# Sketches - DIY Carbon Capture A Chain?

Building on [our research on the possibilites of DIY carbon capture](https://hackmd.io/NuoxefDoSDuqPqepbr9bAg?view) here are ideas/views/questions. Here are the Carbon Capture technologies that seem to work in a DIY context. Let's find out more about them:

IMG & OVERVIEW


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# 1 Activism

Introduction: The most important and **most potent DIY carbon capture technology** to find is… political activism. Companies have to aggressively restructure their operations and reduce their carbon footprint. **Capture it before it goes into the atmosphere. At the chimney or before!**

Here are some questions to drill deeper on carbon activism.

### NEW! What are the key problems - single powerful leverages - for carbon production (5+ problems, with short explanations maybe)

+ ... More than 50 percent of the co2 emission is shared by only 5 countires in the world with china accounting for more than half of it.
+ Instead of sharing new technologies with the developing or third world countries the developed countries are locked up in trade wars and competetion to be on the top.
+ A never ending urge of human beings to desire something more.
+ Rising population (especially for India)
+ Increasing global air travel & transportation.
+ Lack of awareness/lack of proper education regarding climate change at grassroot level.

### NEW! What would be simple - naive - solutions to this problems (Brainstorming mode: write ideas down without critizing them) (5+ solutions, wth short explanations maybe)

Put a stop to the rising population morepeople= more mouths to feed = more exploitation of natural resources.
We need to curtail our expectations ,put necessity before luxry.
Go local dont go on buying expensive organic vegetables that have been shipped from all the way from another hemisphere.
Try to grow your own veggies and other stuff doesent matter if it is as small as a little bit of coriander in a small pot in your kitchen.

### NEW! Tools for political activism! Let's find a list.

+ [Link 1](https://howto.informationactivism.org/)
+ ...

### What are the political demands of the Fridays For Future movement? Find specific ones - maybe focus on a country.

+ ...

### What examples for bottom up activism can we find?

Explanation: Sometimes there are political campaigns that combine small things with larger questions. Some campaigns make it easy to call your representative. There are campaigns like ["Take 3 for the Sea"](https://www.take3.org/). What else?

+ ...

## DISCUSSING Activism

Talking about activism brought up some debate in our team. Here are some of these debates.

### 1. Greta

**DHRUV:** Lars and Prahlad i am sharing this video here it is about climate change activism and a little bit focused on India. Let me know your views next time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-g2wC3-tak

**LARS:** Greta was a 16 year old child when she became known. It would be weird to ask a 16 year old girl to come up with a solutions to such a complex task. She is angry and scared because she sees her leaders fail or not even really attempting to find a solution. She found a way to express and accelerate her anger and this created a global movement that puts pressure on the political system to work harder towards solutions - make more climate action. She probably has inspired a lot of people with more training, skills and power to dedicate their time and energy to find solutions. (Greta gave Climate Change a face - and it is angry like climate change.)

+ And this is where political demands have their role. Demand a good public transport system! Demand more remote work where possible. Demand tax reliefs for renewable energy and so on. This can be done by law. In the 90s and early 2000s Germany was the biggest accelerator of solar energy on the globe because we had laws that put this in motion. These laws were taken back later which set us back in the development.
+ It is a bit weird and not well thought through to say - when big corporations force solutions on us that destroy the planet that we then have to come up with solutions for the problems they created. **If your room mate pollutes your room + kitchen is it your responsibility to clean up after him or suggest calmly and friendly how he could clean up - please. And when he does not... please keep calm?**

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# 2 DIY Enhanced Weathering – Smashing Rocks Fitness Studio

Introduction: Enhanced weathering in your pocket? If I want to make my own little enhanced weathering experiments, where to start?

### NEW! In a nutshell. What is the chemical process here? How is the carbon captured by these rocks?

+

### What minerals/rocks are good for enhanced weathering?


Enhanced weathering of [dunite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunite) rocks cannot be a DIY activity, as the availability of such rocks is found only in the upper mantel of the earths crust.

So Basalt is probably our go to material.

### Where can I find these rocks?

+ A massive exposure of **dunite** in the United States can be found as Twin Sisters Mountain, near Mount Baker in the northern Cascade Range of Washington. In Europe it occurs in the Troodos mountains of Cyprus. In southern British Columbia, Canada dunite rocks form the core of an ultramafic rock complex located near the small community of Tulameen. The rocks are locally enriched in platinum group metals, chromite and magnetite. [Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunite)
+ **Basalt** ... ??

### Once I have crushed rocks into rock powder. What to do with this powder? What effects will appear short and long run?

+ Dunite could be used to sequester CO2 and help mitigate global climate change via accelerated chemical rock weathering. This would involve the mining of dunite rocks in quarries followed by crushing and grinding as to create fine ground rock that would react with the atmospheric carbon dioxide. The resulting products are magnesite and silica which could be commercialized. [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunite)
+

### If I have some of these rocks, what could be a cool and fun way to crush them? In my DIY enhanced weathering workshop/fitness studio: what tools to use, what techniques, what steps (that also don't produce more carbon)?

+ The rocks have to be grined into fine portions, which cannot be done with bare hands. Insted small tools like hammer or a stone grinder can be used, these do not need any energy source to work, insted it can be used as a fitness activity. Also, designing certain fitness quipments, that when worked upon by people, transfers the load onto crusing the rocks. Nevertheless, all the equipments are subjected to availability of these rocks that have high percentage of olivinite.

Additional info can be found [here](https://youtu.be/UmrVltw_gtA)

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# 3 Regenerative Agriculture (in Flower Pots, Backyard Gardens or on Public Green)

### What is a good summary of the key techniques and ideas of regenerative agriculture?
So unlike other carbon capture methods this method is not aimd directly at carbon capture but rather are a set of practices which aim at promoting soil health by improving the soil organic carbon.There are various practices that can be found in the internet here are some of the princiles and common practices given in the article below
[Link 1](
https://www.eitfood.eu/blog/post/can-regenerative-agriculture-replace-conventional-farming?gclid=CjwKCAjwgOGCBhAlEiwA7FUXklkcbcWw79oReDi2yErJnqWVDBacXTO-oTed34qyiomh6sylDX4lXBoC15EQAvD_BwE)
[Link 2](https://www.forumforthefuture.org/scaling-regenerative-agriculture-in-the-us?gclid=CjwKCAjwgOGCBhAlEiwA7FUXkgHztfLC2cb9T5m1pYgxajqZjpZI_lasiMRR8fmsjZMoynnoPtqG-xoCQUQQAvD_BwE) | Comment: In the first graphic you basically find a list of political demands
[Link 3](https://www.earthworm.org/news-stories/power-regenerative-agriculture?gclid=CjwKCAjwgOGCBhAlEiwA7FUXkvmttYhVbSg5sePuZCZQ6IWftW1O9eAH82JFC4khCiiIoLBbmClR8BoCBFYQAvD_BwE)

### What is Carbon Gardening? What are some key things from it every little garden could do right away?
Carbon gardening is basically turning your backyard into a carbon sink that can help maximize carbon sequestration.Carbon gardeing is similar to conventional gardening the only difference is the choice of plants or shrubs and the implementation process. What we can do right now is explained in very simple termsin the article below
https://daily.jstor.org/five-steps-to-making-your-garden-a-carbon-sink/

### If I want to conduct my own regenerative agriculture experiments/projects - what is the smallest piece of land I need?
Ther is no minimum or maximum requirment as stated earlier the aim of regenerative agriculture is enriching the soil by improving the soil organic carbon so you can do it in your backyard garden but then again if you are deciding to put covercrops in your garden then you won't be able to use it as a garden.

### A flowerpot is to small for regenerative agriculture? Why? If I want to force it... what role could a flowerpot anyway? Maybe as part of a larger system?
A flowerpot as a regenrative agriculture does not make sense because first of all as the name suggest(agriculture) a flowerpot mostly contains a plant which is not a crop and secondly a flowerpot is a manmade ecosystem that is more of an artificial environment as opposed to a natural one which you see in yopur backyard garden.

### What plants of biocenosis are good for regenerative agriculture (small scale). What to look for. How to research?
Speaking in terms of largesacal or medium scale regenerative agricultutre it is better to have crops that can be used for grazing the cattle living on the farm.This has two advantages number one you dont need to burn fuel to clean the land for farming again and number two you can save significant amount of money on buying food for these catttles.

### What are the key barriers for large scale regenerative agriculture?
One of the most significant baririer is the yield generated from regenerative agriculture is less as compared to the conventional agriculture.

### What are the (potential) key barriers for small scale regenerative agriculture?
It is difficult to plant many trees or shrubs in your backyard if you want to use it as a garden.One example is if you grow grass it is better to let them groww long as then they can develop roots and hold more bacteri but in practice if you look at any garden they are well maintained and trimmed down for aesthethic purposes.

### What are the fastest growing plants? (Suited for Europe, and suited for India)?
Rather then focussing on fastest growing plants the idea is to focus on longeveity because the longer is the life span of the plant the longer it can hold carbon dioxide inside it , this is the reason it is advised to plant shrubs or trees which are sturdy and live longer than smaller plants.

### What community actions, events and resources could be imagined that support small scale regenerative agriculture?

+ Harvest thanks celebrations
+ Seed swamps
+ seedbomb tutorials
+ Using local veggies and not paying more for vegetables that are transported thousands of miles in an airplanes or trucks which again uses fossil fuels for transportation.
+ Awareness program by the government mainly aimed towards the farmers as they are the ones who are mainly doing the farming.
+ For small scale it is beter option to go with carbon gardening which is less time consuming for a normal person whose occupation is not farming and can be implemented with minimum experience.

### Cities often have companies that take care of the public green - of parks, flowerbeds, backyard gardens and so on. In Berlin we have [GrünBerlin](https://gruen-berlin.de/). What room do companies like that have to adapt some carbon gardening/regenerative agriculture techniques?
I think it is easy for the government to incorporate carbon gardening as they are the policy makers and should lead from the front so others also follow in their footsteps.

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# 4 Biomass Storage

Plants and trees are good at capturing carbon. But the problem is will it stay stored? Or will it be released back into the atmosphere for example by fire or rot?
(If there is combustion then definetly this carbondioxide gets realeased into the atmosphere)

### What ways are out there to store plant based biomass permanently? Wood as construction wood, yes. But what else?

Various biomass resources such as agricultural residues (e.g. bagasse from sugarcane, corn fiber, straw and even nutshells), wood waste (e.g. sawdust, timber slash, and mill scrap), the paper trash and urban yard clippings in municipal waste, energy crops (fast growing trees like poplars, willows, and grasses like switchgrass or elephant grass), and the methane captured from landfills, municipal waste water treatment, and manure from cattle or poultry, can also be used.
More detailed information about biomass can be found here https://www.inforse.org/europe/dieret/Biomass/biomass.html#Biofuels

### [Bananatex](https://www.bananatex.info/) claims to have found a way to transform banana peel into long lasting textiles. Are there similar (textile) project out there. Can we find out how they work?

+ ...

### If we follow the questions and answers above - how can we play this back to regenerative agriculture? ↓

+ ### subquestion 1 → What plants work well in regenerative agriculture but don't have a solution for permanent storage?
Here are the lists of plants too get you started for regenerative agriculture https://rodaleinstitute.org/blog/7-plants-for-your-regenerative-organic-garden/
Theses are not the only ones you can also plants flowers or different cover crops it really does not take much expertise in planting and you can grow some off your own organic vegetables but you have to take proper care after you have planted them.

+ ### subquestion 2 → What plants can we recommend for regenerative agriculture also because there are good solutions for permanent storage?

There is no such thing as permanent storage , what we can do instead is use trees and shrubs which are longer lasting and have a long lifespan as compared to small plants.

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# 5 Biochar

### Is biochar a good way for permanent storage of carbon collected by plants? Why? And why maybe not?

+ Not really, but close to permanent period. "The half-life of Carbon in soil charcoal is in excess of 1000 yr. Hence, soil-applied charcoal will make both a lasting contribution to soil quality and Carbon in the charcoal will be removed from the atmosphere and sequestered for millennia." [link](https://web.archive.org/web/20080515123705/http://agron.scijournals.org/cgi/content/full/100/1/178)

### Can biochar be used in or for regenerative agriculture? If not, why? If so, to what extend?

+ Regenerative Agriculture” describes farming and grazing practices that, among other benefits, reverse climate change by rebuilding soil organic matter and restoring degraded soil biodiversity – resulting in both carbon drawdown and improving the water cycle. [Link](https://regenerationinternational.org/why-regenerative-agriculture/) . This is what Biochar does while storing the Carbon in it.

### Find some super small scale DIY friendly tutorials to make your own biochar

+ ... There are a number of tutorials online that focuses on creating a DIY setup for biochar production, but most of them aren't efficient and emit a lot of harmful gases. Here is a link for [complete DIY tutorial](https://youtu.be/svNg5w7WY0k)

### What is different from these small DIY friendly methods to large industrial ones? Please discuss this also a bit.

+ Though the underlying pricipal for the DIY and the industrial processes are same, the efficiency varies. The more the oxygen inside the pyrolysis reactor is restricted/vaccumed the better the quality and quantity of biochar produced. [link](https://biochar-international.org/biochar-production-technologies/)

### What are the key issues/problems/limiations for biochar?

#### key issues:
+ Inefficient processes emits harmfull syngases.
+ only 50% of the carbon available in the biomass is captured while turning into Biochar.
+ oxygen availability inside the pyrolysis reactor is a key factor in deciding the quality and quantity of the biochar produced.
+ Bio-oil contains organic acids that are corrosive to steel containers, has a high water vapor content that is detrimental to ignition, and, unless carefully cleaned, contains some biochar particles which can block injectors.
+ Biochar can only be used effectively for land covered with greens.
+ Soils, and the ecotopes they are part of, are very heterogeneous systems in space and time that are managed in a large variety of ways. This means that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution, i.e. different soils will require different biochars. And the same soil that is managed in different ways, or is part of a different ecotope, will also require different biochars. [link](https://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu/projects/biochar#:~:text=and%20energy%20production.-,The%20idea%20is%20to%20produce%2C%20transport%20and%20apply%20(to%20soils,that%20biochar%20is%20applied%20to.)
+

### How can small towns or larger cities support the creation of biochar? Companies? Facilities? Policies?

Life cycle of Biochar production
The above production diagram can be used to set up various business opportunities by small/large cities. Biochar production can be a waste management strategy capable of handling a wide range of biomass types—including agricultural and forestry residues as well as animal and municipal solid wastes as long as care is taken not to use feedstocks that contaminate the end product (such as heavy‐metal‐rich feedstocks). The feedstock is the transportef to local pyrolysis plants to convert them into

Policy:
Biochar is a modern technology based on traditional knowledge from the Amazon. Its systematic application in the EU will require bridging substantial knowledge gaps with targeted research programs. Despite its potential to provide effective responses to policy priorities in the EU, such as soil protection, sustainable waste management, and climate change mitigation, there are still major concerns about long-term effects on ecosystems and human health. The argumentation that the traditional technology of Terra Preta has existed for millennia, and therefore that additional research addressing health and safety implications is not needed, cannot be accepted given the large differences between traditional Terra Preta and modern biochar production. It is high time for a substantial, policy-relevant, research effort at EU level allowing for the full assessment of all implications of this very promising technology. Once all the knowledge gaps are bridged a solid legislative framework addressing biochar may be developed in order to regulate its use at EU level. [link](http://scholar.google.co.in/scholar_url?url=https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/3/2/462/pdf&hl=en&sa=X&ei=aFFcYKHBBsyMywTLrpy4Dg&scisig=AAGBfm0EaxcOCqK-kiUbFjJaKx_NLGdpIA&nossl=1&oi=scholarr)

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# 6 Can the process accelerate itself?

### Can the steps above be connected - mesh? If so it is probably mentioned above. But please restate here. (And elaborate if possible - paint a picture, create a scenario, write a story.)

+