🚜🌍 From cashew shell to carbon removal: Behind the scenes of biochar production
Last month, Supercritical joined Cula Technologies for a visit to MASH Makes’ production facility in rural Karnataka, India—a hub for biochar innovation. Here’s a look at the lifecycle of biochar production and the challenges biochar suppliers face.
🌰 Feedstock source
It all starts with repurposing locally-available residues from the cashew value chain, which would otherwise be used as low-grade fuel with harmful environmental impacts. MASH Makes transforms this waste into value, ensuring a sustainable supply while reducing harmful emissions from traditional fuel use.
🏭 Biochar production
At the MASH Makes production facility, advanced pyrolysis technology converts this feedstock into biochar, bio-oil, and syngas. The process is powered by over 800 machine sensors, enabling real-time monitoring and a highly automated operation. This ensures efficiency, reduces human error, and collects the critical data for robust MRV (monitoring, reporting, and verification).
The partnership with Cula Technologies enhances this process by integrating sensor data into customizable dashboards, helping MASH Makes precisely track productivity, uptime, and carbon credit metrics. This partnership is setting new standards for transparency and has boosted MASH Makes’ MRV score on the Supercritical marketplace.
🛠️ Key challenges
• Delivery risk - Many biochar producers rely on off-the-shelf pyrolysis units, which are often not purpose-built for biochar and come with significant operational and scalability limitations. MASH Makes tackled this by developing their own pyrolysis technology, giving them unmatched flexibility and scalability. However, self-designed systems are complex and require meticulous testing and ongoing innovation to achieve reliability at scale.
• MRV complexity - Accurately monitoring, reporting, and verifying carbon credits is critical, yet the traditional approach involves manual data input, prone to errors and inefficiencies. By partnering with Cula, MASH Makes integrates data from over 600 sensors into an automated MRV system. This not only ensures integrity and transparency but also enables scalability for carbon credit markets.
• Operational insights - MASH Makes and Cula are also collaborating to harness machine data to optimize key processes. With real-time tracking of incoming feedstock deliveries, outgoing biochar and bio-oil shipments, and machine uptime and performance.
🚀 A dual impact
MASH Makes’ biochar sequesters carbon and improves agricultural yields, while its bio-oil is being tested as sustainable drop-in fuel for commercial shipping. These solutions address the growing need for sustainability in both agriculture and maritime transport.
By partnering with innovators like MASH Makes and leveraging platforms like Cula, Supercritical is advancing the biochar ecosystem to ensure scalability and integrity in carbon removal markets.
