Ready to dive into more technical data and information about biochar? Check out the resources listed here!
In-depth Information (broad)
Biochar Testing and Characterization
Soil Web of Life Response to Biochar
Biochar as a Building Material
Sustainability and Life Cycle Assessment
The Biochar Journal. This excellent resource exists “to spark innovative research to find economically and environmentally responsible uses for biochar.” Articles range in content from the potential use of biochar in coffee production, to the physical characteristics of biochar function in soils, to creating biochar in cone kilns, and much more.
Environmental Benefits of Biochar. This paper is a literature review characterizing biochar and assessing its effects in different applications including agriculture, soil nutrient cycling, soil remediation, and greenhouse gas reduction. The review focuses on medium-temperature biochars, but it offers some useful information and highlights some benefits and applications.
Ithaka Institute for Carbon Intelligence. This website is an excellent resource for information on biochar production, analysis, and use.
BioEnergy/Biochar Mailing Lists. This non-technical website is an excellent clearinghouse or contact point for mailing lists, events, and general biochar information – covering backyard production, agricultural use, heat production (for cooking or energy) and more. The site features a large assortment of links to other videos, websites, mailing lists, and PDF files.
Biochar (pyrolysis). This useful page is a portal to several documents relevant to biochar production.
Large-Scale
Methods for Producing Biochar and Advanced Biofuels in Washington State, Part 1: Literature Review of Pyrolysis Reactors. This comprehensive review covers a wide range of commercial-level biochar reactors in good detail and is an immense source of reading references as well.
Methods for Producing Biochar and Advanced Biofuels in Washington State, Part 2: Literature Review of the Biomass Supply Chain and Preprocessing Technologies. This report reviews a wide range of approaches for acquiring and processing a variety of biochar feedstocks.
Methods for Producing Biochar and Advanced Biofuels in Washington State, Part 3: Literature Review on Technologies for Product Collection and Refining. This report reviews the literature on collecting and processing a wide range of products from biochar and biomass production.
Use of Biochar from the Pyrolysis of Waste Organic Material as a Soil Amendment. This brief report summarizes some research on the feasibility of creating biochar production enterprises that depend upon biomass waste. It is a good summary of biochar production and characterization and its environmental and agricultural effects.
Mid-Scale
Simple technologies for charcoal making. This interesting web-document developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization describes the planning and management of community-scale charcoal-making processes and facilities targeting developing countries.
Small-Scale
CarbonZero Experimental Biochar Kiln. This is a guide to building a 55-gallon retort kiln.
Charcoal: How to Make it. This article is a guide to making a simple, top-lit updraft kiln using two 55-gallon barrels.
Kon-Tiki Flame Cap Pyrolysis for the Democratization of Biochar Production. This excellent article highlights the process and advantages of using the Kon-Tiki cone-shaped Top-Lit Up Draft (TLUD), also known as Flame Cap, kilns.
The "Jolly Roger Ovens" Family of Biochar-Making Devices. This is a guide for making relatively simple and low cost "Jolly Rogers" biochar kilns.
Biochar Testing and Characterization
Biochar Standards. This resource describes the basics of biochar standards, their history, and current status.
The formation of Polyaromatic Hydrocarbons and Dioxins During Pyrolysis: A Review of the Literature with Descriptions of Biomass Composition, Fast Pyrolysis Technologies, and Thermochemical Reactions. A review of literature on biochar and characterization that found no published evidence of significant PAH and dioxin levels in biochar.
UC Davis Biochar Database. This is an online database plotting characterization data from an expanding collection of biochars.
Biochar Application to Soils. This report, developed by the European Commission Joint Research Centre Institute for Environment and Sustainability, catalogs the positive, negative, and unknown attributes associated with applying biochar to soils for soil improvement, agriculture and soil remediation.
Biochar: carbon sequestration, land remediation, and impacts on soil microbiology. This peer-reviewed paper gives a good technical overview of how biochar affects the soil mechanisms relevant to soil rehabilitation and agriculture in general. Cross-posted to Uses, Remediation.
Biochar, climate change, and soil: A review to guide future research. This report offers a comprehensive review of medium-temperature biochar, focusing on biochar production and agricultural applications.
Defining Carbon in Soil. This article is a useful outline of the different carbon pools found in soil organic matter.
Potential of Pyrolyzed Organic Matter in Soil Amelioration. This paper reports on research on biochar in agricultural soils and improvements on soil health and productivity.
Use of Biochar from the Pyrolysis of Waste Organic Material as a Soil Amendment. This research paper reports on the feasibility of creating biochar-production enterprises that depend upon biomass waste and offers a good summary of biochar production and characterization and environmental and agricultural effects.
Synergisms between Compost and Biochar for Sustainable Soil Amelioration. This semi-technical article is a good synopsis of the biochar and compost relationship.
Biochar and the Biomass Recycling Industry. This brief but interesting article suggests some ways to incorporate biomass production into the biomass recycling industry.
A Review of Biochar and Soil Nitrogen Dynamics. This paper reviews the state of knowledge on biochar's relationship to the N cycle, specifically its ability to absorb and mitigate the loss of ammonia and nitrate.
Soil Food Web Responds to Biochar
Mycorrhizal responses to biochar in soil: concepts and mechanisms. This peer-reviewed paper gives a good overview of biochar's effect on mycorrhizae – a plant-symbiotic fungus.
The Biochar Effect: Plant Resistance to Biotic Stresses. This paper reviews recent research suggesting that biochar in soils induces plant resistance to infections.
The effects of biochar on soil respiration in rhizosphere and non-rhizosphere soil. This paper reports research demonstrating that biochar can increase soil life activity.
Biochar Application to Temperate Soils: Effects on Nutrient Uptake and Crop Yield under Field Conditions. This paper reports research published in Agricultural and Food Science on the effects of biochar on grain and seed crops, demonstrating water-holding advantages and demonstrating deficiencies in soils amended with biochar without nitrogen supplements.
Biochar application to temperate soils: Effects on soil fertility and crop growth under greenhouse conditions. A companion study to the above, researchers now test biochar in temperate soils but in a greenhouse controlled environment with no additional supplements.
How Biochar Can Improve Sustainability for Coffee Cultivation and Processing. WThis article gives an interesting overview of a system of incorporating biochar production and use into coffee cultivation and processing operation.
Livestock
The use of biochar in cattle farming. This one makes a great case for biochar and bacteria polycultures for many functions in cattle management.
Treating liquid manure with biochar. This interesting article makes a great case for treating liquid cow manures with biochar and bacteria polycultures to create valuable fertilizers while eliminating the conditions leading to intense odors.
Evaluation of the effects of biochar on diet digestibility and methane production from growing and finishing steers. This peer-reviewed article examines biochar as a cattle feed supplement at 0%, 0.8%, and 3% inclusion rates and the methane emissions reductions as a result of incorporating biochar into cattle diets.
Poultry
Biochar from manure waste enhances soils. WA brief summary of scientific research on incorporating biochar into poultry management.
Biochar as a growing media additive and peat substitute.
Biochar as a replacement for perlite in greenhouse soilless substrates.
Biochar as a substitute for vermiculite in potting mix for hybrid poplar.
Comparison of Charred and Uncharred Wood Aggregates in Horticultural Substrates. The section of interest from the conference proceedings begins on page 18.
Biochar Affects Macronutrient Leaching from a Soilless Substrate.
Characteristics of biochar and its application in remediation of contaminated soil. This brief paper reviews the variations in biochar quality and the effects of biochar on remediation of organic and inorganic soil contamination.
Biochar as a sorbent for contaminant management soil and water: a review. This paper reviews the sparse literature on biochar adsorption of organic and inorganic soil contaminants (as of 2013) and discusses adsorption dependency on production factors (such as temperature and feedstock) and some of the mechanisms at work.
Impact of Biochar on Organic Contaminants in Soil: A Tool for Mitigating Risk? This paper reviews technical questions regarding the potential use of biochar in mitigating the effects and movement of organic contaminants in soil.
Use of phytoremediation and biochar to remediate heavy metal polluted soils: a review. This short paper reviews research on combining phytoremediation with biochar to remediate soils polluted with heavy metals.
UC Davis Biochar Sorption Database. On-line database. Technical. UC Davis. This online database plots characterization data for two axes for your choice of independent and dependent variables from an expanding collection of biochars.
Evaluation of Biochar for Reduction of Nitrogen in Stormwater Remediation Systems.
Biochar: An Emerging Market Solution for Legacy Mine Reclamation and the Environment. A semi-technical article on the potential use and markets for biochar in mine reclamation. It includes extensive citations and reviews of field studies.
Salix Spp. as a Biomass Crop: Investigating its Potential on Mined Lands and the Use of Biochar as a Soil Amendment. A peer reviewed article on the use of biochar to enhance growth and yield of short rotation woody crops.
Biochar as a Building Material
The use of biochar as a building material. A semi-technical article on the uses of biochar in building construction using the Ithaka Institute’s new building as an example, with a number of references from Japanese use in humidity control in buildings.
Biochar Production and Energy. A lengthy detailed article on biochar production and attendant energy production. Everything you wanted to know about production and more!
The Charcoal Vision: A Win–Win–Win Scenario for Simultaneously Producing Bioenergy, Permanently Sequestering Carbon, while Improving Soil and Water Quality. This article describes a vision of transforming biomass to syngas, bio-oil, and charcoal. Charcoal, in turn, can be used as a fuel source or for biochar (applied to growing ecosystems), where it can enhance soil and water quality. This production framework, taken to a large-scale, could play a large role in national energy use.
Biochar Production for Carbon Sequestration. This project report describes methodologies for characterizing biochar and quantifying biochar production insofar as it can be useful to sequester carbon.
Using biochar systems to sequester carbon. This article gives a good overview of the economic argument for using biochar to sequester carbon.
Sustainability and Life Cycle Assessment
Declaration of Sustainability for Biochar Production. Draft of an ethical and environmental standard for all phases of biochar production.
A life cycle assessment of environmental and economic balance of biochar systems in Quebec. A life cycle analysis (LCA) for pyrolysis biochar systems to determine greenhouse gas balance, carbon cycling and the economics of biochar production from different agricultural residues and wastes.
Find something fascinating? Let us know and we'll post it!