Scale, Sales & Marketing

Community & Farm Scale CHAB

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Location

CC 162

Start Date

14-10-2013 3:15 PM

End Date

14-10-2013 5:00 PM

Session Description

Building a Biochar Business in New England - Bob Wells

This presentation will outline Bob’s experience with putting together farm scale biochar production systems that remove waste materials, capture process heat, create co-products, and eliminate pollutants, all while delivering high quality biochar to be used or sold. This presentation will include Bob’s hands-on experience with a mobile retort that he designed, built, sold, and commissioned. Finding the right balance of people, location, technology, and market are key to bringing biochar and biochar production into the mainstream.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0EikOSkuL4

Frank Jeffers will offer a brief review of technology already in the public domain. We have many methods of producing charcoal, and methods going back to the 1930's for reforming the byproducts. The question exists of its applicability and acceptance where we try to apply it including Haitian skills and technology, the Jamaican coal kiln, the sailing charcoal sloop that delivers renewable biomass energy. The superiority of charcoal over Lena, or stick wood as a domestic fuel. The papers of Daniel M. Kammen and the findings of Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation on the costs to society of indoor smoke. The user interface. This will take education of the world's isolated people, and that will take electricity. The same system that supplied household energy and that supplies biochar can also produce the minimal amounts of electricity required. The cost of photovoltaic power can be slashed to micro loan level, and reliability can be increased with backup generation using charcoal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74suH06T88M

Eric Sorensen will speak about Carbon Roots International's experience launching a community-scale biochar project in rural Haiti. He will discuss locally-appropriate technology, adoption strategies, and developing a project model using the Human-Centered Design methodology, as well as share the false assumptions, lessons learned, and pivots that Carbon Roots International has made over the past three years in Haiti.

Bio and Photo

Frank Jeffers

Frank Jeffers has had some connection with pyrolysis and byproducts from an early age. His great grandfather, Jesse Turley, was a Canadian industrialist who began his fortune making charcoal and byproducts for the Canadian railway system in Brandon Manitoba. Frank's family went to Japan as military dependents during the occupation of Japan shortly after WWII. Having a very retentive memory, Frank was given indoctrination in the many ways the Japanese used pyrolysis during and after the war. This included running vehicles on charcoal gasifiers, and reforming wood vinegar into gasoline and other products after their access to overseas oil was cut off. Following this experience, he helped develop charcoal fueled heaters for homeless housing - including an efficient continuous manual feed method of producing charcoal, a gas-on-demand charcoal gasifier capable of producing fuel gas of high hydrogen content and running as a back up generator for PV systems, as well as a reforming section to upgrade offgas product from a charcoal retort to where it is practical engine fuel.

Before learning the definition of social entrepreneur, Eric’s past job titles included: bartender, farm hand, carpenter, sailor, blog editor, and filmmaker. After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Eric’s career took a sharp turn away from the media world toward the world of international development, where he’s been working at the forefront of the sustainable charcoal revolution. He doesn’t think we need to make a choice between people or profit or the environment, and is working to bring them into alignment.

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Oct 14th, 3:15 PM Oct 14th, 5:00 PM

Community & Farm Scale CHAB

CC 162

Building a Biochar Business in New England - Bob Wells

This presentation will outline Bob’s experience with putting together farm scale biochar production systems that remove waste materials, capture process heat, create co-products, and eliminate pollutants, all while delivering high quality biochar to be used or sold. This presentation will include Bob’s hands-on experience with a mobile retort that he designed, built, sold, and commissioned. Finding the right balance of people, location, technology, and market are key to bringing biochar and biochar production into the mainstream.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0EikOSkuL4

Frank Jeffers will offer a brief review of technology already in the public domain. We have many methods of producing charcoal, and methods going back to the 1930's for reforming the byproducts. The question exists of its applicability and acceptance where we try to apply it including Haitian skills and technology, the Jamaican coal kiln, the sailing charcoal sloop that delivers renewable biomass energy. The superiority of charcoal over Lena, or stick wood as a domestic fuel. The papers of Daniel M. Kammen and the findings of Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation on the costs to society of indoor smoke. The user interface. This will take education of the world's isolated people, and that will take electricity. The same system that supplied household energy and that supplies biochar can also produce the minimal amounts of electricity required. The cost of photovoltaic power can be slashed to micro loan level, and reliability can be increased with backup generation using charcoal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74suH06T88M

Eric Sorensen will speak about Carbon Roots International's experience launching a community-scale biochar project in rural Haiti. He will discuss locally-appropriate technology, adoption strategies, and developing a project model using the Human-Centered Design methodology, as well as share the false assumptions, lessons learned, and pivots that Carbon Roots International has made over the past three years in Haiti.