Gasifier To Produce Biochar

Energy Quest, Inc., an organization working on the development, construction and marketing of low-cost alternate fuels worldwide has said that its gasification process can produce biochar from agricultural wastes and other biomass, as per a press release.

The process employs simple changes like speeding up the biomass fuel and adjusting the process parameters to increase the content of carbon in the solid residue generated from gasifier and provide high quality agricultural grade soil amending biochar.

A modular gasification bio-energy plant consuming 10 to 12 tonnes per hour of agricultural waste biomass available locally can produce 16 to 18 thousand tonnes of biochar per year. According to Christoph Steiner, a University of Georgia research scientist in the Faculty of Engineering comments, "The potential of biochar lies in its ability to sequester-capture and store huge amounts of carbon while also displacing fossil fuel energy, effectively doubling its carbon impact. Scientists estimate biochar from agriculture and forestry residues can potentially sequester billions of tons of carbon in the world's soils."

Production of biochar from a gasifier can slash the set up costs and increase the efficiency and also provide clean syngas fuel for heat and power generation.

Photo Courtesy: Energy Quest, Inc.
Read the full story on: Energy Quest, Inc. Gasification Process Can Produce Biochar

The Making Of Estufa Finca

Efforts to build improved cook stoves are resulting in solutions that combine an appreciation of thermodynamics with the social and culinary needs of people and their environment. A Seattle area artist Art Donnelly, for example, invented a clean-burning biochar stove which he now propagates through a non-profit organization called Seachar in Costa Rica.

Donnelly's stove runs on garden waste and was inspired by his experience while travelling in South America, says a report in Kuow.org by Joshua McNichols. He explains that when a piece of wood is burnt, it actually burns twice. At the beginning the fire is bright, with lots of flames. Later, after all the resins and things have burned off, the flame dies down a bit and one is left with glowing embers,charcoal. This is when the wood releases most of its carbon to the atmosphere.

Donnelly says that his stove makes efficient use of the first stage when the fire is bright. The smoke is consumed in the flames and therefore there is almost no emission. He further says,"Because it is so efficient you don't need to go to the second stage of the fire. Instead, you remove the burning embers from the stove with a pair of tongs and drop them in a bucket full of water."

These stoves do not need to use wood for fuel. One can fuel these stoves with garden waste including corncobs and goat poop. And that is why Donnelly has taken his stoves down to Costa Rica. He has brought stoves to the same women and children he saw cooking at smoky fires years ago. Over the next cacao harvest season, Donnelly will carefully track what they put into their stoves — and what they take out.

According to SeaChar.org, it is working with partners around the globe to Reinvent Fire. "Our elegant and affordable Estufa Finca (Farm Stove) works by burning the smoke that would escape a traditional fire. Able to use a wide range of waste biomass as fuel, these stoves will save lives and trees. As an add benefit the stoves produce the soil building charcoal known as biochar, a form of fixed biocarbon which can store excess CO2 for thousands of years."

To read the full story: Clean-Burning Cookstoves
Also see SeaChar.org

Cornell Research on Biochar and Cook Stoves Gets Funded

Research projects of the Cornell University for making richer Biochar through a combination of development of micro-organisms and development of cookstoves that would produce biochar while eliminating indoor emissions has received funding from the Basic Research to Enable Agricultural Development (BREAD), which is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

According to  Cornell University's Chronicle Online, two Cornell-based research projects -- one that boosts the soil-building effects of biochar for plants and another that harnesses genomics technology to accelerate maize and sorghum breeding in Africa by three-to-four times -- have each been given more than $1.6 million in grants.

The first project aims to develop microorganisms (inoculants) to add to biochars, produced when organic waste is burned at low temperatures without oxygen, to improve soil health in small farms in Kenya, where soil degradation is directly linked to food insecurity, hunger and poverty.

"Biochars act like a sponge or microbial reef where microorganisms like to live, proliferate and hide from predators," said Johannes Lehmann, associate professor of soil biogeochemistry, who leads the project. The inoculants would infect plant roots and support mycorrhizae fungi and other bacteria to provide plants with such essential nutrients as nitrogen and promote growth.

Lehmann's group also seeks to develop stoves that would be made locally in Africa. The stoves would produce biochar while they were used for cooking and would eliminate indoor smoke, a serious health consequence of wood stoves in Africa. Also, farmers would be able to use such on-farm waste as shrubs, grasses and crop residues -- rather than harder-to-find wood -- to fire up the stoves.

The $1.6 million project also includes outreach to spread information and protocols about biochar, inoculants and cook stoves through workshops, presentations, CDs and publications.

The group includes researchers from Cornell's Departments of Crop and Soil Sciences, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Applied Economics and Management; the University of California--Irvine; World Agroforestry Center of Kenya; and the University of New South Wales, Australia.

To more than triple breeding cycle rates to develop new maize and sorghum varieties in sub-Saharan Africa, researchers received $1.7 million to apply new molecular breeding technology to sequence trillions of base pairs from 12,000 breeding lines of maize and then sorghum. They hope to winnow the lines down by 90 percent, retaining only those that hold the most promise for drought tolerance and nitrogen efficiency.

Read the full story $3.3M in grants to improve soil, plant breeding in Africa

Biochar and the Quest for Sustainable Home Fuel

Haiti and Latin American countries are becoming a case study for successful transition of communities to biochar as a sustainable alternative to firewood and charcoal, says The Epoch Times in an article on "Biochar: A Panacea for Global Warming Issues".

Use of Biochar has the power to restore soil productivity, provide energy for domestic, agricultural and even industrial purposes, and mitigate climate change through carbon storage.

Nathaniel Mulcahy, the founder of non-profit organisation World Stove, says “Biochar-producing stoves save fuel, reduce both emissions of greenhouse gasses and indoor—and outdoor air pollution,” he said. “In this way, we improve soils, preserve forests and bring better health and economic independence to people.”

Biochar can be produced from urban, agricultural and forestry residues or biomass – from sugar cane waste and coffee hulls to palm fronds and paper mill pulp. It removes the need to harvest trees for firewood and charcoal by generating syngas and bio-oil for cooking, heating and drying, and even electricity generation. Biochar’s co-product is applied to soils with many carbon sequestration benefits including increased bio-available water and organic matter, enhanced nutrient cycling, and reduced leaching. It can also be used to filter water.

Mr. Mulcahy recently joined the Haitian “building back better” recovery effort by introducing his patented Lucia stove to help locals produce “biochar” pellets. Its unique design incorporates venturi holes for negative pressure plus a Fibonacci spiral-styled flame cap to keep oxygen out of the pyrolisis chamber.

According to The Epoch, "By respecting and maintaining cooking traditions, Mr. Mulcahy says the stove is more readily accepted in different cultures. He believes it is vital the developed world offers the world’s poor a clean efficient stove that fits their needs, rather than the other way around. Allowing users to cook on a gas flame as in “modern” kitchens, they can maintain cooking customs without environmental damage."

Illustration from the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station
(See Rising from Haiti's Quake: Cookstoves Adapted to People's Needs)