Bioenergy Byproduct to Soil Savior

by Anna Simet (Biomass Magazine) Production and sale of biochar at biomass-using plants can result in significant financial gains, but the industry is still working at building its myriad of potential markets. -- ... While there may be hundreds of companies working in the smaller-scale bioenergy project space, (Greg) Stangl (CEO of Phoenix Energy) has something that most of them don’t: biochar. And, he knows how to use it. Perhaps more accurately, he knows its worth.

(I)t wasn’t until Phoenix Energy began working in the U.S. that a much different market began knocking on the company’s door to purchase biochar. “Farmers started contacting us for it,” Stangl says. “Now, if someone buys a bulk truckload, we charge 79 cents per pound, and people pay it. It’s an expensive product, but if you have high-value specialty crops with a high capex investment and it has to provide to you for 20 years, it’s well worth the investment.”

While well aware of biochar’s capabilities and potential—evidenced or proven in thousands of research papers, field trials and real-world application by a growing market—Stangl admits he isn’t an expert on biochar best practices or application rates in the soil as a fertilizer, storm water remediate, odor controller, carbon sequestration tool, and the list goes on. But what he does know is that the farmers and others who are repeat-purchasing in bulk continue to benefit from its “amazing properties.”

One example of high-end, or upgraded, engineered biocarbon, is Google Ventures-backed Cool Planet Energy Systems, which currently has a production facility in California, and a Louisiana site it plans to build an additional plant on, potentially in 2017.

Dubbed “Cool Terra,” it is a carbon-sequestering soil amendment that is engineered to enhance soil health by nurturing microbial life in the soil, and enhancing its water and nutrient-holding capacity, according to Jim Loar, Cool Planet president and CEO. The model is set up differently than most biochar producers today—Cool Planet actually buys biochar in its raw state and puts it through an additional, patented process, but Wes Bolsen, head of global business development, says there is a market for this kind of high-quality, upgraded biochar.

Though production in the U.S. is on the rise, on a global level, China dominates in both production and use.

“In the case of China, it’s being used it to remediate soils that have been damaged by pollution from their coal-burning power plants,” Miles (Tom Miles, owner of T. R. Miles Technical Consultants Inc. and board member of both the International Biochar Initiative and the U.S. Biochar Initiative) says. “They’ve also been making granulated biochar products used in mainstream agriculture, a point that we haven’t gotten to in any significant quantity yet in the U.S.”

“What we’ve learned over the past 10 years is that there are a lot of different qualities of chars that we can use in different ways in agriculture, forestry itself, and storm water and soil remediation—we’ve found a lot uses for the material, and the challenge now is sort of balancing that with where the char come from, what its properties and best uses, and what a company can afford to make.”

The other thing the industry has accomplished is an official definition accepted by the American Association of Plant Food Control Officials, which controls labeling and regulation of fertilizers and soil amendments for the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. That took about three years to accomplish. “Now, everybody in every state and province has a reference point,” Miles says. Biochar has gone from ‘What’s biochar?’ to a buzz, and this year it’s, ‘What quality of biochar do you have available and how much?’” READ MORE