Could you provide some background on BC Biocarbon and your role in the company from the beginning?
Founded in 2011, BC Biocarbon is an innovative waste-to-resource company that specializes in pyrolysis, a process through which residual substances are thermo-chemically converted to produce carbon-rich solids, liquids, and gasses in the absence of oxygen. In 2018, we developed our first continuous flow production unit designed to operate at a processing rate of one metric ton of biomass per hour and with a conversion ratio of four tons of biomass to one ton of biochar.
When I first joined the climate change sector after many years of working in the electronics industry, I studied up on many forms of technical carbon removal. Like many engineers, I was eager to find a company and a technology with the potential to accomplish durable and long lasting carbon removal. What fascinated me about biochar was its dual purpose as both a removal and as a highly useful output product benefiting multiple downstream industries. BC Biocarbon was taking that model even further and manufacturing gasses, oils and tars that are in demand, and all from waste materials. I was eager to help grow the team and the mission and to help with scale up to make a meaningful impact in the fight against climate change.
I joined BC Biocarbon in early 2022 and from that point on, I began growing BC Biocarbon’s business partnerships; including our relationship with one of Canada’s largest privately owned lumber companies and now our main source of input materials to our process.
What is unique about the technology BC Biocarbon employs to produce biofuels?
Our initial focus was on producing bio-coal out of residuals — any hydrocarbon that can be obtained from municipal solid waste, garbage wood, crop and lumber residuals, etc. The process we work by is unique in that we also process, decant, and distill the condensate (the gasses emitted through pyrolysis) into creosote oils or chemical compounds such as wood vinegar, which can be used as a bio stimulant, dedusting agent and de-icer. Our most valuable United States patent is probably the process by which we produce and combine a substance we call “glassy tar” with biochar and then press it into a high-quality bio-coal that is waterproof and can be easily transported by train. Overall, our pyrolysis equipment and processes yield energy efficient charcoals of about 90% carbon content with properties that are useful for a variety of purposes, including combustion, cement and steel manufacture, filtration, and for retaining water in soils, adjusting pH, and harbouring healthy bacteria and nutrients for plant growth.
We are known for our relationship with the lumber industry that has enabled us to build a ten-ton-an-hour biorefinery by taking wood residuals from Saskatchewan, Canada and turning them into biochar that we sell to the horticulture industry for its soil-enriching properties. Because the biochar is used as a soil amendment rather than combusted as a bio-coal, this process also allows us to generate carbon credits. Our plan is to expand our processing rate from two and a half tonnes to ten tonnes of biomass per hour by 2025.
How widely are your products utilized today? And what are their principle applications?
We typically receive requests from clients who are reaching out to the International Biochar Institute (IBI) in search of equipment that can transform a large supply of biomass (e.g., from a lumber mill) at an efficient cost and processing rate. In these instances, we are known for the multitude of products we can produce as well as our ability to scale production.
I think the biochar industry is still a nascent one in the U.S. and Canada if you compare it to that of Europe, which uses the product to filter water in sewage systems. Biochar is also used as an activated carbon, which has a host of applications such as controlling the mercury levels of flue gasses. In Europe, biochar sells for approximately €800 a ton and has a mandate for use in agriculture, whereas in North America its demand is just now starting to pick up.
What are your key objectives for the next few years?
We are looking to find more partnerships to expand our production of biochar (and carbon credits) that we can sell to the agriculture and horticulture industries. At the same time, I feel it is an environmental imperative that we continue to make bio-coal out of municipal solid waste, which might become a more significant revenue stream in time than our production of carbon-rich biochar for the agricultural industry.
In Canada we are heavily subsidizing liquid biofuels and renewable natural gas, but no one is financing the bio-coal industry.
This is an important issue when it comes to thinking about how the cement and steel industries, which both have significant carbon footprints, need bio-coal to decarbonize quickly. It is more lucrative to profit off carbon credits by selling biochar to the agricultural industry (who ultimately buries the carbon rather than burning it) than it is to sell non-subsidized bio-coal at the same price as standard fossil fuel coal. Which is to say that I would like to see a shift in government financing toward bio-coal.
Lastly, we also aim to continue building facilities near lumber mills to optimize our negative carbon footprint by avoiding the transport of large quantities of biomass to our pyrolysis equipment.
