Quantification and characterization of dissolved organic carbon from biochars

Abstract Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in biochars is critical to carbon dynamics and contaminant transport in soils. This study aimed to develop a robust and easy method to characterize and quantify the biochar-DOC, using water-, acid-, and base-extractable DOC samples (WEOC, AEOC, and BEOC respectively) from 46 biochars produced from diverse feedstocks and pyrolysis conditions. BEOC concentrations were the highest (2.3–139 mg-C/g-biochar), followed by WEOC (0.5–40 mg-C/g-biochar) and AEOC (0.2–23 mg-C/g-biochar). Fast-pyrolysis biochars generally had higher DOC concentrations than slow-pyrolysis biochars. DOC concentrations in slow-pyrolysis biochars decreased exponentially with increasing pyrolysis temperature from 300 to 600 °C. The solid-state 13C NMR showed that biochar-DOC had abundant small fused-ring aromatics, aliphatic C, and carboxyl C. Biochar-DOC included an acid-precipitated (AP) fraction of higher molecular weight and aromaticity and an acid-soluble (AS) fraction of lower molecular weight and aromaticity. BEOC generally had a greater AP fraction than WEOC and AEOC. Molecular weight, aromaticity and composition of AEOC and BEOC differed from those of more environmentally-relevant WEOC, suggesting that the acid- and base-extraction may not produce the DOC released in real soils. Finally, a quick, easy and robust UV–vis spectrometric method was developed to measure the composition and concentrations of WEOC in diverse biochar samples (R2 = 0.96, n = 46).