IBI Work Groups

IBI is creating work groups that focus on a certain issue pertaining to biochar. The purpose of the work groups is to involve as many stakeholders as possible from the wider biochar community to work in a collaborative environment. Some work groups may hold meetings around conferences or through phone calls as necessary. They may create an online collaboration through a file sharing system as well.

 If you are interested in finding out more about a work group, or joining, please email the specific contact listed for each group.

Biochar Characterization Work Group

Work group contact: Julie Major (julie@biochar-international.org). Please send questions or comments to Julie. 

At the May 2009 regional biochar conference in Australia, a group started work on a set of guidelines for a safe biochar industry--recognizing that there are no guidelines for manufacturers, retailers, or purchasers of biochar to describe the material. These discussions were continued at the August 2009 regional conference in the US. The Characterization Work Group has put the discussions into a document entitled "Guidelines for a safe Biochar Industry".  The intentions of this document are to:

• Provide a voluntary set of guidelines that can be adopted by Producers and Retailers of biochar (possibly as "IBI approved biochar")
• Allow purchasers of biochar to ensure it is derived from sustainable resources and is basically safe to use
• Provide some suggestions on the types of analysis that can conducted on biochar to allow basic characterisation
• Provide results from some basic biochar properties that describe the processing conditions, feedstock and biochar characteristics

This document is not intended to:

• Be published in a scientific journal
• Provide a detailed assessment or comparison of analytical methods- (we are preparing a separate document/ publication)
• Be a definitive document that is inflexible

These guidelines are currently designed as a voluntary set of parameters that may used to provide a basic set of characteristics of biochar and we propose voluntary guidelines for sustainable production. The purpose is to ensure the material being used for application to soil is safe for human and environmental health, and is likely to provide agronomic benefits for farmers through improvements to a wide range of soil chemical, physical and biological properties. These guidelines also suggest a framework for classification of biochars based on a range of physico-chemical properties. The IBI and Australia New Zealand Biochar Researcher network suggest that if these tests are undertaken then consumers will have a basis for comparison and assessment of the suitability for their particular application.