In the end, delivery took 4 and a half months: over twice as long as we had hoped and planned. The delivery truck had performance issues, to put it mildly: if I shifted our Land Cruiser beyond second gear, I’d be going too fast for it to keep up. I think several donkeys passed us in the 30 final miles.

The road to the 8′x20′ slab on our 6-acre farm is compacted dirt; had it rained, the truck would have been unable to reach the container’s slab and I would have had to spend several muddy days (weeks?) dragging the container with our car over logs. But, the day was dry: the truck made it down the road without speed or mishap. And then, a huge surprise: the unloading crane worked perfectly, placing the container on the slab within 10 minutes of truck arrival!

Not so nice of a surprise upon opening. It appears a tornado occurred inside our container:

This ‘tornado’ wrecked a substantial amount of equipment and helped itself to some smaller tools. A trying week of unpacking followed to recover core functionality and get our meant-to-be-backup generator functional for off-grid operation (grid power was ordered 2 months ago and may or may not ever arrive). 7 days post-arrival, we could see the floor and made a sample cut on the plasma CNC:

Great success! Woohoo! We’re in business! And then our generator spontaneously combusted.

I debated with Shopbot Tom (yes, our newest employee is so good with CNC equipment that his nickname is a type of CNC table) whether we had to stand 50 or 100 feet back to not get hit with shrapnel from the explosion. A silver lining: no explosion, just a gas-vapor flare, burning tires, and a generator so melted that the mechanic I had look at it simply laughed and told me it might be usable… as scrap metal.

Not to be deterred, we bought a smaller generator (Immolator was 9kW, replacement 5.5 continuous), switched to our backup, smaller compressor, realigned the CNC’s gantry, spent several more days troubleshooting, and cut out our first Kenya lid:

We’ve now completed a dozen full kilns, the first of thousands to be built and sold by us in Bungoma this year. Still no grid power, but the shop is becoming more functional every day. By the end of February, one shift of 2 workers will be able to produce in excess of 300 kilns per month. We’ll finalize the shop-in-a-box design in the next couple of months (here’s a list of what we brought this time) and work with partners to get at least three more shops in different countries producing our suite of products (while contributing their own innovations) within a year.

And pay no attention to the dent in our car. 5 days after our container arrived, a truck carrying a 40-footer plowed into me while attempting to pass as I turned into our farm from the highway. Minimal damage to the car and none to me, I’m pretty sure the 40-foot container was just jealous of the life in store for the shop-in-a-box:)

As leaders in the biochar space, the re:char team tries to stay at the bleeding edge of emerging trends. We’ve come up with a list of predictions for the coming year and beyond. Comment around this time next year to see what we got right (assuming the world doesn’t end in 2012):

• The Black Revolution is Coming: 2012 will be the breakout year for biochar. Soil carbon sequestration has become an emergent trend in Africa. On several occasions, we have heard Kenyan gov’t officials state that East Africa could be the ‘Inverse Saudi Arabia’ of soil carbon sequestration. In addition, Australia has launched the world’s first ever Biochar Capacity Building program to incentivize farmers to work with biochar. Multiple companies are launching bagged biochar products for horticulture with nationwide distribution. Oh yeah, and re:char has some big plans for this year, but we can’t talk about them right now….
• Poop Becomes Cool: The influential Italian art and living magazine COLORS recently published an entire issue devoted to sh*t. It examines all aspects of the human waste supply chain, and how it can be improved. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation also committed $42M (of which re:char is a grant recipient) to reinvent the toilet. For thousands of years, we’ve flushed value down the toilet. In 2012, we predict humans will finally give up the taboo and convert human waste products into value-added products like fertilizer and biochar.
• Africa Rises: East Africa will become the most exciting place to invest and do business in 2012. The populations in the countries within are rapidly growing, urbanizing and increasing their standards of living while still maintaining ties to agriculture and their roots. Anyone working in tech, agriculture or clean energy should be looking closely at Africa.
• Urban Agriculture Becomes a Necessity: As food supplies become increasingly more unstable and urbanization continues, city-dwellers will come to depend on food crops grown in urban areas. We are witnessing urban agriculture explode everywhere from Amsterdam’s Plantlab to Vertical Farming in Nairobi’s largest slum. This trend will represent one of the greatest disruptions in agriculture. Traditional farms will focus on grain production, with vegetable and fruit production shifting to urban farms.
• Traditional Investment Models Collapse: Kickstarter has totally disrupted early-stage VC for hardware-based products. Tech Incubators have done the same for early-stage internet investing. The Occupy Wall Street Movement and the Financial Crisis have shown the risks associated with allowing the few to control the wealth of the many. 2012 will be the year that investment becomes truly democratized. Anyone can be an investor and can invest directly into the means of production. There will be massive losses but also massive gains in unexpected places.
• Abundance: Conflict originates with resource scarcity. The West has been embroiled in conflict for resources for the entirety of the past 100 years. New models for food and energy production will emerge that will begin to create an abundance of resources in places traditionally shaped by scarcity (Africa, SE Asia, India). As these innovations become democratized, individuals will become radically self-reliant rather than dangerously dependent.
• Governments Become Increasingly Less Relevant: A significant portion of the United States will be disappointed by the 2012 election. The US is so culturally and ideologically divided that it simply won’t matter who wins. In the Developed World, people feel alienated from their governments. In the Developing World, people don’t expect anything from their government. Groups like Peter Thiel’s Blueseed are subverting government policy through entrepreneurship. In 2012 and beyond, people will seek and employ new models to govern and provide social services.

The site will be re:char’s primary hub for product fabrication in western Kenya. Here, Luke, Paul Manda (a recently hired engineer) and other future re:char employees will operate out of a spruced up 20-foot container to produce the Rutuba biochar kiln and other future products. Perhaps the highlight of the workshop will be what it contains: a CNC plasma cutter. Although I have a feeling Luke would probably say the highlight(s) are his designs to change the shipping container into a comfortable and trendy workspace. See the previous post.

Before: As we looked at the property for the first time, this spot would end up being the location for our container workshop.

After: A concrete slab down that will host our container workshop surrounded by cleared land.

In addition to serving as a production site, the land will teach farmers about the benefits of biochar. Come March, visitors will find test plots that demonstrate side-by-side plots of regular and biochar-enhanced (of differing degrees) soils, in which varying levels and types of fertilizer will be controlled. re:char is planning to enlist the help of Cornell University to ensure that the test plots are scientifically rigorous and suitable for publication. The test plots will allow farmers and other interested parties to see with their own eyes the improvements biochar could make to their fields.

Before: An image of the brush on the shamba before we hired local labor to help clear the land in preparation for plowing.

After: A picture of the field being cleared of the brush. In three hours, over three acres of brush was cleared!

If farmers like what they see, they will be able to purchase biochar-producing Rutuba kilns in an on-location retail store. re:char plans to do regular, well-publicized demos of the kiln and how to properly add biochar to the soil.

We have already gotten to work on the field, preparing it for January when the workshop will arrive and field preparation begins for the upcoming “long-rains” season.

We welcome all visitors to see the site – especially once we have it fully operational by mid-January!

Here’s video:

And, here’s the presentation:

I think I’ve got a useful (and sexy!) object of my infatuation:)

As we’ve written before, there are many exciting and technically advanced efforts in the field of clean cookstoves. These efforts seek to solve the indoor air pollution problems associated with wood fuels, thereby improving the lives of millions of women and children worldwide. Many of these stove technologies also cite reductions in carbon emissions and reduced deforestation as indirect benefits (often leveraging these offsets as a potential funding source). While we applaud these efforts for their ingenuity, there may be far simpler (albeit less elegant) solutions that can achieve the same ends rapidly at a fraction of the cost.

The answer may lie in  LPG, or liquified petroleum gas. LPG is a combustible refinery byproduct that can be compressed and transported in metal cylinders (pictured above). In Kenya, LPG stoves are the preferred cooking method for the middle and upper class. A simple LPG stove can be purchased for <$30, which is less than the cost of the leading clean biomass cookstoves. Gas bottles of various sizes can be purchased and refilled at virtually any market or fuel station, giving the user a clean source of cooking fuel. These stoves are far superior to any biomass stove in terms of both emissions, temperature control, heat output and startup time. So why are they not more popular?

As with most improved technologies in Kenya, cost is a major barrier. To obtain a 13kg gas cylinder, a user must make a deposit of 8,000 Kenyan Shillings (~$80). This deposit is to prevent users from selling the canister as scrap metal after it is used. Compared to wood fuel or charcoal, LPG has much higher upfront costs. But what if there were a way to remove some of these cost barriers? How does the actual incremental cost of LPG compare to charcoal fuel?

Currently, it costs 2,000 Kenyan Shillings ($20) to fill up a 13kg LPG cylinder in our town of Bungoma. On average, a full cylinder can last 6-8 months with daily use. This translates to a weekly cost of between 62 and 83  shillings, depending on intensity of use. By contrast, an approximately 4kg tin of charcoal costs between 70 and 100 shillings, depending on price fluctuations. Most families in urban and peri-urban areas purchase 2-3 4kg tins of charcoal per week. So, the actual incremental cost of LPG is as little as 60% of that of charcoal.

The barrier for the majority of users in Kenya is the high upfront bottle deposit and filling costs. 10,000 shillings to acquire a gas bottle and fill it represents as much as 1/3 of the average annual income in the region. Even though the deposit is refundable, few BOP customers can afford to have so much of their money tied up at once. But what if these costs could be subsidized, or paid over time?

In the early 90′s the government of the Dominican Republic began a program to modernize cooking fuel usage. The government provided subsidies to users seeking to switch from biomass fuels to LPG. By subsidizing the fixed costs of the stoves and fuel bottles, users quickly adopted the more modern systems. Within five years, there was a 20.5% increase in the use of LPG stoves across income sectors. This growth of demand for LPG has had ripple effects, encouraging the government to build modern natural gas refineries and filling stations. It has even led to the conversion of gasoline-powered automobiles to LPG-based systems, which have lower emissions and improved efficiency.

Could such a program be duplicated in Kenya? Most certainly. Filling stations already exist throughout the country, and the benefits of LPG are widely known to consumers. The main drawback of LPG is the obvious– it’s a fossil fuel and fossil fuels aren’t renewable. However, there is an emerging technology that could solve even this seemingly intractable obstacle: compressed biogas.

Biogas is an LPG substitute made from decomposed human, animal and food waste. Biogas production is cost-effective and rapidly growing in India and Pakistan. With proper compression equipment, biogas can be made locally in urban, peri-urban or rural areas and packaged into the same cylinders used for LPG. Compressed biogas could then integrate seamlessly into the existing LPG supply chain.

We hope that simple, yet potentially impactful technologies like LPG stoves and compressed biogas continue to grow, as they represent some of the most cost-effective and cleanest cooking technologies in existence.

Here are some photos from the deployment:

Congrats to Eric and the rest of the Carbon Roots team. Laissez les bon char roulez:)

With the growing trend of converted shipping container homes popping up all over town, re:char has decided to join the revolution, but with a twist; we are building a metal workshop out of a shipping container instead. Complete with lighting, ventilation, electrical wiring, re:char’s container will house a most exciting spin on the shipping container phenomenon: a CNC plasma table. The idea is to create a completely modular, replicable, portable workshop, send it to our base in rural Western Kenya, and begin testing production of our climate kiln (known by our Kenyan customers as Rutuba, kiswalhili for “soil fertility”), iterating our designs, and expanding our product line and scope. re:char believes that previous efforts to bring products to the developing world have failed due to “engineering at a distance.” We are confident that by bringing our production directly to our customers, we will have insight into local needs along with a flexibility to fill those needs.

and we want your suggestions on equipment and supplies to augment the shipment. We’ll be sending a 20′ shipping container from Austin, Texas to Bungoma, a city in Western Kenya. The primary goal will be constructing a metal working facility where we will fabricate our biochar kilns for sale to farmers, and we want to make the shop as versatile as possible.

Thus far, we’ve definitively spent ~$8,000 of our $20,000 budget, mainly on a used plasmacam 4′x4′ CNC with 2 plasma cutters, and allocated <20% of our space.

Here’s a taste of our equipment list:

desktop computer

What are we missing that we just shouldn’t be without?

We’ll have access to (dirty) grid power, standard industrial building materials, and (slow, expensive) shipping from the West.

Please leave us a comment to add your ideas to the spreadsheet along with your broader thoughts on the project below. We’ll read everything, incorporate the best suggestions, and let you know what our final inventory becomes.

We set sail September 3rd, so don’t delay!

Interested? check out our posts on hack-a-day and instructables.

Members of the re:char team with David Guerena (3rd from left) in front of Maize treated with biochar

We recently paid a visit to David Guerena (PhD Candidate in soil science at Cornell University under Prof Johannes Lehmann) at his field sites in Vihiga, Kakamega, South Nandi and North Nandi,  Western Kenya (about 30 minutes drive from Kisumu and Lake Victoria). David and his group have been working in the region for the past 5-6 years. As far as we can tell, this trial (utilizing approximately 20 independent farms) is the longest-running biochar field trial in Africa. David’s group supplied local farmers with biochar at a rate of 6 Tonnes/hectare each year in 2005, 2006 and 2007 for addition to the soil. The farmers utilized this biochar on roughly half their holdings. The farmers practiced their normal fertilization and cultivation regime on all holdings.

After 6 years of cultivation, the results are still astounding. As you can see from the anecdotal image above, the maize crops treated with biochar exhibit stalks 10-12 feet tall, often with 2 ears per stalk. Treatment of soils with biochar resulted in a 45% improvement in soil organic carbon (SOC) when compared with non-treatment. Biochar treatment also resulted in a crop yield improvement of between 2.2 and 2.9 tonnes of maize per hectare (Kimetu et al 2008). In a region like East Africa grappling with an emerging famine, the potential yield increases associated with biochar could save thousands of lives.

Now, David Guerena is working on a greenhouse trial in Kisumu to compare the soil and productivity effects of various ‘designer’ biochars produced under different reaction conditions. This research is crucial to determine the optimal biochar to improve different soil types in Kenya. We will keep a close eye on this great work. In the words of David, “The next agricultural revolution in Africa won’t be green, it will be black.”

Technorati Tags: biochar, cornell, David Guerena, science

“We’ve experienced a 300% improvement in crop yield from adding <500kg of biochar/ hectare!”

“My biochar stove will burn any type of waste biomass with zero emissions!”

“Biochar is [insert any number of miraculous claims]!”

We in the biochar community are all excited and enthusiastic about the possibilities for biochar and biochar-producing equipment. Unfortunately, excitement often makes people overzealous, and can lead us to jump to conclusions too quickly. The consequences of making unfounded claims in the nascent field of biochar are potentially disastrous. We should all be familiar with the overarching claims made by Mantria, which ended with an SEC investigation and was recently labeled the “biggest green scam in America.” However, there is a greater danger lurking than investor fraud. Each time an unfounded claim is made about biochar or biochar technologies, it severely weakens the credibility of the entire industry.

At a recent dinner in Kisumu, Kenya, the re:char team met with Prof. Johannes Lehmann (Chair of the International Biochar Initiative) and his team from Cornell University. Subsequently, we paid a visit to the UK Biochar Research Centre at University of Edinburgh. In each case, a hot topic of conversation was the recent critical review of biochar by a UK-based group called Biofuelwatch. While this report lacks peer-review or significant scientific justification, it does point out some (unfortunately) legitimate issues surrounding biochar. The consensus of the re:char team and our academic friends, is that the content of the Biofuelwatch is largely a response to the unregulated, unfounded and sometimes fraudulent claims made by some members of the biochar community.

In an effort to clear the air (no pun intended), we are publishing the following points to explain what is currently known about biochar, and what still needs to be determined. We do not consider any claims valid that are not peer-reviewed according to traditional academic practices. We are also working closely with IBI and UKBRC to promote a unified message from the biochar community. So here’s what we feel confident in saying:

• Biochar improves crop yield in oxisols: There are now hundreds of peer-reviewed studies on the agronomic benefits of biochar. These papers have shown a variety of yield improvements across a variety of soil types and crops. We are confident that biochar is effective in tropical and/or weathered soils typically found in Africa in Latin America. For other soil types and crops, there is still much research to be done.
• It takes a lot of biochar to see an effect: Current academic consensus is that farmers must apply >500kg of biochar to every hectare of soil in order to see any crop yield improvement. However, most studies at these low concentrations were conducted in pots, which do not accurately mimic in-field conditions. The majority of field trials show yield improvements at concentrations between 3 and 6 tonnes/ha, with some as high as 20 T/ha. We need an order of magnitude more trials across a variety of soil types, with variations in concentration and application technique.
• Few (if any) biochar technologies have had their emissions rigorously tested: The unavoidable truth is that any device which combusts or pyrolyzes biomass will generate emissions. Even so-called ‘clean cookstoves’ generate emissions. There is no such thing as a ‘zero emission’ biomass stove. We are currently going through the process of having our kiln’s emissions measured by our friends at the UKBRC. It is a long and involved procedure, but we recommend it to any and all biochar technology companies.
• Carbon credits for biochar could be dangerous in places like Africa: Through our work in Kenya and East Africa, we have witnessed firsthand the enthusiasm for carbon credit funding around biochar. Unfortunately, as new markets develop there is the potential for abuse. Kenya has been plagued by a rash of potentially dubious carbon offsets. We urge those touting the benefits of offsets for biochar to exercise caution until markets have sufficiently developed.

We believe that biochar represents a growing industry with gigaton-scale potential. By maintaining a strict code of ethics, and abiding by scientific principles, we can sustainably grow the industry and all benefit. We urge other members of the biochar community to follow-suit and promote transparency.

re:char’s work in Western Kenya was recently featured on an episode of BBC World’s Horizons Business.

This episode covered innovative business approaches to solving food insecurity in Africa. The Horizons Business team visited us in Bungoma, interviewed some of our farmers, and produced a great 5 minute segment on our work.

Our segment was then broadcast to millions of viewers around the world through the extensive BBC World network.

We invite you to view this exciting clip here!

Technorati Tags: BBC, biochar, kenya, News