Biochar explained
What is pyrolysis?
Pyrolysis is basically heating in an oxygen-depleted environment. Most people are familiar with pyrolysis from cleaning their oven at home. Here, the oven is heated to very high temperatures in a low-oxygen environment that allows dirt and grime to be charred and easy to clean.
Among Pyrolysis Denmark's members, the ovens are slightly larger than the ones in the kitchen. And among our members, various biomasses are heated and converted into gas, bio-oil and biochar in the process.
The typical biomasses used are digestate from biogas plants, other agricultural residues and sewage sludge. However, anything can theoretically be pyrolyzed to produce different products in the form of biochar, carbon removal and energy.
What members of Dansk Pyrolyse have in common is that we use green biomasses that would otherwise typically be treated as waste products.
You can read more about pyrolysis here (see Chapter 2).
Biochar is one of the products created by the pyrolysis process.
Biochar can sequester and store CO2 for 100s of years - helping to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. This is also what is known as "Carbon Capture", which is seen as an important tool in the fight against climate change.
Biochar has many properties, but the typical use of biochar is to spread it on agricultural land, where it will contribute to storing CO2 in the soil, but also has a number of soil-improving effects.
Biochar can also be mixed with cement to make it more climate-friendly and in several cities, biochar is used in beds and green areas to improve the soil's ability to withstand periods of drought or heavy rainfall, which we are seeing more of these years.
Since biochar can store and sequester CO2 for many years, you can also buy and sell CO2 certificates that can be used to reduce your own or your company's net CO2 emissions.
CO2 certificates are traded on certified exchanges with certified companies, ensuring transparency and security when purchasing CO2 capture and storage.
You can read more about biochar and biochar opportunities here.
What is biochar?
What is biomass?
Biomass is a common term for the quantity of all living organisms in a particular area or ecosystem at a particular time.
Biomass can therefore be many things. In the context of pyrolysis, we are talking about digestate from biogas plants, straw waste and sewage sludge. But in other countries, many other forms of biomass are used, such as wood chips, peanut shells and more.
Biomass is often maligned because some people "produce" biomass with the sole intention of burning it - for example, planting a tree only to cut it up and burn it.
The typical biomass used by Danish pyrolysis operators is usually a "waste product" or biomass that is created after another process has ended. For example, the digestate from a biogas plant or sludge from a wastewater treatment plant.
You can read more about examples of accepted biomass for pyrolysis here.
