Biochar End Uses
Oral Presentation
Methods for measuring biochar properties and how they determine value and performance
Hugh McLaughlin, PE

IBI and EBC have analytical requirements that are standards that must be met to be "certified". These metrics serve as useful criteria to establish what biochars are "in" versus "out", but they fall short of allowing biochar quality and prediction of biochar performance in specific end uses.

Recently, Puro and other carbon credit marketplaces have promoted specific analytical protocols to create and quantify marketable "CORCs". These measurements serve well to establish the selling price in the carbon credit marketplace, but do not allow prediction of the performance of a specific biochar in the spectrum of potential end uses (soil, plastic, asphalt, concrete, etc).

This presentation will review specific and simple analytical methods to measure intrinsic physical and chemical properties of a specific biochar, typically received as a bulk shipment by the purchaser or replicated smaller packages of consistent product. Based on measured properties, the value will be assessed for a spectrum of representative end uses.

This is an ambitious quest and will not be the last word, but rather a template for the kinds of specific measurements that can be utilized to predict biochar performance in unique applications. The presenter has spent the last 15 years developing methods and measuring unique biochar properties in order to improve the market valuation of specific biochar products.