An earlier post repeated an often voiced notion:

I suspect that if the biomass removed for fire management was pyrolyzed and used as a soil amendment that carbon sequestration would rise rather than fall as when used for fuel. This has long seemed to me to be an emerging best practice. . .

Forest cleanup and management also seems like it would be a boon to local communities that have suffered from reduced production of forest products.

For example:

With the support of $4.25 million in federal economic stimulus money, they expect to create at least 40 jobs and put the county at the forefront not only of new energy technology, but an emerging field of soil science focused on charcoal-like biochar.

Borgford said total investment could reach $19 million, much of that provided by his family. . .

The Kulzer project will start with site preparation for a community center/Borgford office site, but the real centerpieces will be the gasifiers. The devices, each the size of a small room, will generate electricity as well as byproducts like distilled water, bio-oil and, perhaps most importantly, jobs. . .

Stevens County Commissioner Merrill Ott said he is excited about the gasifier’s ability to diversify the area’s output of forest products by putting to good use logging slash and other materials that now go to waste. . .

Borgford said the combination of rising fuel prices and the need to clear away forest debris suggested the time was right to build a commercial-scale gasifier. As soon as the paperwork can be overcome in time, and the grant money is in hand, he said, “We will be moving ahead very, very fast.”

This project meets many of the requirements I've enumerated as attributes of a sensible char system. It's located in a hungry forest products community and uses forest slash as feedstock. It focuses on the syngas products that have current market value while producing a char residual. It's even sited where a sawmill died. It's too bad that about 20% of the capital is government pork since this not only hog ties the developers in red tape, it warps the process in ways that conceal the possible viability of the plant as a real business.

There's an increasing amount of interest among biochar advocates for biochar testing and characterization. It varies depending on the feedstocks used and the methods employed. This has long been known and efforts to develop comprehensive tests are being developed to establish standards that will allow growers to better predict the effects that char would have when used as a soil amendment. It's been likened to existing testing and reporting standards used for compost, which is also a semi-mysterious soil amendment that varies depending on inputs and methods.

Early research suggests that the most beneficial biochar is produced at moderate temperatures. The Borgford system is a high temperature system. It may be better for production of the gases used for the main products, but worse for the char coproduct. I expect these trade-offs to be an ongoing issue and a area of innovation where methods and designs to maximize all outputs will be sought.