Decentralized oxygen-lean torrefaction for in-wood biofuel production

Most biomass (crop and forest) residues are loose wet and bulky making them logistically costlyto collect and convert into useful biofuel/bioproducts. As such in Western States such asCalifornia excess woody residues either are burned in prescribed fires or cost landownerstremendously to move out of wildfire-prone regions. Takachar is developing small-scale low-costportable equipment that can be latched onto the back of pick-up trucks to deploy to remote hard-to- access landings and vegetation management operations to locally densify/upgrade the woodybiomass into higher-value biofuels and bioproducts before transportation. As more equivalentenergy or value can be now packed onto the same truckload compared to moving raw biomass thissaves electrical utilities such as Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) hundreds of millions ofdollars in vegetation management. This project will validate a feedstock-robust control system overa wide range of input biomass characteristics consistently producing a biofuel of a heating valuespecified by a prospective customer despite the input fluctuations. If successful this project willlead to an integrated hardware-software system that allows Takachar to scale our operation todifferent vegetation management operations with different biomass types and moisture contentsproducing different user-specified bioproducts on demand. When commercialized in the beachheadmarket we can help landowner expand vegetation management increase biomass utilization andreduce wildfire risk thereby helping state and federal governments avert $4 billion/year in wildfiredamages and suppression costs sequestering around 800 million tons of CO2-equivalent andcreating $150 million/year of livelihood in rural underserved communities.