Search for: All records

The water retention capability of soil significantly impacts plant growth. A scarcity of water in agricultural soil may cause low crop productivity, potentially leading to critical food-deficit problems in arid areas with increasing populations such as central California. New ways to enhance the water retention capability of soil to enable farmers to utilize water more effectively are thus urgently needed. Research has shown that hydrochar, which is produced by hydrothermal carbonization (HTC), can potentially improve soil quality by enabling it to hold water for longer periods. This study therefore explored how the addition of hydrochar affects water retention capacity in the root zone using soil experiments. For the experiments, a column filled with sample sandy soil but without hydrochar, which was used as a control. Meanwhile, 8% weight of hydrochar were mixed with soil at the top of soil columns to investigate how the presence or absence of hydrochar affected: (1) the temporal variation of soil moisture vs depth; (2) the temporal variation in the water’s potential head vs. depth at different times; and (3) the distribution of soil moisture vs the water’s potential head. The results of these experiments can be utilized to show the agricultural benefit gained by soil amendment with a certain amount of hydrochar. 

The water retention capability of soil significantly impacts plant growth. A scarcity of water in agricultural soil may cause low crop productivity, potentially leading to critical food-deficit problems in arid areas with increasing populations such as central California. New ways to enhance the water retention capability of soil to enable farmers to utilize water more effectively are thus urgently needed. Research has shown that hydrochar, which is produced by hydrothermal carbonization (HTC), can potentially improve soil quality by enabling it to hold water for longer periods. This study therefore explored how the addition of hydrochar affects water retention capacity in the root zone using soil experiments. For the experiments, a column filled with sample sandy soil but without hydrochar, which was used as a control. Meanwhile, 8% weight of hydrochar were mixed with soil at the top of soil columns to investigate how the presence or absence of hydrochar affected: (1) the temporal variation of soil moisture vs depth; (2) the temporal variation in the water’s potential head vs. depth at different times; and (3) the distribution of soil moisture vs the water’s potential head. The results of these experiments can be utilized to show the agricultural benefit gained by soil amendment with a certain amount of hydrochar.