Preparing and characterizing repacked columns for experiments in biochar-amended soils

Abstract

Laboratory soil column experiments have been frequently performed for investigating various soil-related processes. In recent years, the demand for using biochar as a soil amendment for environmental and agricultural purposes has increased significantly. To assess the beneficial impacts of biochar, laboratory column experiments may be conducted using repacked biochar-amended soil before large-scale biochar application. Biochar is a porous material that might have transient hydrophobicity, and particle density, size, and shape that often differ from native soil. These factors might cause several experimental problems in repacked laboratory columns, including unrealistic hydraulic and solute transport and transformation measurements, spatial variation of biochar content, and error in estimating the repacked biochar-amended soil properties. Therefore, it is necessary to modify standard repacked column packing procedures for biochar-amended soil. In this work, several modifications are described for preparing repacked biochar-amended soils. The modifications are rinsing and oven-drying biochar, determining the optimum moisture content to achieve a homogenous mixture, determining the desired bulk density before column packing, and mixing and packing under wet conditions. In addition, repacked columns should be characterized by their inter, intra, and total porosities and pore volume after column packing.•Steps are recommended prior to packing the repacked biochar-amended soil columns: rinsing biochar and pre-determining optimum moisture content and bulk density.•Columns are wet-packed in subsections at the optimum moisture content to the desired bulk density. Following packing, the inter, intra, and total porosities and pore volume should be determined.•These steps will reduce unrealistic transient results, inhibit nonuniform packing and heterogeneity of biochar content, and provide important information for interpreting the performance of biochar-amended media.