This page is for un-reviewed and partially reviewed ideas. Ideas that have been reviewed can move to other pages. Please add your ideas and/or reviews here, and include your name.
Chris Phoenix suggests: Charcoal takes some time to develop a cation exchange capacity. Chris suspects that this could be speeded up if "wood vinegar" - distilled smoke from charcoal making - was mixed with it. Wood vinegar is acid; charcoal is more or less basic (when you burn it to ash, and mix the ash with water, you get lye); if the charcoal were partially neutralized, it might be able to exchange cations better. Microbes like to eat wood vinegar, so adding it could jump-start the microbe population as well. The downside is that wood vinegar is a brew of lots of different chemicals, some of them poisonous to humans.
Russell Brand suggests: If charcoal improves the effectiveness of organic fertilizers (which it does), then it could make organic food growing profitable in situations where it's currently unprofitable. This is a potential market for charcoal.
Chris Phoenix suggests: Perhaps kelp would make decent charcoal? Kelp concentrates phosphorous from seawater, so if (as some say) we are close to a scarcity of phosphorus, then kelp charcoal might be a good way to add phosphorus to soil. Kelp can be farmed. This might be a significant source of biomass for sequestration.
