GJ: My first reaction was that this isn't a viable biochar system. It wouldn't have happened without subsidies. Frye wouldn't even be in the chicken business without subsidies for maize since that is a primary ingredient for chicken feed.

PS: It should pencil out as a replacement for propane, as it turns the manure from a waste disposal cost element into an alternative fuel. I suppose it is just a question of how long you need to amortize the equipment cost to achieve a competitive ROI. I assume it is positive, but you never know until you get out the calculator. OTOH, the market price of $600/ton for the char mentioned in the article is um likely more conceptual than actual.

GJ: My second reaction was that this was a waste of chicken manure, a particularly rich fertilizer since chickens have poor digestive systems that allow lots of nutrients to pass through undigested. When spread on fields soil bacteria finish the job of breaking it down to plant available forms.

PS: True, but if the manure is building up b/c the local demand isn't there, that is not workable. The sweet combination is to make char from only as much manure as can't be distributed as nutrient rich fertilizer and mix that char with chicken manure: the mix is worth more than the sum of the parts.

GJ: It would have been cheaper to just give propane to Frye and better to continue using his chicken manure for fertilizer. Biochar is a good thing, but subsidies enable systems to be created and operated that would never exist if they had to actually pay for themselves, and distort agronomic decisions. I think that this discredits biochar, making it subject to the same sort of criticisms as other not-ready-for-use greenish ideas.

PS: A few subsidies in the front end, to prime public perception is a good thing. But permanent and generous subsidization is dangerous and damages the long term potential of the solution, biochar in this case. When a problem owner sees a problem as worth more as an attractant of funding than the value of solving the problem, all sorts of perversity results. Yech.

GJ: In my view Lehmann has repeatedly shown bad judgement, associating himself with unwise projects in his efforts to promote biochar. Biochar needs a wise champion, someone who sees its value and uses, and will support projects that show it in good light. For example, the same type of demonstration system that took problem materials that have few uses - such as orchard and vineyard prunings, or forest slash - would be compelling. The Danish system mentioned in Energy Mates uses old wooden packing crates.

PS: I can see that. In his defense, Johannes is learning from his mistakes, as we all are. I am now a little skeptical of using forest slash, unless it is to convert forest to pasture. The large scale Canadian forest biochar proposal in 2007 was poorly conceived from the start, and then the Wardle study came out in 2008 showing that biochar stimulates the decomposition of forest litter. That's a positive feature if you are using biochar to goose your compost, not so great for maintaining forest litter, and few have promoted a forest slash proposal since.

GJ: It is interesting that some of the research about biochar done in S. America found that biochar was particularly beneficial when coupled with chicken manure, not made from it. The manure provided nutrients and the biochar helped make good use of them.

PS: The combination of biochar plus chicken manure is working wonders on my 8 cu yd leaf pile right now. I used only 0.25% volume:volume char+manure. There is ice on the tarp, but underneath its 60 degrees and steaming away. Normally the pile just sits there cold and wet, a static pile waiting for spring to be fed into the compost-proper.

Can you point me to more about the Canadian forest slash proposal? Was anything actually done, did things go beyond the proposal stage?

I am influenced by my local situation. Huge quantities of forest slash, orchard and vineyard prunings and other woody materials are burned continuously.

• vineyard prunings are dropped between the rows and later baled like large round hay bales and hauled miles away to a cogen plant to be burned.
  
• Orchard prunings are chipped to reduce volume but not mass and hauled away too.
  
• Truck after truck comes down off the mountain loaded with slash from forest maintenance (Sequoia National Forest and state forests).
  
• Trash from the lumber mill that has no higher market value (sawdust for instance is coveted by some) goes to be burned too.
  
• Every year in early summer the power transmission companies generate mountains of tree trimmings cleared away from power lines.
  
• Urban and suburban trees go down, or just drop limbs (self-prunning, ha ha), especially after storms. More mountains of woody material.
  
• Industrial woody wastes - boxes, pallets - and woody construction wastes are common too though they would have to be carefully managed for toxic material (treated lumber) and embedded metals etc.
  

I imagine diverting those streams to char production, doping it with dairy manure, and so make a significant improvement in ag lands while ameliorating some waste and emissions problems. It's not worth $480 a ton but I think that it would be a money spinner at a quarter of that, especially if clever use was made of coproducts such as in a CHP system or even using the off gases for chemical/fuel/fertilizer manufacturing.

In my view the price of biochar needs to be loosely comparable to other soil amendments such as manure and compost for growers to buy lots of it. Applying tons per acre to millions of acres, as would be required to have any of the imagined impacts, has to be affordable. There can still be a gardener market for bagged material that is hideously expensive on a per ton basis, but for commercial growers the price needs to be far lower.

I'm trying to interest some fellows who have the where with to do with in these schemes. If subsidized demonstration systems are to be useful for kick starting this industry then they need to be commercially viable demonstrations. In my view projects like Frye's do more harm than good since they do not actually demonstrate anything that could attract investors.