BIOCHAR RESEARCH AT RICE UNIVERSITY: AN OVERVIEW

We have formed an interdisciplinary biochar research group at Rice University focused in four areas: reactor design and optimization, biological and environmental impacts of soil charcoal amendment, biochar effects on soil hydrology, and optimization of soil carbon sequestration. Each of these subgroups feeds back information to the others with the goal of determining optimal pyrolysis conditions to achieve positive environmental outcomes while avoiding unintended environmental consequences. We also seek to connect measurable properties, such as charcoal ring structure, with positive environmental properties, such as increased soil water-holding capacity. In this poster we provide an overview of Rice biochar research. We also present one-plot vignette results from each of the subgroups, showing, for example, that biochar hydrophobicity and nitrogen contents are tuneable properties.