1/25/2009

 I was asked to make a presentation at the Harvesting Clean Energy IX conference in Billings, Mt and gave a presentation on the Pine Valley Biochar Project along with three other presentation in a breakout group called "The Promise of BIOCHAR: Generate Ag-Energy, Improve Soils, Store Carbon"

You can find these four at the following website:

http://www.harvestcleanenergy.org/conference/HCE9/HCE9_Index.htm 

You need to go down the page till you find the above title and there are links to the four powerpoints there.

This was a good start to networking with all kinds of people working on this concept in many ways including a lot of researchers. 

I met several new people building biochar plants, interestingly some were focused on making all biochar and some interested in producing all BioOil. We believe the mix of these two is a more sustainable product.

 I gained some contacts with researchers especially looking into soils benefits of using char in all kinds of soils. This is probably the biggest issue in terms of profitable sale of BioChar. There are many variables that need to be researched before actual application rates and char condition are known for each soil. We found another interesting thing was that researchers can't get enough biochar for operational scale tests. (Exactly what I found when I tried to do this test.) So there seems to be market for BioChar just for research.

Finally I met all kinds of people who were interested in promoting the BioChar industry including a fellow from Emmit, Idaho who has since been a good partner in developing markets for our BoiOil and  BioChar.

Morris Huffman - Biomass Coordinator - Emmit ID

 http://www.idahosmallwoodpartners.com/index.cfm

Morris has contacted a bio-diesel  refiner who is interested in purchasing our BioOil of which I'll be going into more detail  in the future.

There are continuing to be a great value from all these contacts along with a demonstration of a real desire in the US to move the science related to biochar forward.