Carbon negative biofuels and biochar win UN World Environment Day Award

Biomass pyrolysis and carbon sequestration technology developed by Australian researchers along with Best Energies - hailed as one of the most important technologies available for stabilizing the world’s climate - has been chosen by the United Nations Association of Australia as the winner of their World Environment Day Awards category, ‘Meeting the Greenhouse Challenge’, along with project partners, the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries.

A revolutionary synergy
The group of researchers demonstrated (earlier post) that biofuels can help mitigate climate change by making use of a carbon sequestration technique known as 'terra preta'. The idea is relatively simple: a stream of biomass is converted into liquid biofuels (bio-oil and their refined products) via pyrolysis, whereas the biochar (agrichar) that is co-produced in the process is ploughed into agricultural soils, which get a boost in fertility and water absorption capacities.

The result is that the biofuels become carbon negative - which means their use can take historic CO2 emissions out of the atmosphere - while the (energy) crops grown on biochar improved soils that now act as carbon sinks see their yields increase. The team's research showed a spectacular doubling and even tripling of yields from crops grown on such 'dark earth' soils.

Adriana Downie, who accepted the award for Best Energies, said the commercial uptake of the Best pyrolysis technology will result in significant carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas mitigation. “Adoption of the technology will deliver long-term sustainability benefits of increased soil health and therefore agricultural productivity.”

The slow pyrolysis technology developed by Best Energies is particularly exciting because it not only produces a renewable energy to displace the use of fossil fuels, but it also produces a very stable form of solid carbon which can be sequestered over the long term in soils.

This process has been developed by Best Energies with support from the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change and involves heating green waste or other biomass without oxygen to generate renewable energy and a high carbon char product. Best Energies has a fully integrated pilot plant operating at their demonstration site at Somersby, on the Central Coast of NSW:
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“Once the high carbon char product, agrichar, is added as an amendment to agricultural soils, some of the most remarkable and promising benefits of this technology become apparent,” said Adriana Downie, Technical Manager for BEST Energies Australia. Experiments conducted by the NSW Department of Primary Industries have demonstrated that the char product can improve several soil health indicators as well as increase crop yields and productivity.

NSW DPI research scientist, Dr Lukas Van Zwieten, has found that when applied at 10 tonnes per hectare, the biomass of wheat was tripled and of soybeans was more than doubled. Van Zwieten said the char product also decreases emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas nitrous oxide from soils and increases the efficiency of nitrogen fertilizers.

NSW Primary Industries Minister, Ian Macdonald said this new process offers hope for using soils as a carbon “sink”.

Tim Flannery, Australian of the Year, renowned scientist, environmentalist, and author of The Weather Makers, is a major advocate of char and pyrolysis. In The Bulletin magazine, Flannery recently listed “fostering pyrolysis-based technologies” fourth among his five steps for saving the planet.

The UN Association award winners for World Environment Day were announced at a ceremony in Melbourne, Australia on Friday June 1.

Based in Madison, Wisconsin, Best Energies is focused on leading the development of clean energy solutions all based on renewable bio-resources. Best has formed a family of companies that provide integrated bioenergy solutions around the world where biomass is available and energy is needed.

In a similar development, biomass-to-liquids company Dynamotive earlier announced it is taking part in a comparable project. In contrast to Best Energies, Dynamotive develops fast-pyrolysis conversion technologies, which use higher temperatures. But like its counter-part, slow pyrolysis, an agrichar is obtained in this process too, making it possible to produce carbon negative biofuels by sequestring that biochar into soils (earlier post).

Large potential
A major advantage of the 'terra preta' technique is that it is quite low-tech. In contrast to other carbon sequestration technologies - such as 'carbon capture and storage' (CCS) from coal plants - the technique can be implemented on a vast scale in the developing world. Especially in the tropics and the subtropics, where soils are often nutrient-deficient, the application of biochar could yield multiple benefits.

Farmers in the South would thus become producers of carbon negative biofuels, while at the same time using their soils as carbon sinks that stimulate crop growth.

In contrast to CCS, which requires large and expensive infrastructures and are coupled to large, centralised power stations, biomass pyrolysis plants can be taken up in a decentralised biofuel production strategy and coupled to local soil improvement plans.


Image: NSW DPI environmental scientist Steve Kimber shows one of the chambers used to monitor greenhouse gases emitted from the Wollongbar trial plot. Credit: NSW DPI.

More information:
Pollution Online: BEST Energies Wins UN World Environment Day Award - June 11, 2007.