A father and son team have invented a practical thermal treatment for making a charcoal soil additive from organic green waste. Stan Joyce of Maleny spoke to the Hinterland Times about this remarkably effective waste treatment process that got Stan and his son James into this year’s finals of the Queensland Premier’s ClimateSmart Sustainability Awards.
AS WITH so many smart and successful inventions, James and his father started small. Two years ago they bought a 44 gallon drum and a garbage bin and have ended up being able to produce friable charcoal using large quantities of green waste in a very short space of time.
Stan’s background is in earth sciences and his son is a chemical process engineer with a PhD and experience in the sugar industry. Stan is naturally proud of his son who he says has always been interested in anything with a sustainable green technology label.
James Joyce is still based in Mackay where he set up his own consulting business in process engineering, consulting on sugar, water recycling in coal mines in Australia, and designing and commissioning equipment overseas.
Stan Joyce had retired to Maleny but James had an idea to engage his father’s scientific experience. Having seen the huge waste resource in sugar cane trash James thought it could be turned into charcoal and returned to the soil with enormous benefits for the carbon cycle. The result is a family business which is starting to take off with increasing interest around the world.
Charcoal has been used ever since man walked the earth says Stan. “What’s new is that we are looking at a very rapid throughput of waste material, say in a matter of seconds to minutes for green waste, and being able to do it continuously.”
James’ invention is like a huge circular vat. Any type of green waste is loaded into it via a conveyor. A certain amount of the waste is ignited to start the process and the entire mass circulates down through a series of decks. The process releases water vapour and combustible gases. The gases are burned leaving the carbon which is harvested and then discharged as a biochar product which the Joyces are calling BiGchar.
The uniqueness of the Joyce invention is the unit’s speed of processing and its portability. The main BiGchar unit is 2.2 metres in diameter and can be put onto a two-tonne truck. When taken say to a cane farm, this unit can process 1.2 tonnes per hour continuously. It will produce from one quarter to one third of the dry mass put into it. So 1.2 tonnes of waste provides 300 to 400 kg an hour of BiGchar.
Interest in the BiGchar process ranges from US and Canadian power generators eager to reduce their carbon footprint, to local governments in Australia who are choking on ever-increasing amounts of green waste. Close up BiGchar is a dark, dry and odourless compost (see inset). It can be compressed into pellets to provide a fuel, but it simply cannot compete with Australian coal unless the government provides a stimulus through tax credits or a levy system.
“We are suggesting to local governments,” says Stan, “that we can transform some or all of their green waste into BiGChar, and use it for their parks and gardens, as soil improvers and sell it to the general public. Even if all they did was turn their green waste into BiGchar and bury it, it would be safer than what they are doing now. Its volume is less, and it’s a stable, long-lasting, carbon sequestering product.”
Stan is managing the business side of their company and like many a new and innovative business there is no knowing how far the Joyce team can take their invention. Stan and James are receiving valuable financial support via a QSEIF Grant from the Department of Environment and Resource Management. The Department’s supervisor for the grant stated,
“If only 1% of Australia’s agricultural stubble residues could be converted to charcoal, this would allow more than 100,000 tonnes per year of carbon to be sequestered or to achieve an equivalent reduction in greenhouse emissions by displacing fossil fuels.”
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