SCALING NATURE’S BRILLIANCE
Before the industrial revolution, nature processed CO2 at about the same rate it produced CO2. The problem is that while plants continue to process carbon dioxide at scale through photosynthesis, human activity has upset the balance. Since the mid-1700s, people have extracted and combusted more than 1.6 trillion tonnes of greenhouse gasses that were previously photosynthesized by plants and sequestered underground for millenia. In addition, every piece of biomass that becomes waste contributes greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Although plants continue to photosynthesize, they cannot keep up.
All Carbon’s modular bioreactors capture carbon from biomass through a process called pyrolysis, or the heating of organic matter in the absence of oxygen. The feedstock, or input, is biomass waste. The outputs are heat, combustible gasses, and biochar, a nearly pure carbon that forms in a honeycomb structure at high temperature in an oxygen-restricted environment.
10+ years of r&D
Basic gasification and biochar production is relatively easy – but segregating the outputs to get clean and easily monetizable gas and biochar is very difficult. Further complicating matters, high feedstock transportation costs have made traditional large-scale bio-energy plants cost prohibitive.
The technology underpinning ACE has its roots in over a decade of grant-funded R&D focused on modular biomass-to-electricity generators that produced biochar as a byproduct. Although the rapid expansion of wind and solar doomed that business model, the engineering work to overcome technical challenges in the generators led to a breakthrough design: the swirl hearth and pyro auger.
Our SPecial sauce
The swirl hearth solves many of the previous problems of modular bioreactors. Simpler bioreactors can have dirty emissions and run at cooler temperatures, producing a lower quality biochar that gets impregnated with toxic combustible gasses. The pyro auger’s unique design allows for controlled gas recirculation. Since pyrolysis occurs while biomass is being transported to the swirl hearth, as well as in the swirl hearth itself, operators can set the temperature and duration of pyrolysis. This means the company may be less picky about biomass inputs, while being more intentional about the specific carbon content and quality of biochar it produces. Right now, ACE’s bioreactor consistently produces biochar at a 20% yield that has been independently verified to be 94% carbon.