Type of biochar produced: What is the minimum quality of biochar that you will be able to produce?.

Potential Biochar Value: The approximate value per tonne of the biochar produced, after costs.

Dried biomass needed: This is the amount of dried biomass you will need to generate the required heat output through pyrolysis. Moisture content of the biomass should be 15% or less.

Biochar Produced: 1 kg dried woodchip will produce around 3.5 kWh heat. If, for example 850 MWh of heat is required, then 242.86 t of dried woodchip will be needed for comnustion. This assumes the heating unit achieves 90% thermal efficiency. Pyrolysis will produce only around 33% of the heat output, as more than 50% of the Carbon remains un-combusted. Therefore 825 t of woodchip will be required to produce the same heat. 825 t of woodchip will produce around 204.2 t of biochar, which can be sold, and used to offset the net carbon emissions from the production and pyrolysis of the wood chip

CO₂e emissions: This adjusts the tons of biochar by the correction rate for the application to soil and then multiplies it by 3.67 to give the weight of CO₂ (when two oxygen atoms bind to a carbon atom, the combined mass of the carbondioxide molecule is 3.67 times that of the carbon atom on its own). Note, the emissions from the pyrolysis process itself shown below are deducted from this sequestration value to give a net carbon sequestration value.

Avoided CO₂e Emissions by Using Pyrolysis instead of Burning Natural Gas or Biogas: Assumption: This is the amount of CO₂e emitted by burning methane, either in the form of natural (fossil) gas or biogas produced by anaerobic digestion. Biogas, although generated from recently-grown biomass, still releases the carbon content of that biomass during combustion so should be treated in the same way as fossil gas for this comparison