Effects of Fly-Ash on Agriculture Production As Soil Amendments.

Lime application in agriculture is the typical and common practice for raising pH to the optimum level. Agricultural lime releases CO2 emission to the atmosphere (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and plays an important role in the global fluxes of greenhouse gasses. The US EPA has estimated of 9 tera gram CO2 emission from 20 tera gram of applied agricultural lime (McBride and West, 2005). Thus, It is important to use an alternative source of Lime application to improve soil pH without harming the environment such as biochar and fly-ash. Biochar application has shown soil quality improvement (Chan et al. 2007), and greenhouse gas emissions reduction from soil (Yanai et al. 2007; Van Zwieten et al. 2009). Fly ash increases uptake of nutrients as well as plant growth (Weinstein et al.,1989). Biochar and fly-ash both are amendment sources in agricultural that could sequester the carbon which might help in reducing CO2 emission. However, economically biochar is more expensive than fly-ash, and its results are inconsistent, therefore using fly-ash will be more economical for agricultural production. However, soil properties change the fly-ash potential of C sequestration. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the fly-ash potential of C sequestration in different soil and farming system.