Ver­sa­tile char – local pro­duc­tion as part of the green tran­si­tion (Era of biochar)

Era of biochar ‑project seeks alter­na­tives to over­come the local chal­lenges caused by decreas­ing the ener­gy use of peat. The aim of the project is to find new infor­ma­tion on the raw mate­ri­als, pro­duc­tion meth­ods and util­i­sa­tion of car­bon prod­ucts.

The project aims at find­ing ver­sa­tile new sources of liveli­hood and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly fos­ter achieve­ment of emis­sion reduc­tions by intro­duc­ing car­bon sinks. The Era of biochar – project cov­ers the whole biochar val­ue chain from raw mate­ri­als and their cul­ti­va­tion to the dif­fer­ent uses of prod­ucts. In the case of raw mate­ri­als, the poten­tial of old peat pro­duc­tion fields in cul­ti­va­tion of sus­tain­able raw mate­ri­als and use of alter­na­tive and eco­nom­ic raw mate­ri­als for biochar pro­duc­tion are dis­cov­ered. The project focus­es on pyrol­y­sis and hydrother­mal car­boniza­tion for char pro­duc­tion espe­cial­ly from sus­tain­abil­i­ty point of view. For exam­ple, envi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic impacts are improved by increas­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy of pyrol­y­sis process with the help of a dig­i­tal twin and by seek­ing alter­na­tives for uti­liza­tion of the bio/hydrochar process by-prod­ucts. The sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the pro­duc­tion and the prod­ucts will be sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly eval­u­at­ed dur­ing the project. Busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties relat­ed to pro­duc­tion and prod­ucts will be eval­u­at­ed also from an inter­na­tion­al per­spec­tive. The Era of Biochar will con­sid­er espe­cial­ly soil amend­ments, fer­til­iz­ers, met­al­lur­gi­cal appli­ca­tions, water purifi­ca­tion and plant health improve­ment appli­ca­tions as the uses of the char prod­ucts. The long-term impacts of biochar use relat­ed to the car­bon bind­ing capac­i­ty of soil after biochar addi­tion is sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly fol­lowed to be able to proof the for­ma­tion of car­bon sinks and to devel­op reli­able mod­el for fore­cast­ing the soil car­bon bind­ing capac­i­ty.

The project is co-fund­ed by the Euro­pean Union.