Pecologix Political Ecology Blotter

The efficacy of no-till agriculture for increasing C in soils has been questioned in recent studies. This is a serious issue after many publications and reports during the last two decades have recommended no-till as a practice to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions through soil C sequestration. Our objective was to investigate the possibility that the [...]

In recent years, researchers have come up with good CO2 absorbers made from porous solids called zeolites and metal organic frameworks. But they’re expensive. So Olah and his colleagues set out to find a cheaper alternative.They turned to polyethylenimine (PEI), a cheap polymer that is a decent CO2 absorber. But it only grabs CO2 at [...]

As high CO2-emitting utilities and other industries move toward implementing carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies to manage greenhouse gas emissions, more and more CO2 will become available as a resource for multiple applications. CO2 will be a plentiful potential feedstock (carbon source) for many products, including commercial chemicals, plastics, and improved cement. Unfortunately, CO2 [...]

Steel slag is a kind of alkaline mixture and considered to be a potential CO2 adsorbent. In this work, the CO2-trapping characteristics of two types of steel slag, basic oxygen furnace (BOF) steel slag and electric arc furnace (EAF) steel slag, were experimentally investigated. Generally, the higher the temperature, the larger the Ca use of [...]

For the development of commercial biochar projects, reliable data on biochar production technologies is needed. For this purpose, peer-reviewed scientific articles on carbonization technologies (pyrolysis, gasification, hydrothermal carbonization, and flash carbonization) have been analyzed. Valuable information is provided by papers on pyrolysis processes, less information is available on gasification processes, and few papers about hydrothermal [...]

Shale gas is viewed by many as a global energy game-changer. However, serious concerns exist that shale gas generates more greenhouse gas emissions than does coal. In this work the related published data are reviewed and a reassessment is made. It is shown that the greenhouse gas effect of shale gas is less than that [...]

WASHINGTON — The leading American effort to capture carbon dioxide from coal plants has hit a stumbling block that could imperil the project and set back a promising technology for addressing global warming, people involved in the venture said. Ameren, the Midwestern power company that was to be the host for the project, has told [...]