At a new home off West Neck Road, NASA scientists are experimenting with an ancient fertilizing method they hope will grow shrubs and flowers in an environmentally friendly way and help control global warming.

The method dates back hundreds of years to a simple but largely forgotten formula once favored by Amazon Indians, African tribesmen and Chinese farmers. Today, the method is called "biocharring," and it basically works like this: Take burned pieces of wood, grind them up, combine them with compost or clean soil, then bury the mix in the ground, maybe 6 inches deep.

Students at Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey are developing supercapacitors that use electrodes made of the green and inexpensive material biochar.

Supercapacitors are commonly used in solar panels to rapidly capture the generated energy so that it can then be stored. However, the material they use, activated carbon, is unsustainable and expensive. Biochar, on the other hand, represents a cheap, green alternative. It is the byproduct of the pyrolysis process used to produce biofuels, and as the use of biofuels increases so will biochar production.

Phosphate poses one of Florida’s ongoing water-quality challenges. A process developed by University of Florida researchers using partially burned organic matter called biochar could provide an affordable solution, however. The process also yields methane gas usable as fuel and phosphate-laden carbon suitable for enriching soil.

Phosphate is used to make fertilizers, pesticides, and detergents. Florida produces about one-quarter of the world’s phosphate, and its surface waters sometimes contain large amounts. Because the chemical can spur algae growth, it has caused water-quality concerns in some communities. Some water treatment plants filter phosphate from wastewater, but existing methods have drawbacks such as high cost, low efficiency, and hazardous byproducts.

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

PR Newswire

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.