to agricultural soils enhances fertilizer and nutrient retention within the soil, increases water-holding capacity, promotes the growth of beneficial microorganisms, and greatly enhances accumulation of organic matter and humic substances in the soil – and thereby improves crop yields while obviating the need for heavy (and expensive) chemical inputs to maintain soil fertility.
The char itself is relatively stable in the soil – it has a residence time of hundreds- to a few thousand- years. Thus creating biochar from waste biomass and using it as a soil amendment has the net effect of removing atmospheric CO2 and sequestering it soils and thereby mitigating the effects of CO2-induced climate change and global warming.
Projected Water Scarcity in 2025
Aqueous Solutions’ role in the collaboration with Biochar Fund will be to develop simple household water purification units utilizing the biochar as a filtration medium to remove pesticides and other harmful organic contaminants. The locals will create their own biochar from agricultural waste materials, incorporate it into home-built water filter systems, then utilize the spent filter material as a soil amendment.
There is much excitement building now over the manifold benefits of biochar materials as potential energy sources, agricultural soil amendments, refractory atmospheric carbon sinks, etc. This collaboration aims to add to the list of potential benefits of biochar, “low-cost water purification medium.” Of course, using biochar as a water filter medium does not preclude its benefits in other areas - it simply means adding a step in the process between char production and burial in soils, namely some residence time in a home-built water treatment unit.
This exciting, one-of-its-kind collaboration between Aqueous Solutions and Biochar fund will promote sustainability and local self-reliance for agrarian communities in Cameroon, and will help to provide the locals with food security, better nutrition, and safe drinking water, while benefiting agricultural soil quality and exhibiting a net-positive effect on climate change.
More information can be found at aqsolutions.org, biocharfund.com and biocharcameroon.org.
(EDITOR’S COMMENTS: In addition to purification of drinking water, I can see further benefits biochar could deliver to the growing water scarcity challenge. For instance, biochar could become an integral part of humanure composting systems and municipality waste water treatment facilities. This biochar-manure mix could fertilize energy crops such as switchgrass polycultures and fast-rotation coppices. -RDH)
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