Terra-Char & Bioforcetec

[Erich Knight]

Dear Dr. Hansen,

I sent you a bunch of biochar research o what about 7 years ago, I have been a very active biochar advocate and you also worked with a good friend of mine from high school, who is the epa's guy on Ocean rise, Jim Titus.

I am so glad to see your name is on this rock flour paper, ( what they call Rock Dust in Europe).

I wanted to tell you about a biochar company named Terra-Char, they're soils guy is David yarrow, they have been adding biochar to commercial soybean and corn fields in the Boot of Missouri for several years realizing record Harvest of 60 bushel per acre and 280 bushel per acre.

They have also added to their no till seed drill not only biochar but rhyolite rock dust they Attain from the waste piles of a local shingle Factory. This shingle Factory has mountains of fines they have no use for.

I also wanted to mention that in Europe there is a company who was cited by Richard Branson's carbon prize group that uses Olivine rock dust for massive carbon sequestration.

Also you may be interested in an Italian pyrolysis company that has become the cat's meow of the California Air Board, (CAB).

Bioforcetec is their name and I have included one of their principles as a cc on this email. They have developed a biologically driven the  aerobic de-watering process which uses no additional energy because the microbes build up the temperature to 140 degrees Centigrade. Then they use a pyrolysis reactor to take the human biosolids to biochar and unlike other large manufacturers, they have off-take contracts for the next 10 years for all of their biochar, used as a binder in manufacturing.

 The largest fracture of biochar currently in the country is Coaltec who produced 17000 tons of biochar last year, mostly they use animal manure as their feedstock. They also have plants being built in Russia the Netherlands and about a half-dozen around our country.

In the last year the most important paper on biochar I have seen was a collaboration with the Canadian light source characterizing the humic surface structure of biochar, also a co-author was Hans Peter Schmidt of the Ithaka Institute.

Please contact me if you have any questions or want a broader briefing about the companies and studies that I mention.

Regards,

Erich j Knight, 

540 289 9750