POTSDAM, N.Y., May 23, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- ZeroPoint Clean Tech, Inc. ("ZeroPoint") today announced that it has completed the initial field commissioning of its biomass gasification Renewable Combined Heat and Power Solution at a project site in Schwarze-Pumpe, Germany. During commissioning the ZeroPoint Renewable CHP Solution produced synthesis gas that is suitable for fueling reciprocating engines on a stand-alone basis or by blending with landfill gas or natural gas. The Schwarze-Pumpe project will utilize the ZeroPoint solution to power used Jenbacher gas engines. The project is expected to begin selling power onto the grid within several weeks. The Company's Renewable CHP Solution can be sized to power a wide range of distributed energy projects. The ZeroPoint Renewable CHP Solution produces sequestered carbon in the form of "biochar" as a co-product. Biochar offers a number of positive environmental and agricultural uses in addition to sequestering carbon.

About ZeroPoint:

ZeroPoint Clean Tech builds distributed-sale biomass gasifiers and deploys them around the world to make renewable energy and sequester carbon. ZeroPoint's biomass gasification and related process technologies are designed to convert biomass into carbon-neutral synthesis gas, distillate fuels (middle distillates, ethanol, methanol, etc.) and electricity. ZeroPoint's packaged systems include the "ZeroPoint Renewable Gas Solution™" and the "ZeroPoint Renewable CHP Solution™" For more information please visit www.zeropointcleantech.com

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Cleantech Transit Inc. has announced that the 500kW biomass gasification facility located in Merced, California has passed its interconnection tests and is now connected to the utility distribution grid. The gasification technology uses a non-combustion process to convert Ag and other woody residues into a hydrogen rich gas ("syngas"), which is then converted into electricity, along with heat and biochar (a useful byproduct that captures carbon in solid form and can be used as a soil amendment).

The Phoenix Energy technology used in Merced essentially cooks the biomass in an oxygen-deprived environment to release the elemental gasses from the wood. In the process biomass is converted into a carbon rich biochar. With the carbon fixed in solid form this process not only provides a valuable soil amendment but also serves as a source of carbon sequestration.

The Merced plant is expected to produce enough electricity to power about 400 homes. The plant connected to the electricity grid under California's feed-in-tariff with a 15-year power purchase agreement. Ken Bosket, CEO of Cleantech Transit, stated "We are delighted with the success that Phoenix Energy has had with the Merced project and look forward to working with Phoenix Energy to build a strong partnership." iStock Analyst

There is a popular saying among organic gardeners: “feed the soil not the plants”. For the past 80 years, organic gardeners have fed their soils with a wide range of composts, from the home-made, high-fertility wormy stuff to nutritionally-balanced nursery-bought bags based on peat.

But recently, an additive has been discovered, or rather rediscovered, prompting excitement among gardeners. Available alone or now as pre-mixed, peat-free compost, the wonder material is biochar, a charcoal-like substance produced through the oxygen-free, slow burning of woody biomass garden cuttings, grasses, crop waste.

THE demand for energy production as well as agriculture's need for soil improvement is often incompatible. But biofuel and biochar made in the same process could soon become a reality. Curtin University's Fuels and Energy Technology Institute is halfway through a $4.7 million research project that uses mallee trees as the feedstock to produce liquid fuel.

The two stage process converts the biomass into a liquid bio-oil which can be transported to a refinery to produce liquid biofuel. Director Professor Chun-Zhu Li said the high nutrient biochar produced from the process was a source for carbon sequestration that could be used to improve soil conditions. "The carbon in the biochar comes from the carbon dioxide in the air when the plant grows," Professor Li said.

THERE was a frost expected here two weeks ago, but Gary Paul Nabhan, a conservation biologist and inveterate seed-saver, was out in his hardscrabble garden anyway, planting his favorite food, hot chilies. Chiltepin, chile de árbol (the one that scrambles up trees), Tabasco, serrano, pasilla, Chimayó. These are only a few of the pungent peppers that Mr. Nabhan and two other chili lovers — Kurt Michael Friese, a chef from Iowa City, and Kraig Kraft, an agro-ecologist studying the origin of hot peppers — collected on a journey that began two years ago, in northern Mexico, and took them across the hot spots of this country.

The intrepid Branson launches Virgin Oceanic, a quest to explore the deepest parts of the aquatic world and talks biochar.
FORTUNE -- Yesterday at the Brainstorm GREEN conference in Laguna Niguel, Calif., Richard Branson sat down with Fortune Managing Editor Andy Serwer for a conversation where he unveiled his latest venture,
Virgin Oceanic, through which he will explore the deepest underwater areas of the world.

In 2011, the world will emit more than 35 billion tons of carbon dioxide. Every day of the year, almost a hundred million tons will be released into the atmosphere. Every second more than a thousand tons - two million pounds - of carbon dioxide is emitted from power plants, cars, trucks, ships, planes, factories, and farms around the world.

The average citizen of the world will account for the release of four and a half tons – 9,000 pounds – of CO₂ this year. The average American will be responsible for four times as much, almost 18 tons, or 36,000 pounds of carbon dioxide this year, roughly a hundred pounds of carbon dioxide emissions for every day of the year.

While humans emit far less carbon dioxide than nature, the amount we emit exceeds the capacity of plants and oceans to absorb on top of the amount they’re already absorbing from natural sources. As a result, most of the carbon dioxide we emit remains in the atmosphere. Year over year, the atmospheric concentration of CO₂ creeps up. It will rise only half a percent in 2011, a seemingly tiny change. Yet tiny changes add up. Over the 50 years since 1960, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen nearly 25%. Since the start of the industrial revolution it has risen by 45%, putting it at a level not seen in millions of years.

A coffee grower on the NSW North Coast is starting to see some results from biochar research on his plantation.

Jos Webber says the trees without compost or biochar aren't performing as well as the rest of the crop.

He says two different types of biochar were put on his seedlings 18 months ago as part of Industry and Investment NSW trials.

"There seems to be quite a difference in the way the two chars are reacting in the soil, in that the rice hull has almost formed a blanket and there has been very little activity in that, whereas with the slightly coarser biochar made from poultry litter, there's been a lot of activity in that, and a lot of that is now being incorporated into the under-layers of the soil."

Biochar is also being trialled with other crops, including sugar cane, macadamias, rice and avocados. ABC