At a red-brick factory in the port city of Hamburg, Germany, the pods of cocoa beans enter at one end, and a wonderful black powder that can withstand climate change comes out the other. The substance, called biochar, is produced by heating cocoa pods to 600 degrees Celsius (1112 Fahrenheit) in an oxygen-free chamber.

The process inhibits greenhouse gases and the end product can be used as a fertilizer or an ingredient in the production of “green” concrete. Although the biochar industry is still in its infancy, experts say the technology offers a new way to remove carbon from Earth’s atmosphere.

According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), biochar could potentially be used to capture 2.6 billion of the 40 billion metric tons of CO2.₂, which humanity now produces every year. But expanding its use remains a problem.

Amazonia

“We’re changing the carbon cycle,” said Paik Stenlund, CEO of Circular Carbon, at the biochar plant in Hamburg. One of Europe’s largest factories, the factory delivers used cocoa pods from a nearby chocolate factory through a network of gray pipes. Biochar captures CO₂it is contained within the bark in a process that can be used for any other plant.

If the cocoa pods were disposed of normally, the carbon in the unused by-product would be released into the atmosphere during decomposition. Instead, carbon accumulates in biochar “for centuries”, according to David Guben, an environmental scientist at the UniLaSalle Institute in France. One metric ton of biochar, or biochar, can store “equivalent to 2.5 to three tons of CO2,” Houben told AFP.

Biochar was used as a fertilizer by Native Americans before it was rediscovered in the 20th century by scientists who explored the highly fertile soils of the Amazon basin.

The spongy structure of this amazing substance increases the yield by increasing the absorption of water and nutrients by the soil. In Hamburg, the factory is enveloped in the faint scent of chocolate and warmed by the heat emanating from the factory’s pipes. The final product is bottled in white bags for sale in pellet form to local farmers.

One of these farmers is Silvio Schmidt, 45, who grows potatoes near Bremen, west of Hamburg. Schmidt hopes the biochar will help “provide more nutrients and water” to its sandy soils.

carbon cost

The production process, called pyrolysis, also produces a certain amount of biogas that is resold to a nearby factory. The plant produces 3,500 tons of biochar and “up to 20 megawatt-hours” of gas per year from a total of 10,000 tons of cocoa husks. However, scaling the production method to the level predicted by the IPCC is still difficult.

“To make the system store more carbon than it produces, everything has to be done locally, with little or no transportation. Otherwise it just doesn’t make sense,” Huben said.

And not all soil types adapt well to biochar. Huben said the fertilizer is “more effective in tropical climates” and the raw materials for its production are not ubiquitous. Cost can also be prohibitive – “around €1,000 ($1,070) per tonne is too much for a farmer,” he added.

Houben said other uses must be found to make better use of the powerful black powder. For example, the construction industry can use biochar to produce “green” concrete. But to make a profit, biochar came up with another idea: selling carbon certificates. The idea is to sell certificates to companies that want to offset their carbon emissions by producing a certain amount of biochar.

With the inclusion of biochar in Europe’s highly regulated carbon credit system, “we’re seeing significant growth in the sector,” CEO Stenlund said. His company plans to open three new plants for biochar production in the coming months. Biochar projects began to proliferate across Europe. Production will nearly double this year compared to 2022 to 90,000 tons, according to the Biochar Industry Federation. Source