My third and final post about presentations I attended at US Biochar Initiative. I’d be grateful if you would take this opportunity to follow Arigna Group on their biochar journey.
1. Myles Gray, P.E. and Wendy Lu Maxwell-Barton gave a preview of the Biochar Industry Survey results. Essential reading for industry participants and its all covered here: https://lnkd.in/e63hQtjj
2. Hansjörg Lerchenmüller of Carbonfuture gave an overview of the biochar industry in Europe. Installed capacity is circa 100k mt in Europe at end 2023 and biochar is mainly being produced for the energy and heat produced by the process with less emphasis on the use of the char itself (as per my reading). The fastest growth in use is in construction materials which is very interesting and contrasts with the findings of the USBI Industry Survey which identified agriculture as the biggest growth opportunity.
3. Steve Peterson of USDA gave a very detailed but understandable presentation of the replacement of carbon black with biochar in rubber composite materials. His research showed some very promising results; biochar can replace 40-50% carbon black with similar or better strength and elongation, but composite stiffness still needs improvement. He then discussed the now familiar issue/problem, that biochar has to compete with existing uses; in this case carbon back and biochar is currently 2x the cost of carbon black. Scale will reduce costs but without adoption, it’s hard to scale.
4. Yván David Hernández Charpak gave a very technical and energized presentation on his work on biochar-plastic composite development at Rochester Institute of Technology. An incredibly promising area of research and we got to handle some of the composite bags produced.
5. The last presentation I attended showed what one advanced future use might be for biochar. Daniel Mulqueen of Climate Robotics demonstrated how they were using plant-based carbons to replace activated carbon and carbon black. The pluses are the high prices of existing activated carbon and carbon black and the challenges are achieving the technical specifications of the different types of those products.
Watch the presentation HERE.
