[Stoves] Chinese biochar projections [formerly Re: Calculating cooking costs and char costs ----Re: [biochar] Where to discuss STOVES AND CARBON offsets and drawdown

[Ronal W. Larson]

Tom and stove list (and adding the biochar list).  Note thread title change.

	I have reviewed the IBI “8858” message below and suggest these are the two key sentences:

“The ambitious plan of the cooperative enterprises on straw biomass and biochar technology is to upscale up to 5M tones of straw recycled per year and 100 enterprises converting biomass to biochars, reaching a total market value of 10 billion CNY (Chinese yuan) by 2020. 
With this mode so far, up to 100,000 tons straws were carbonized while some twenty thousand tons straw biomass biochar fertilizer produced with additional 20 thousands tons biochar sold, giving a reduction of GHGs over 0.6 Tg CO2 equivalent.”

	These numbers don’t hang together!   

	I am now inclined to believe the total annual 2020 market value (10 billion Yuan per year) and the .6 Tg CO2 equivalent reduction to date.  Only if I increase the quantity scales by a factor of 10 (both “to date” (meaning 2015) and in 2020) can I get a future char price to be $150/tonne char and a 3:1 weight ratio of CO2 to biochar.  As the weights are now stated, we would get $1500/tonne char (seems way too high for China in 2020) and a (ridiculous) 30:1 ratio. 

	I can get their factor of 50 increase (1 million t char/yr) / (20,000 t char) [or my preference that is ten times larger in both numerator and denominator] if I assume a five year  period (all of 2016-2020) AND I assume that all of the stated past values were from only 2015.   Then I need an annual growth rate of about 119% for five years.  So we might be able to justify an annual bit-more-than-doubling of output - that is six annual relative numbers for 2015 - 2020 like 1, 2.2, 4.6,10, 22, 50.  Their computations were probably more like an annual doubling of output at each site when we factor in growing from about 50 sites to 100.

	This annual growth factor is still huge (but probably well less than that seen for hand-held phones).

	Is it possible that the Chinese have a weight unit that is 10 times larger than a kg or tonne?  (that got lost in the translation?)

	The first key quantity to check could be whether the Chinese could have produced 200,000 tonnes char in 2015 rather than 20,000?  With 50 companies this is 4000 tonnes per year per machine, so a bit more than 1/2 tonne char per hour.  This looks possible with the machine shown at the IBI site given below by Tom.  They appear to be going from 50 such machines to 2500 such machines over a 5 year period.  To say that (looks big) machine can only produce less than 1 kg char per minute doesn’t seem reasonable.

	Anyone else see a major opportunity here for pushing biochar? (via the Chinese goals).  Or maybe I have just made an error?   I have intentionally not shown all the computations, but they are quite obvious, and better to have independent confirmation.  Glad to comment off line with anyone.

 	It is exceedingly important in our world (of selling biochar) to get this (double) factor of ten sorted out!   

	Tom - thanks for this important lead.  I am sorry to report that I see this factor-of-10 error.

Ron


> On Sep 18, 2017, at 1:54 PM, tmiles at trmiles.com wrote:
> 
> In the last couple of years biochar has become a national priority in China. We have seen substantial research and several production facilities but it is difficult to get a clear picture of actual production and use.  IBI china provided us with a map and description earlier this year:
>  
> “Straw biomass biochar and biochar-based organo-mineral compound fertilizers approved as one of the Top Ten viable systems for recycling agricultural residues by China's Ministry of Agricuture”   http://www.biochar-international.org/node/8858 <http://www.biochar-international.org/node/8858>
>  
> Tom
>  
> From: Stoves [mailto:stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org <mailto:stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org>] On Behalf Of Crispin Pemberton-Pigott
> Sent: Monday, September 18, 2017 12:21 PM
> To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org <mailto:stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>>
> Subject: Re: [Stoves] Calculating cooking costs and char costs ----Re: [biochar] Where to discuss STOVES AND CARBON offsets and drawdown
>  
> Dear Paul
>  
	<deleted as not being on Tom’s “8858” topic>
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