SCAF technology will accomplish the goal of sequestration and create a carbon
economy with carbon and CO2 having great value.
Pure carbon can be used to improve any soil
and
will recover many acres for agriculture. Carbon dioxide will
increase
the harvest of
food,
fiber and fuel crops, save up to 96% of all water used in
agriculture and recover
land long lost to farming from alkali poisoning or lack of water.
It will trap poisonous heavy metal ions as carbonates and supply
the carbon that makes 44% of all the dry mass of the plant.
As long as water tables can supply
at least 4% of what had supported crops in the past the land will be productive
with future engineered plants. Soils getting elemental carbon allotropes
retain natural water previously lost and CO2 supplementation reduces transpiration as well as make genetically modified low transpiring plants practical.
Corn is our largest crop and export. Corn has
a typical 120 day growing season in the areas of greatest
production, the middle-western corn belt. That will be shortened if we expand
corn planting to some of the hotter, drier areas where corn grows faster and accelerated with SCAF technology,
but we will examine the economics for an existing set of conditions in the midde-west.
Each acre of corn includes 25,000 plants on 16
to 18 inch centers. Each plant transpires 200 liters of
water per season. If we assume the SCAF treated fields will produce
200 bushels per acre, or five metric tons, we can assume that we will
also have 75% (3.5 metric tons) of that mass in corn stover to
harvest.
"Stover" includes the stalk and leaf material
of the plant and is normally left in the field. The John Deere company has developed
a machine that will harvest both corn and stover in one operation.
This can be a great boon as stover is both an ideal bio-fuel raw
material and cattle will eat it if it is made into silage.
Silage is fermented whole corn plants as that
process produces protein, but it
can be made with other materials. It would seem that usable
silage could be made with stover and some corn as well as the addition
of alfalfa or other material high in protein and perhaps in market
surplus. The objective seems to be coming up with a mix that the
cow will eat as their stomachs are able to digest cellulose. A
number of these recipes needs to be developed for better using farm
surpluses.
With each corn plant needing 200 liters of
water over the 120 growing season we will require 1,044,500
liters/acre for a normal crop and about half that for a crop treated
with sub-soil CO2. The amount of water from rain plus what will migrate into
that field from underground acquifers varies and can be determined in
the field. If the field in question is to be served with sub-soil
gasification the service may include water as none will be lost to
evaporation. The equipment to accomplish in-field watering on
this scale has not been developed and the engineering problems may
prove formidable given the weight of water.
1,044,500 liters of water can carry twice the
CO2 we need for a corn crop. We need to deliver 8.2 tons of
CO2 per acre over 120 days and how we go about this will depend on the
soil, the percentage of water in it to a depth of three feet. In
many soils we could deliver the entire amount at one time, but we will
probably find two or three injections separated by five to eight weeks
will be more effective in boosting the crop.
Existing equipment of the kind now in use work
through fields at one to three miles per hour and typically cover
one acre every 20 minutes. If we assume the apparatus has a cost of
$100,000 and a life of ten years with 10% maintainence it will have an
amortized cost of about $70 per working day. With an operator at
$20 per hour the running cost will be $230 per day so we have only the
cost of the carbon dioxide, for which sequestration fees have been
collected. Given the increase in the crop it seems we have ample room for profit for everyone involved.
We have about 118 million acres in corn which could
use about 1 billion tons of CO2 which is 2/3rds of our annual
production of CO2 for corn alone. We have not analyzed wheat
farming for this system, but assume the figures are similar. Be
this the case we have considerable room for expansion of fossil fuel utilization in this economy.
We expect immediate increases in
production and water savings on the order of 50%. In the
case of corn, now producing 130 bushels an acre we expect to
see 200 bushels per acre, gains of up to 70 bushels per acre.
At the present
market price of $4.00 per bushel this is a gain of $280 per acre.
The value of water saving can be estimated by converting the
agriculture price $35 per acre foot to the $1150 price charged for
urban users and estimating a value in perpetuity.
Farmers will be hesitant to sell off these
rights, but eventually they will become a very large part of the farm
economic as agriculturists control over 70% of the existing water
supply. Of course filtration and chlorination plants must be
employed on water for human consumption, but they are long-term
financings and affordable. We can see a million new acres in full
production and they will yield $280 to $500 million in new crops and
many times that converted to low transpiring plants with benefits in
the billions of dollars.
Beyond
the farms we have very substantial lawns and gardens. These
locations can make good use of SCAF by installing permanent delivery
systems rather like drip watering, but with tubing that is designed to serve lawn plantings.
The major savings will be in healthier lawns and gardens in
addition to the water saving for lawns and vegetable gardens. The CO2 injection
phase will kill or chase soil pests just as well-defined water
delivery systems control weeds by drying the soil beyond defined
growing areas. The gas/water injection equipment can handle
ammonia gas for nitrogen delivery and water soluble compounds can
be added to the water regularly injected. With reduced water
requirements, better growth and
lower maintenance we expect short payback times for this equipment.
The United States produces
1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually. The US
Department of Energy has placed a sequestration value of $100 per ton on
the gas. This is in view of the expectation of pumping the gas
into old oil wells, mines and caverns treating it as garbage, but SCAF
makes CO2
a valuable product for agriculture that will expand the economy by at
least 150 billion dollars immediately and create 3.5 million jobs in agriculture
and technology.
All things considered we estimate
a 30% to 50% expansion of the world economy within the first 20 years
of SCAF implementation.
