Subsoil plowing is done to bring deep soil with minerals up to the surface, dig underground water pathways to the surface and bury soil poisoned by accumulated salts to put them in contact with moisture for leaching and to control deep soil pests by suffocating small animals and insects as well as poison subsoil bacteria with surface alkali. This is quite a lot to be done with long spikes in the ground.  SCAF salesmen may say, “Not since the invention of the penis has so much fertilization been owed to so few by so many," but then salesmen are an earthy lot even if they are imitating Winston Churchill.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
          These plows can be adapted to deliver carbon dioxide for subsoil fertilization.  The plow spikes may be drilled, channeled or piped to carry gas for subsoil deposit.  With a spike instead of a triangular delta wing-like lifting plow blade there will be no topsoil disruption for no-till farming.

 We believe that sub-soil delivery will be attractive in the beginning, but it will become obvious that additional applications will be needed during the growing season and they will be difficult to impossible with tall plants like corn.  With immature soybeans in rows or many other field crops supplementation will be possible, but permanent installations will look attractive when the net effects of SCAF are seen.

Leakage?

          We have no field data for SCAF, but ammonia gas has been injected into soil for 60 years and in the literature we found, “The Minnesota study found that fields treated with anhydrous ammonia had two to four times the nitrous oxide losses compared to urea ammonium nitrate or pelleted urea. If the ammonia was injected more than four inches below the soil surface, however, nitrous oxide emissions were lower in no-till fields than in conventional or conservation-till fields.” 

            This suggests that soil leakage was negligible in ammonia at the very shallow depth of “more than four inches.”  Ammonia is very soluble in water and the product ammonium hydroxide is stable.  Nitrous oxide is much less soluble, but was injected and held efficiently by simply going deeper. We are calling for injection at a depth of 18 inches, to insure good cover, with immediate harrowing to close the furrow so we expect our gas losses to be approach zero.  Normal soil moisture will absorb the CO2 to make carbonic acid which is stable in still, dark cold water with a 62 g/mole molecule that is going to diffuse at a rate 1/12^th that of water vapor per Graham’s law so it will remain in place.