How to Make Biochar 

Home / About Biochar / How to Make Biochar 

There are many different ways to make biochar, but all of them involve heating biomass with little or no oxygen to drive off volatile gasses, leaving carbon behind. This simple process is called thermal decomposition usually from pyrolysis or gasification. These methods can produce clean energy in the form of gas or oil along with the biochar. This energy may be recoverable for another use, or it may simply be burned and released as heat. It’s one of the few technologies that is relatively inexpensive, widely applicable and quickly scalable.

But biochar technology is more than just the equipment needed to produce biochar. Biochar technology necessarily includes entire integrated systems that can contain various components that may or may not be part of any particular system.

biochar-production

Biochar production diagram courtesy of Johannes Lehmann

In general, however, biochar systems should include the following elements: