U.S.-FocUSed Biochar report - BioEnergy Lists

eowner will have one half of the 3.69 pallets (7,385 / 2000 = 3.69) = 1.85 pallets of biochar. In total, the homeownerhas handled (7385 + 923 =) 8758 pounds of material during the heating season, an increase of 46 weight percentover the “no biochar” baseline, and handled a volume equal to 5.54 pallets of wood pellets, an 85 volume percentincrease over the baseline. As such, the homeowner has added some sweat equity to the additional cost of fuel toproduce biochar while providing the original heating requirement.For the case where 25 weight percent of the incoming wood pellets is converted to biochar, the biochar contains37.5% of the incoming fuel value and the wood pellets only yield (8000 * 62.5% =) 5000 Btu per pound. In this case,9,600 pounds of wood pellets are needed and 2,400 pounds of biochar will be produced. While the additionalfuel requirement remains $0.15 per pound of biochar, the material handling requirements of the higher biocharproduction scenario increase to twice the weight handled and 2.4 times the volume handled, as compared to the“no biochar” baseline.While the incremental cost of biochar is $0.15 per pound, based on the additional wood pellets needed and thecost of the energy exiting in the form of biochar, it is interesting to calculate the value that the biochar would haveto represent to underwrite the cost of the heating season. For the 12.5% yield scenario, if the biochar was valued at,or could be resold at, ($738.50 / 923 pounds =) $0.80 per pound, the homeowner could heat for free, plus the sweatequity. In the 25% case, the greater biochar yield reduces the cost to ($960.00 / 2400 pounds =) $0.40 per pound.While the value of the biochar must be significantly higher than the incoming fuel, the values calculated do notappear to be out of line with current “retail” biochar prices. In fact, most current biochar sales are transacted at$0.50 per pound or more, in addition to shipping costsOne underlying fundamental is that the raw material cost of biochar production is 1.5 times the cost of the incomingdry weight biomass. This relationship is derived by the energy ratio of wood biomass at 8000 Btu/# andbiochar at 12,000 Btu/#. As such, this relationship will apply whenever both the biomass and biochar are valuedon a moisture-free ash-free basis and the energy produced by the biochar generating process is used as heat.These applications are known as “CHAB” applications, standing for Combined Heat and Biochar. In CHAB applications,the cost of the biochar is tied to the cost of the incoming biomass, since a fixed heat demand is beingserviced and some excess biomass is being converted to biochar. In this case, the biochar raw material cost is theincremental additional biomass cost.If only biochar is being produced, and the available carbon-neutral heat is not being utilized, the application isknown as “Biochar only”. In this configuration, the raw material cost of the biochar is tied to the efficiency ofconverting biomass to biochar. If some heat is being utilized, but additional biochar is desired, a portion of thebiochar will effectively be produced at CHAB raw material ratios and the remainder as “Biochar only” raw materialcosts.The “Biochar only” case also occurs when the heat valued as “free” or when the biochar production volume resultsin a vast excess of unusable carbon-neutral waste heat. Then, the calculated raw material cost becomes the cost ofthe amount of biomass necessary to create one unit of biochar. Thus, as seen above, if the char yield is 12.5%, then8 pounds of wood pellets are needed, as a cost of $0.80/# of biochar. Similarly, 25% yield scenario needs 4 poundsof wood pellets per pound of char, at a cost of $0.40/# of biochar.The above examples look at an expensive biomass source, wood pellets, and the scenario of producing relativelysmall quantities of biochar at the residential scale. For industrial scale applications, the incremental cost of theraw materials to yield biochar becomes quite low. For example, if hog fuel is available at $25/ton, correspondingto $0.0125 per pound, then the incremental raw material cost for biochar is $0.01875/# or less than 2 cents perpound. However, the material handling issue does not disappear at the industrial scale, with 25 percent biocharyields doubling the weight handling requirements, as seen before.In summary, any biochar production scenario will have significant amounts of thermal energy generated in conjunctionwith the biochar production. If the biochar is valued at higher than 1.5 times the biomass cost, in additionto the conversion cost surcharge of higher material handling costs and incremental capital and operatingBiochar and energy linkages in: Biochar and Energy Co-products 19