Products

Biochar

We have the ability to produce a wide variety of biochars with our thermal decomposition technology. As discussed on our rationale page, the structural characteristics and biochemical properties of biochar affect its performance in a given application to a very significant degree.^{1 2} Hence the term “biochar” describes a family of diverse products rather than a single thing.^{3 4} To produce biochar for a given need, whether it is to increase soil fertility, maintain livestock health as a feed amendment, remediate contaminated soils or act as a filtration medium, the pyrolysis process must be variable and precise, and the biomass feedstock must be appropriate. Each particle of biomass must receive the exact same heat treatment, and the operator must be able to customise that heat treatment and the post-pyrolysis treatment, so the biochar particles produced have the properties needed for the application.

If biochar is used to increase soil fertility, we recommend that it be prepared to emulate humic matter as it is in soil. Why? Simply because the soil ecosystem and agricultural plants have evolved together to provide plants the ability to obtain nutrients from soils rich in humic matter. Scientific characterisation of biochar is important as an initial step, but biochar needs to be deeply integrated into the soil ecosystem for it to optimally improve soil fertility.

PyGrow®

Our precise thermal decomposition technology produces a unique extract from the biomass we process that we call PyGrow. It is similar to pyroligneous acid or wood vinegar, except that our process ensures that:

1. it is optimised as a plant biostimulant to significantly increase productivity
2. it is consistently and reliably produced
3. it is completely free of any contaminants that sometimes are present in wood vinegar produced in the traditional way.

To illustrate the difference, wood vinegar is a byproduct of charcoal production. In our process, PyGrow is extracted first, then the remaining biomass is converted to biochar.

PyGrow is a liquid biostimulant that significantly up-regulates photosynthesis, giving more energy to the plant-microbe ecosystem that increases plant health, mineral- and phytonutrient content. It very economically increases the vigour and productive yield of agricultural plants and trees, while enriching soil carbon content.

PyGrow works at trace amounts, tapping into an ancient stress-response / hormetic genetic signal whose origins can be traced all the way back to algae. As land plants began to evolve, the overwhelming stressor to their survival became wildfire, and plants adapted and replicated these hormetic genes to respond to the residues of wildfire in their environment as a signal to produce as many seeds as possible.

Natural selection favoured those plant species that developed this stress response. After a wildfire, it is very common to see plant life burst back into existence, and be very productive until a green landscape is re-established. It is this phenomenon that PyGrow captures, in a bottle.

A healthier, more vigorous plant that has optimised photosynthesis rates produces many of the metabolites it needs to defend itself against disease and insect infestation, and obtain much more of the nutrients it needs from microbial associations in the soil and within the plant, as it occurs in nature. No one has ever applied fertiliser and pesticides to the forest. The use of PyGrow can allow farmers to significantly decrease the amount of chemical fertilisers and pesticides used to produce a crop, leading to a better financial outcome while reducing the environmental impact of food production. PyGrow provides farmers with an easy transition to regenerative farming practices without sacrificing yield, while producing healthier, more nutritious food.

An amazing amount of in depth, open access research has been done on a wide variety of uses for wood vinegar in Asia (see ⁵ for example), and much of it is freely available in English via Google Scholar.

Chemical pesticides and herbicides have significant, widespread environmental impacts and unintended or undesirable side effects. They affect non-target species 95% of the time, tend to degrade slowly, spread through runoff into streams, rivers and lakes, leach into the water table, and are blown by the wind to neighbouring areas, either when they are sprayed or upon evaporation.⁶ A study by the US Geological Survey found pesticides in every stream and over 90% of the wells sampled.⁷

A growing awareness of the negative effects of both chemical fertilisers and pesticides has generated worldwide interest in using wood vinegar as a biological substitute.⁸ Research has shown that wood vinegar is highly biodegradable⁹, has a positive effect on soil microbiology, and is of no environmental risk when produced and applied properly.¹⁰