Example business cases

The BiGchar 2200 mobile unit costs $9,900 a month under a fully serviced four year lease and is capable of turning out more than 600 tonnes of biochar a year in mobile form or well in excess of 1000 tonnes per year in a fixed location.

The potential business cases for the utilisation of the BiGchar technologies are many and varied. A couple of examples are outlined below:

Case One – Green waste disposal

Bob owns a garden maintenance and tree lopping business which generates 2000 tonnes of mixed green waste each year. Bob uses a chipper and has tried to sell the green waste for mulch, but with little success, because no-one wants someone else’s weeds. So Bob pays $50/tonne to dispose of his chipped waste at the council green waste facility, with the prospect that this disposal cost will keep increasing by 5-10% per year. Rather than pass on $100,000 of his customer’s money each year to the council, Bob would rather sell them back their green waste as biochar for their garden beds. Bob figures that his customers will be willing to pay $400/tonne for biochar (equivalent to $120 per tonne of their own green waste converted to biochar).

	Now	With BiGchar
Tonnes of green waste	2,000	2,000
Tonnes of Biochar made	-	600
Volumes	~5000 m³ (chipped) ~100 truck loads	~500 m³ as biochar ~10 truckloads
Council disposal charges ($50/tonne)	-$100,000	Nil
Truck running costs	-$6,000 Assuming 20 km round trips and running costs of $3/km.	-$2000 (Bob can also move to a smaller truck)
Sale of biochar at $400/tonne	-	$240,000
BiGchar 2200 fully serviced 4 year lease	-	-$118,000
Additional overheads and operating costs	-	$50,000 (incl. additional wages)
Net result	-$106,000 Net cost	$69,200 Net benefit per year 40% return on funds employed

Case Two – Crop waste disposal

Plants were the world’s original solar panels and to this day are the most efficient technology for capturing and storing sunlight. Yet mankind does not make efficient use of the energy stored by plants. Around Australia there are literally millions of tonnes of crop harvesting wastes that either go un-utilised, or worse, are disposed of in an environmentally harmful manner. The following analysis applies to the harvesting residues from sugar cane. A similar analysis could be applied to cotton harvesting wastes, rice husks etc.

Currently cane trash fires are used to dispose of the harvesting residue in fields that are about to be ploughed out for fallow crops or replanting. The alternatives are to mulch and plough in (infeasible when soil moistures are low), bale for sale to the general public, or transport to sugar factories as a supplementary fuel. The following table outlines these alternatives.

	Trash fires on plough-out fields	Bale trash on plough-out fields	Transport to local sugar factory for cogeneration fuel	Processing to BiGchar
Tonnes of crop waste	10 tonnes per hectare of cane harvesting residue (cane trash). The total cane growing area in the Mackay local district is ~80,000 Hectares, with more than 10,000 Hectares per year ploughed out for fallow or replanting. Most of this has the trash burnt off it before it is ploughed out. For this example we look at the alternatives for just 200 Hectares.
Tonnes of product from 200 Hectares	2000	2000 130,000 bales per year !	2000	600
Volumes of biomass transported	-	~20,000 m³ @ 100 kg/m³	~50,000 m³ @ 40 kg/m³	~3500 m³ as biochar @ 170 kg/m³
Trucking costs 50 m³ truck, $2.5/km and 25 km/round trips	-	$25,000	$62,500	$4,375
Sale or value as reduced fertiliser requirement	-	$390,000 @ $3/bale ($195/tonne)	$70,000 @ $35/tonne	$300,000 @$500/tonne
Production costs	-	$325,000 @$2.50/bale	$20,000 @ $10/tonne in field collection Other costs borne by sugar factory	$170,000 (BiGchar lease & other costs)
Net result	Air pollution complaints. Wasted resource	$40,000 per year Net benefit 11% return on funds employed	$12,500 per year Net cost !	$125,625 Net benefit per year 72% return on funds employed