Re: Two questions : is there a way of minimising gas release in burning wood for power or heat and how Archived Message
Posted by David Macilwain on June 4, 2019, 2:11 pm, in reply to "Two questions : is there a way of minimising gas release in burning wood for power or heat and how "
Just saying that for "climax" vegetation, over a period of a few hundred years there will be no net gain or loss of carbon in the plants and soil humus. THis includes any insect losses and gains, so includes - in OZ - activities of termites, which break down the hardest wood. The variations on this system might be a forest in a humid warm environment, or cold wet one, where humus accumulates as peat or swamp. Or in the tropics where the rate of breakdown of Organic matter in the soil is faster than it can accumulate, and so there is little reserve outside the living plants Draining or drying up of swamps and peat bogs also releases carbon and methane... I live in a house built of timber - and mud.. which has taken a few tonnes of carbon out of the system. At least it's better than steel, now preferred as termites can't eat it. Would be interesting to do a carbon budget comparison!
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