Idled lumber kiln being repurposed for biochar development

Biochar is produced by cooking organic material from agricultural and forestry wastes (biomass) in the absence of oxygen in a process called pyrolysis. Biochar sequesters carbon and got a boost during the Obama Administration so more applications for it are still being advanced by the US Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station.

According to a 2013 Argonne National Lab study the Black Hills National Forest is highly suitable for that type of harvest. But, as Jim Neiman shutters his sawmill in Hill City, South Dakota other timber harvesters are converting the kilns that dry lumber to biochar production.

If there’s a piece of wood out there, James Gaspard will probably take it. The 17 acres his company owns in Berthoud, Colo., is stacked with rejected trees from across the state. The beetle-kill branches and fire-scarred trunks wait to be fed into 100 massive kilns, which look like a fleet of rusty UFOs landing in the farmland below Longs Peak. His company, Biochar Now, uses the contraptions to convert wood into biochar, a carbon-rich charcoal that can help soil retain water and nutrients. Products like biochar could provide the financial motivation for fire mitigation products, which reduce fuels but also creates massive piles of unwanted timber. [Colorado Public Radio]

In Bonner, Montana retired Forest Service project manager Dave Atkins is developing his own biochar production concept with yard landing waste and timber too small for commercial harvest.

Atkins says creating biochar out of young, skinny trees can reduce wildfire risk by removing “ladder fuels” — flammable material that can carry flames into the forest canopy — from vulnerable forests without releasing stored carbon into the atmosphere the way pile burning, the more common alternative, does. Adding biochar to a hard rock mining site can reduce the acidity and heavy metal pollution associated with mine drainage. Applied to drilling pads, it can expedite revegetation efforts. Atkins says that nearly two decades after he first started learning about biochar, the pieces appear to be falling into place. [Montana Free Press]

As it revises forest plans the USFS is preparing to burn slash piles on numerous national forests throughout the Mountain West. 

One need look no further than the Black Hills National Forest for how politics has completely altered a landscape but there are plenty other public lands examples that illustrate the red state, blue state divide. Here in New Mexico public comments on the upcoming forest plan will look way different than how they’ll read in my home state of South Dakota.

A study from American University posed some concern for the cost of producing biochar and argued it could be difficult to measure how much carbon biochar was specifically removing from the air. The study estimated biochar could sequester 500 million to 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) at a cost ranging from $18 to $166 per ton. Much of that cost, the study read, would depend on the amount of organic material specifically grown for biochar production. “The potential and cost of using biochar at large scale remain somewhat unclear,” read the study. “Further research is needed to refine global and regional estimates of biochar’s cost and potential.” [Carlsbad Current-Argus]

At least one company is converting waste from the cannabis industry to produce biochar.

Learn more about the US Biochar Initiative linked here.

ip photo: mixed pine, fir and aspen stand after the 2011 Las Conchas Fire.