Imagine if there was a market for the woody weeds in your paddock, or the cotton seed hulls left behind after ginning?
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In this new era of clean and renewable energy, viable supply will come from many different quarters, including agriculture which will grow biomass for energy extracted through a controlled process.
Unlike setting fire to stubble and watching the smoke rise, energy from that plant stem can be collected through pyrolysis and converted to liquid fuel while solid carbon in the form of biochar will help more plants grow.
John Winter is a chemical engineer when he's not breeding cattle near Glen Innes and has combined a life of experience to create an efficient biomass-to-energy process. It sequesters carbon as biochar while retaining all the combustibles, except for a baby's breath of exhaust which contains 87pc nitrogen, just 8pc more than the air we breathe.
The outcome, under company name SEATA, has passed rigorous EPA assessment and now is a world-leader in pollution-free pyrolysis.
His unique process was patented in 2013 and since then he has constructed three prototype plants, each one more refined and larger. His latest creation, fully approved by the world's toughest regulations, has coincided with a maturing market for carbon sequestration and energy alternatives.
What excites Mr Winter and his team, including fellow director and environmental engineer Craig Bagnall, is the ability to take woody waste, spoiled crop residue, cover crops and a multitude of other combustible raw materials and turn some of it into fuel - to drive internal combustion engines like tractors - while at the same time creating a stable form of carbon that can be stored underground to stimulate plant growth and potentially earn tradeable ACCUs for the farmer.
In fact, a new method for earning ACCUs using biochar sequestered in soil, is currently up for public submissions until July 12.
Meanwhile, the latest land clearing data for NSW shows 95,000 hectares of vegetation removed every year with the majority of that burned in windrows, filling the sky with valuable carbon-rich smoke.
Mr Winter points out the need for biomass to fuel biochar machines does not have to compete with food production, as already there is 80 million tonnes available in NSW alone from existing stubble and waste.
"Biochar stores CO2, captured by plants, as solid carbon and that is utilised in crop production so it's a double whammy for farmers," Mr Winter says.
In Mr Winter's vision the farmer can now have an avenue for income from paddocks of woody weeds otherwise burnt. By removing older growth already in senescence, new green shoots can be maintained and with living roots exuding the process of photosynthesis comes more fuel for carbon. It is a wonderfully complex system of sustainability best left to nature.
"I tell people the solution to our problems is right in front of us," he says.
Despite the industrial look of Mr Winter's machine, its systems are deceptively simple. Heat is exchanged at gentle pressures between a low temperature retort to char biomass and a high temperature furnace to crack off the syngas. Atmospheric N2 is kept separate from the fuel gas to improve its calorific value.
At the moment Redbank in the Hunter Valley is an example of a proposed big biomass burner converting waste to energy at scale but it does not produce biochar.
None of the current renewables - solar, wind, hydro are carbon negative.
Melbourne based Rainbow Bee Eater uses its own ECHO2 technology to create clean syngas from waste biomass, creating heat used in a South Australian greenhouse at Tantanoola. At the same time the process creates carbon-sequestering biochar.
In South Gippsland authorities are working on methods of biochar production to minimise biosolids precipitated from waste water.
Mr Winter says his machine is more nimble, scaleable and efficient.
Syngas, a mix of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, can be used in the production of ammonium nitrate and methanol. Through the Fischer Tropsch process the gas can be converted to liquid synthetic fuel which can run existing diesel powered equipment.
"This is on-demand power and fits into the existing distribution model," says Mr Winter. "Through these technologies agriculture can be our saviour - again.
"Previous historical breakthroughs gave us clean water, sanitation and available food. Now the problem is how to manage climate change. But by redistributing carbon and putting it in the ground we can do this."
