World Views : France – Biochar, looking to find its place
Cornelia RUMPEL – CNRS
Marc LE TREIS, Responsable du pôle biocombustible – AILE – THREE C
Hervé DENIS, Président – B2E – Bretagne Eco-Entreprises
Lydia FRYDA, chargée recherche bioenergie et biochar – UniLaSalle
Florent BOURGAREL, CEO – GAZOTECH
Pierre DOREAU, Responsable du Développement Commercial – Charwood Energy
Christophe SERPEAU, Directeur du développement – GAZOTECH
You can download the presentations from this page : https://www.bio360expo.com/Page/1098/program-2023
Is without further ado we just heard the person asking different questions sector and we are going to elaborate on this recently you might have seen an article that has the same name same name as our presentation and we will try to detail what was mentioned in this article in Western France
In this region we mainly work so of course it only makes sense that we are here four or five years ago we worked on the power gasification sector and on creating a market and we suggested to our hosts to put the topic via chart forward and we immediately see so interest arising
From different actors So this is the introduction of our association to what we’ve learned from a program we work on with people that’s all here today the idea is to work on a local and search and we have different challenges that we have started working on foreign and I will have the floor back again later And then 16 with the redirect program there had been some work done about the underutilized biomass so in fact we can look at 2008 and the objective is to make sure that the players that are interested can meet and we want projects to appear to develop iotr we want to structure the
Market in a better way we want to make sure that this particular industry is recognized by the institutions and we want the industry to have a clear objective the partnership the 3C partnership is part of interreg there is the UK there is Ireland the
And you can see if you are in the room that uh the UK and show their hands well there is Ireland and there’s no room anyway and Belgium there is also Wales and then the Netherlands are not well to the Netherlands says the speaker and Germany
Ourselves in hubs labs and Nets the Nets part means that we can be together we are Partners from different cultures from different countries the lab part is the Laboratories the expertise the analysis the hubs art is what we are able to do ourselves I.E the networking
The setup of networks and also to offer the data of a resource center I explained it to you that I uh will mention what has been done in the last two and a half years what we want to do is create a community of players for the
Biochar industry we set up a working group which means that we have managed to get together 271 players that have taken part one or the other of the working groups and in fact we have organized the eight the Matic meetings either online or face to
Face and when it was played to face it was to visit some plants but we’ll send me things that to identify the characteristic of the industry where the webinar on certification mentioning that it is important to know what is happening in other countries such as the EBT certification
We linked our players close communities for example the ones that work on methane realizations and by your chalk I won’t give you the list of the eight working groups this is a collaboration between and we as far as networks are concerned we worked on communication we are here at this Congress
We are speakers on different topics and it is important to be present at different events so that we make sure our players are known and especially to the institutional act players and there is a Common Thread that has guided us over the last two and a half years it is
To make sure that Adam the agency that is responsible for energy in France is well informed and that we answer the questions of the institutions and as I said also there are some conferences on biochar so this type of networks is carrying on at the level of your
Repentance is a good thing that there is a European project it is good to pull our resources our knowledge and we have organized Meetings online not online and therefore we have exchanged remotely but we have also gone on a study trip which is extremely important if you want to share
Know-how and it is important to train the various players of the industry that means creating a network of the various and labs and we have got labs in Germany in uh France which include the idea is to work on themes that are specific to each country I am not going
To tell you all the topics that you need LaSalle is there to with I invite you to come to our booth and talk to us in a minute we’ll talk about what has been done so far so we explained the origins and where we are at what
Remains to be done within the program which will last till June 2023 first of all we are here at this bo360 and also on the 29th of March we have got the National Conference on biochars and it is simple to register you can see at the bottom on the right there is
A point of contact and there was already a conference last year the conference for this year will enable everybody to have an exchange about what is happening in the various regions I don’t want to give you the details the people that will take part so please uh
G41 we’re still here today we shall not be here tomorrow and so this national conferences will take place in in Brittany the objective is to think collectively to reflect collectively there will be round tables in the morning there will be workshops it’s the opportunity to explain a new
Approach or a trial with some results if you want to come and speak but get on with it because obviously at the end of March 29th of March is soon What is being organized this year by a chance it’s looking is seeking to make its place in the world well a lot of players are involved in the biochar industry at the beginning of the 3D program we wanted to create circular economies at the local level having biomass suppliers
And players who would want to use by your child that was the original idea of the program obviously you can apply it to other Industries a very often very quickly we realized that there were some barriers the economic Logistics but also structural linked to the fact that this industry is not really mature
So for example there are misconceptions about biocharge we don’t know what the customers potential is they are fears about the resource itself and how will by your child be used there is no feedback really we have Solutions provide this and we don’t necessarily have their feedback we can however get feedback from other
Countries but then the background is not the same from the economic or regulatory point of view and there is also the necessity to develop skills and competencies in order to develop projects and to operate them and they are economic barriers somebody’s editorial by your child is expensive but what which by
Your child and what do you use it for so it is important to manage to match the potential of the product and the uses of that product so we have identified uh topics that we should there Twist from your topic uh therefore go beyond the use of a simple return to
The soil and how to favor uses cascading uses so we are suggesting that the projects that could be widened by looking at further uses not only return to the soil and not all by your child by the way should be returned to the soil uh cnis will mention it in a
Minute so there are uses before the return to the soil that can be interesting and some of the players could talk to you about those are for storing carbon yes but not only and biocharge should not be only carbon storage and we shall see later on that
Biota can do other things as other functions has taken the point the quality you are not talking about one by your child but several by your child they must be more visible obviously we have by your child producers that have been operating for many years but we must know more about
Them because some of them are very well structured and we should encourage others to become producers to meet at the demand that is for what we are detecting as actions is there is some challenges the institutions I have said to us what is what will happen if biochar is only
Returned to the soil well you have to have priorities to decide what is the value of the various uses and you must diversify the industry so from the resource point of view it is important to carry on with the work about the part of the biomass that is that is not used
Or very badly used and Jacques will now had something with examples if you look at resources we haven’t really looked to the two points that are on the right I think the pictures in France looked at wood biomass and our German and Belgian colleagues were more interested in herbicious crust biomass
This is true for uh BB and so the idea is to raise the biomass and you recover the solid part you make from the solid top and you recover the wet part for other uses that I will rather talk about wood biomass will not be the same
Each one of the resources and therefore the end use may be very different with more biodegradability if you have rather than a wood biochar So the challenge is that today we already have that that I use such as the uh wood in lot also uh obviously the more you go towards the right hand side of this picture the youth is and you also have mattered then that is much more difficult to put through
Uh they are technical difficulties it does not mean that they are intermountable I have tried here that show the various uses of a biocharge and those are the various things the various duties you could look at maybe with a substrate that are very bio decredible uh so there are a number of challenges
Especially in effluent management is concerned you mustn’t forget about the functions and the wrong problems with returning to the toilet for example if I put a chicken litter into the methane thank you in the Cascade in the form and that that could make sense still we obviously Grew From experiments and the experiences
And other countries we use also the results of research interested and these days we have a farmers that can see that is interesting to use various functions the fact that there is to define a product to look at the very least use a lot of work has been done in this field
We have got together by your chance producers and then you must have a um certification organizations and we have the EBC certification for some time we have been in the bioenergy industry for 25 years and from then on we had to move on to standards and in this case
Higher energy industry as being structured and we have managed to reassure the customer and in France the bio Industries relatively recent which is a plus and we are surrounded by countries that have already worked on biocharge and we can really use their work their research their experiments
Decide on regulation and we have to reassure the institutions very quickly and I do not go into the details but there are a number of things that are reassuring as far as the product stocks concerned that is about the fact that product is safe and about its function it is a
Really important if biocharge is to be returned to the soil so I’m not going to go back to those two points of safety and functions looking at the Quality we should like to go a little bit further and we asked the public institutions and in this case uh them
We asked them to uh what would be the possible and they’ve said it is important to have a study on the characteristics of French in France and it is important to have a common protocol produces they have an idea of what the characteristics of the products
Also the analysis will be carried out by is a partner with Europe and a French level we want also to contribute to the standardization project on the biocharge so that will be ISO standards this is not in competition with anything why it’s important to establish the characteristics of a French biocharge
The idea is to reassure to encourage the customer to look at new markets and to make sure that there is During the last Workshop in December we added 10 companies that produce the bio children that would be interested um foreign join us I think that Cornelia is so what are we going to talk about if we want to be criticized we will talk about the carbon removal this is our third
And it is important to get money if you want an industry that is a sustainable and that is always difficult to explain that there is a price today that might be different tomorrow so it’s clear that there must be some value added within the industry and before looking at the carbon removal we
Must look at other uses of carbon removal In the approach for carbon scoring that is proposed by the commission and was proposed in at the end of 2020. there are two criteria that are coming to a certification so quantification and availability and then there is the length of courage in the soil of value truck is important
That we have information and this sustainability in the Environmental Center so there will be a second part until we let the industry be able to meet those two challenges will introduce We’ll add her comments from you and then we’ll let Cornelia know when she can make her comments can we do that technically
Can you hear yes I can hear you clearly this says Cornelia thank you okay a short introduction on the summer well scientific aspects on the carbon storage we will talk a lot we have talked a lot about carbon storage and carbon credits well here is a here are some present
More talk on uh neutral point of view authentication on what what we mean with the carbon stability um well I should have drawn a timeline but well I didn’t I just find it very interesting to consider the ipcc report up to uh well for several years now the
This report the GX has summarized very well in in detail the zero emission Technologies in the meantime biochar has become quite quite important as well as a carbon storage and zero emission or negative emission technology finally buy a chart has been included in the itcc report in 2019 and that was
Important because this made it possible also to um to stress out how important it is to have biochar as a as a carbonyl carbon well negative technology but officially and very recently biochar also founded where its way to the e-regulation uh well it’s still a proposal but it’s in
The pipeline the EU is planning to introduce a new regulation on a certifying CO2 removal this report is quite well it’s still in the making the regulation is still in the making but what is very very important is that there is a separate Annex on this regulation that details
The uh the mechanisms that would make CO2 removal possible um and in this Annex biochar is mentioned many times it’s over 40 times and someone wants to count in how many instances biochar is detailed in the different mechanisms and the possible projects and what needs to be very
Carefully defined is the criteria for uh this certification scheme so we from from well we want to answer from the science point of view uh is it possible and how it is possible to lock away carbon forever permanently so we need to be sure of its stability of
Carbon as a material that it will not Decay after a few uh after some time uh we have to take into account well we need to take into account the benefits the core benefits of biochar projects because it’s not only the carbon storage that will motivate the the massive uh
Application of biochar products and we have to be sure that during the lifetime of a biochar project we know exactly what are the the emissions so very few words to introduce the subject well about biocharid carbon stability there is not one single protocol yet there is not one single standard there are some
Protocols proposed and applied in the lab I have personally worked in some of them which consider well they consider the bioterrorism material that needs to be tested for its stability um the scientific literature is quite rich I always like to refer to the EBC the European biocharge certificate which
Gives a very uh a good overview and actually sets the basis for a certification and proposes also ways to check the stability of carbon there are some very nice reports in the very recent publication for which I copied this very nice graph that shows the difference the difference in stabilities
Of carbon it can be it can be stable but also London certain conditions carbon can be less stable oh yeah and I would like now to introduce um Dr Cornelia rumpel from the cnrs she’s a research director at the cnrs the French national Research Center soil biochemistry Institute of ecology
And environment in Paris she has been working for some years now on the development of innovative agroecological strategies to increase soil carbon sequestration and she’s also president of the technical Committee of the four per thousandth initiative which aims to increase the soil carbon concentration and the the floor or the screen is yours
Thank you the the problem is the main initiative aims to increase with carbon stocks not not to concentrate it’s not the same so with uh it’s just just as a correction so you will change the slides for me Lydia could you please change the slide yeah
So um I was asked to tell you a bit more about the core benefits of biochar so as we heard earlier biochar has a very high porosity and can therefore lead to water retention aeration uh it can be um not as the lady said make a substrate for microorganisms
Microorganisms they find the habited in biocharge or biochar it’s not um decomposable a very very few of the biochar when you put it in soil it’s decomposable by a microorganisms could you please go back hello return please yeah so um it’s not a substrate for microorganisms so it does not favor
Directly the microbial activity this rather a microbial habitat um biochar can also absorb nutrients and therefore can be a nutrient store in biochar addition to soil as we see on the picture um we can easily uh recognize because it changes completely the color of the soil and the
Um the idea that biochar can has actually a lot of core benefits came comes actually from the analysis of the so-called terabetta soils in Brazil where in former times the Incas use the biochar to put as we put the biochar in the soil and these soils containing the
Bioches they were very fertile and therefore by your tradition to soil may help to improve several of the soil functions as a nutrient storage capacity bioshack can be a pH buffer a biochar increases the water holding capacity of the soil and maybe the habitat for microorganisms however biochar is not a
Fertilizer but it can be used as a soil conditioner next please foreign types of biochars we have a slow pyrolysis biochus which takes hours and gives us a Char uh in the end of uh the yield of CHA is 30 to 30 40 and the temperature ranges between 350 and 500
Degrees and then we can have faster paralysis that occurs within seconds and we have lower amounts of biochar but within the same temperature range gasification biochar um which of course is produced with sparsal oxidation also within seconds has a lowest charge yield only five to ten percent of the carbon of the biomass
Is transformed into Char and this of course it’s a very high temperature so above 70 700 degrees and we can have hydrothermal carbonization which is produced as very low temperatures 200 degrees and the Char amount of char is very high so um all these types of charge that are produced use feedstocks
Of feedstock for this is organic material and ideally it’s waste material so we will not cut the forest in order to produce biochar um on the waste material you are usually used you can use wood residues wheat straws corn Stova a lot of things for them the importance of the dry material is
Used for for the paralysis and gasification biochar production various liquids materials such as Wastewater sludge manure or poultry litter can also be used to produce hydrothermal carbonization chance next please so is it in sharp and biochar properties greatly depend on its production conditions here for example you have a graph which was
Um taken from a publication of Johannes Suleiman um so the it shows the paralysis of wood for one hour at each temperature and you see that the current recovery decreases with increasing temperature whereas the uh the other parameters you know assembly the surface area the pH the cation exchange capacity which is
Important for nutrient absorption increases with temperature and that there is a Optimum temperature for biochar production which was defined at 500 degrees and so actually most most scientific studies they use this biochar produced at this temperature so next slide please so a biochar effects on plant growth we
Have some studies reported very strong positive effects uh especially in tropical regions however there were um also many studies that showed uh positive negative or neutral effects and so this effect is not really clear especially in temperate regions and depends on many things on the feedstock
And on the biochar type that was used for the biochar production um yeah and many uh the mainly these studies are based on short-term studies there are very few long-term experiments that will give us information on the biochar fade in soil um next please yeah so a sort of
Um you cannot go back there was some recommendations given um that higher applications of Bio should be used for um choice because they can buffer and lower applications are needed for the Sandy soils and for growth applications biosha should have a low density High porosity low PH uh and Electrical uh cognitivity
Next please so there are also a negative effects that biochar can have for example depending uh on how biochar is produced it can introduce pollutants for example pahs or dioxins so this has to be checked biochar can induce at least the short-term very high as of excessive
Increase of pH in some in some soils and this can lead to limited nutrient availability a biochi Edition may increase soil salinity especially if it has a high electrical conductivity we can have advert effects on soil invertebrates because it absorbs a lot of water and for example earthworms do not like this
So much I can also reduce the effects of agrochemicals because it has a hydroption capacity and a biochar in terms of climate change mitigation as in terms of this is what we want when you put biochine the soil to increase the carbon store in order to take the carb
Out of the atmosphere and so when we put biochide the soil surface and the soil surface becomes dark and this uh um yeah this has an effect on the Albedo and actually the energy absorbed by the soil which is the dark and will be higher than in a soil without biochar and
Therefore this should be considered when biochar is used as a climate mitigation strategy next slide please yeah so uh and see Accu the biochar because it has a very low and slow decomposition rate due to the highly aromatic structures um is which is dependent on the feedstock on the temperature
Um the biochar actually leads to accumulation of organic matter so the residence time of wood biochase we heard is much higher than the herbal biochar and increase also with the temperature and then biochar additionally when it’s put into the soil has an effect on on it on the aggregation for example so it’s
Stabilizes carbon through favoring aggregation in addition to just uh just a stable C that is added to the soil with the biochar and also biotra induces the negative priming effects that means when you put biochar in the soil then you can preserve the native organic matter to a higher degree
Um then if you have a don’t have the biochar next please so and it’s important to note that the biochar is changing this time with aging in in the soil so the biocha is actually most of especially herbal biochar is very um friable so there’s a fragmentation occurring and the biochar becomes
Smaller we have oxidation reactions uh which create functional groups and favor leaching of biochar compounds there is a size fractionation occurring and also density fractionation and we can have stabilization of biochar by mineral interactions but when we add the biochar especially in the first years biocha is highly um
Susceptible to be transported from the site um in by wind and water in erosion especially fine particles so with time we will the the particles will become smaller we will have dissolved organic matter and also a mineral Associated biosity but um when we have small particles then
They are highly likely to be transported by wind or water next please yeah so remove cement and water and uh yeah some biocha um when when it’s uh with some biochar effects are only short term for example the effects on the pH because the biochar is aging with time and so we
Have removal of these hydrozone compounds which can create the higher ptmp ages um yeah next please yeah and so we are interesting we were interesting what is happening through time this biocha for example through weathering effects and therefore um at the phds through students christophness some of you may know who
Looked at uh who carried out a laboratory aging experiment in order to study the effect of laboratory aging of freeze drying and drying and betting cycles and freezing and de-freezing Cycles on the behavior of the biochar and he found that’s actually weathering of two types of different biochars as it was gasification biochus
Was produced with two different feedstocks so he had the herbal feedstock the mice biomass and the wood feedstock and he saw that actually had very high carbon losses through the weather Rings he had three cycles for the herbal biochar compared to the wood biochar which was rather stable when he
Studied the carb mineralization of this materials in the lab and he found that the from the the two biochar as it is lower residence times on the 100th day and 10 year time scale whereas both unvisited and better biochar from woods they were more stable after it had the same stability after
Um of 100 years the result showed that 50 of these biochars might still be present after 100 years and this is taken technique foreign foreign showed that after 100 years um approximately 50 of the 40 to 50 percent of the visit and unvisited biochar were still remaining so um we had uh
Important weathering losses which need to be taken into account when into account when assessing biochar stability as it’s not only microbial degradation but also the physical losses of biochar particles and the weathering losses reduced carbon storage potential at shorter time scales okay next slide please
Yeah so so we studied uh in in this project which I was taking apart uh we studied the fate of biochar under field conditions um so what we did uh we uh ameliorated loamy soil and in temporary climate under grassland conditions with biochar we used 30 trans per hectare and the
Biochar was labeled with C13 which means that we could follow the fate of the biochar um in situ through by the use of this isotopic technique and the result showed that the biochar stocks in fact decreased in 10 centimeters depths after three years and we found an accumulation of
Biocharparticles in 10 to 20 centimeter depths however when we compared the the total amount of the biochar which was still present in the soil after three years we found that we had deficit of 30 percent of the biochar um so we found we measured mineralization also and we found that
This accounted only for five percent of the losses and we had no lateral losses because the site was rather flat and therefore we hypothesized that there may have uh vertically transport might have occurred and that the biochar was probably removed by a leaching water and another difficulty which we have when we study
Soils at um ameliorated the spiral Char then we have a high terrain heterogeneity which obviously uh is is makes it more difficult to really evaluate the the losses okay next slide please um in the same experiment we Quantified also the biochar effects on soil organic matter pools after one year of exposure
And here we saw that in the bike soil um very much increased the carbon stocks and this com stocks have found for the native soil organic matter maybe mainly in the clay fraction uh in contrast the biochar was located mainly in particulate organic matter fractions and therefore this
Missiles show that we really completely changed the physical nature of the soil um and we in the next when you click one small piece all of the questions that we asked is how do these changes affect microbial activity and especially under drought conditions because you can use biochar uh
Ultra management of soil in order to fight against the drought because biocharm might help to preserve more plant available water when there are drought conditions next is and so um the students uh Lydia page was a PhD student also she carried out an experiment um in the lab where she studied a solo
Organic matter mineralization again thanks to the labeling and she saw that she the soil was amended with fresh biochar and also with this biocharm which already had been in the soil for one year and she found that the same amount of fresh and weathered biochar that the the
Aged biochild the weather biochar was able to um support microbial activity as the the carbon mineralization which is the measure of carbon of microbial activity even under growth road condition um even underground conditions so the controlled soil always has the lowest mineralization and the the soil containing the H to biotic has the
Highest mineralization and uh the Water holding capacity you see from the values uh was significantly increased in the soil containing the Aged biochar and therefore addition of biochar increases the microbial activity and plant available water even under drought conditions and this effect is much more pronounced for when for Aged by itself
So it’s important that the biochar yeah changes this time and develops its effects on plant growth and water content as mainly when when it ages next please um so we asked what is the effect of really very aged biot shark and what is the effect on microbial properties on the soil and and
Um therefore to do so we sampled ancient charcoal killings which contained biochar since 400 years and so when we looked at the charcoal we found that this Chapel is highly colonized with microbes in in agreement with all the literature and we also saw that the car mineralized mineralization of these soils
Is higher than than of the soils which did not contain biochar and and so biocharm really sustains the microbial activity and so we asked what is the effect of the sea storage and especially um in microbes developing the capacity to degrade the charcoal which is in soil for a long
Time so next please and here uh we we saw that when we ate we used the The Killing soil and see adjacent soil and it added plant material and looked at the mineralization rates and also the biochar and here we saw that the Kiln soil in the Kiln soil um the microbes
They were more able to degrade the plant material with regards to the adjacent soil they were more active they had a yeah better health we can say so the microbes were more able to use this plant material um but that’s when we added the biochar we did not find any significant differences so
Um biochar the microbes living in this biochar material since 400 years they were they were they did not adapt to its degradation and so this means that the biochar is really a substrate that is not very usable by the microbes and that’s this may stay in soil for very
Long time and we is there there have been studies showing uh that’s a hand-picked biochar from from soil can really be very very old even several thousand years old okay next please so what is the effect of this killing biochar on the plant growth and here we
See that in the Kiln soil where we have the HB biochar that we have a higher plant growth with regards to Fresh Fire and so it’s really um yeah the biochar develops it’s uh it’s uh who benefits this time as it’s not not uh with the fresh Bioshock can
Have some effect but this effect may change and the positive effects on plants growth really develop this time and uh yeah okay next please so in conclusion depending on the biochar properties its application to soil may have many core benefits biochar is not fertilizer and can also have
Adverse effects that need to be considered biochar characteristics determine the stability and impact on the environment depends on production conditions biochars have a condensed aromatic structure which is stable against microbial decomposition loss of biochar from the site of its deposition may occur through vertical and horizontal transport and the important
Point biochar properties may change this time thank you so Lydia I give back to you very very insightful um yeah I will uh continue with two very short parts of this presentation uh we talked about added value that we can give to biochar beside just uh looking at the carbon storage
Property which is uh of course important but we have to consider while they initially we started looking into biochar because of this uh very high added value you can have in soil because of well thanks to water holding capacity and th buffer and the effects of soil microbiome microbiology and well
Food security and all so I would like to present some work of my colleague Dr David from Manila salove I will go through the slides very quickly because of lack of time also well it’s not really only my work so I will just give you the resulting keywords
Uh at Bove they have tried in the frame of larger national projects they have tried to replace biochar in uh in Horticulture media to so to replace the pit here we see some results on oops they tried different plants different cultures and different biochars so this is just to compare different biochars
And we can see that all of them had an effect on the plant but what needs to be kept the message from here is that different charts have a very different effect on the same plant and what is important is well what what made the difference or what was the
Best working biochar is the one actually with high porosity a good surface area neutral pH so in a nutshell it’s all the properties that characterize a good pit so a good substrate needs a good biochar needs to be working as a good substrate so we already need we already know the
Characteristics of uh well the quality of good biochar for Horticulture there are also quite a lot of experience on open soil so biocharring agriculture um different agriculture practices were applied like the minerals and fertilizers compost and the combinations of them the results are uh well there are quite
A few reports and Publications but what is interesting to conclude that compost biochar or fertilizer biochar mixtures well just giving this more or less the same results as only as without biochar but the the soil the effect of the site and the soil is predominant more than
Anything else so a good soil will not be improved by uh an improvement of uh well by more fertilizer or biochar but what is very interesting from this study is that every biochar application managed to in to increase the carbon concentration in the soil and also the useful earthworm
Activity was and population was increased where there was biochar smaller scale tests at lab and that was a an internship that we co-supervised with my colleague they checked they did a very specific test they wanted to check the effect of biochar on a specific well it’s not an insect it’s a microorganism Columbus
Springtail I think so it seems that this small very useful organism likes to live in biochar so where there was more biochar there was more of this organism and the the the vegetable the plants the plant growth was much more important so an indirect effect direct indirect
So if we want to conclude of course we conclude always the same that there are different biochars and one has to choose the biochar suitable for their application there is no one bullet that can fit that can shoot everything a lot depends on the site itself on the
Soil poor soils can benefit a lot from biochar and consequent application of biochar can increase the carbon concentration in the soil and I want to just talk another one or two minutes uh it’s very important in every biochar project to consider the full life cycle emissions especially greenhouse gas emissions from the full
Project from beginning to the end because biochar is a potential carbon sink but it’s not one by default it depends a lot what we do with it just a reminder there is a difference between a carbon sink and a carbon removal and just carbon avoid it so CO2 sink or CO2
Avoid it just a reminder if we produce biochar and then we use it in um in in the metal industry in the reducer for example to replace fossil coal we just avoid some CO2 but we cannot claim any carbon removal um so in practice if we want to
Calculate our carbon footprint of or the well how much of CO2 we have stored by uh per ton of biochar it’s actually a simple calculation but we have to take into account that there is the stable part of carbon in biochar as we saw this very very insightful presentation of Dr rumpel
So most of the carbon will be stable but not all so this stable carbon will give us already a CO2 removal quantity but we have to be well we have to be sure that of the stability of carbon and very important we have to calculate we have to be sure of the
Emissions created from the beginning of our project the biomass harvesting transport until the end of the project the application of the chart and we have to be sure that our biochar will be applied in a in a in a way that will secure its permanence forever well I said long term but it’s
Not enough we have to be sure that our biochar project will secure the permanent storage of carbon so all this CO2 emitted from scratch to the end will have to be reduced we have to be deducted from our potential CO2 uh number that we have calculated so this is also explains the difference
You see numbers well it’s one between one and three tons of CO2 per ton of biochar that’s because of this LCA that needs to be done Um and this is my final slide what I think is important to include in every LCA we do have to question ourselves on the sustainable source of biomass uh where does it come from how does it grow um is it really correct to assume that biomass use and paralysis and combustion
Really leads to a neutral CO2 or do we have to take into account some CO2 there of course transport storage of biomass the conversion itself are there any other emissions that come due to the application of the Char and also we have to monitor the the biochar
Project all along its lifetime and with that I have concluded my presentation thank you [Applause] Mercedes merci Cornelia um The functions that are very useful the European commissions that we diversify the way we remove the carbon and as far as the storage it lasts we have got some figures the fact is that there are players that are looking at the topic they have some knowledge the knowledge must be a
Strikes in and it is important that we ass should develop our knowledge as carbon removal is concerned as we said in the first part we have to look there are total functions of biocharm before it is returned to return to the soil I will leave the floor to
Earthquake that will introduce the last part of this and also maybe Kristoff says well within the times So we have asked the P b2e to come and take part in this last part of the presentation and we wanted these two companies they organize themselves challenges from childhood will take the floor a fan And outside France we have several big projects a contract credit Foreign Hydrogen foreign Foreign Is one of our assets in your business model Kristoff now good afternoon we focused on the sale of equipment or the sale of the molecules in which case we operate the because when they use a paragraph twist are you produced by your truck and using this by
Your child would you like to move he’s taken into account when you look at the final price of the money we can have office is you really Than the one that produced from the Indian technology when I talked about quality we talked about 300 yeah 550 square meters per gram on the Asian technology rather than the other one was Indian technology so it is very um uh biocharm from our thyroid gratification in plants and process and
We are talking with it the use of um emissions that’s it Mercy thank you merciful thank you for these two examples thank you very much for coming uh and we would like you at least 41 to carry on to this question about your child I think that they will also a drink organized
And we can obviously carry on discussing this topic of a drink on the 29th of March for the National Conference that will be organized there in partnership with Adam and with other partners in the biota industry thank you very much and I hope to see you soon