 Well, thank you appreciate the opportunity to be here First of all, I'd like to begin by acknowledging my team co-authors This is very much a interdisciplinary project We have agronomist cropping systems people soil scientists. We have mechanical engineers who work in thermal chemical Systems we have techno economic analysis. We have economists So we are literally trying to work across the spectrum from molecular scales to global markets and Indirect land use and related issues So the motivation here what we're talking about is a system that is carbon negative and and obviously IPC IPCC fifth assessment report made it very clear that if we want to avoid Unacceptable levels of climate change stable o2 degree C We're going to have to go carbon negative certainly to offset some Anthrogenic emissions, which are very difficult to remove from from our economy But also to Overcurve because we're likely to overshoot and we're gonna have to correct so our Technology our system is a carbon negative system It could be argued to be a form of becks or you could say it's an alternative to becks And it's really just a semantics argument at that point So what are we talking about? In this image is our sort of our grand vision we have Yeah, okay, so The landscape is covered with diverse sources of biomass whether it's cropping systems whether it's Dedicated bioenergy crops such as switch grass or Miscanthus grown on Agronomically marginal lands highly erodible lands or other lands that are should not or ought not to be Farmed we could have dedicated You know a tree forest crops all of this biomass can be pyrolyzed Thermal chemically transformed into Renewable energy products, and I'll talk more about that later and a Co-product which we call biochar, which is basically condensed aromatic carbon that is The solid residue of the thermal chemical processing the vision is to use the char as a soil amendment and The value here comes in the fact that the right char and the right soil can enhance soil quality it can actually enhance Plant growth primary productivity cropping crop yields and so on it also has some impacts in terms of enhancing nutrient water use efficiency in cropping systems and Intentionally in reducing the nutrient loss to rivers groundwater At the same time this becomes carbon negative because the half-life of char carbon is measured in the hundreds if not thousands of years depending on char quality and and Whereas the half-life of plant biomass such as a leaf or corn stover is measured in months and so by the Thermal chemical transformation of that material into a highly recalcitrant form. We're actually able to achieve carbon negative systems Our G-SEP project Is centered around a vertically integrated modeling approach So at the very center of this We have a model which is the Apsum biochar model and Apsum is a broader internationally used cropping systems model and what we've done is to introduce a char model here Now the reason we're doing this is that there's not one type of char, but there's a really Huge diversity an infinite diversity of char types We also have an infinite Almost infinite diversity of soil types. We've got huge variability in cropping systems in climates in management and so we've got an end by end by end by end by end diversity system that we're dealing with and It turns out that obviously if you don't get the right type of char and the right system in the right way You can see a negative Response on the other hand if you have the right type in the right place in the right way You can see a positive response and before we are going to be able to scale this up to a level to have an impact on climate systems we have to have an understanding at a both basic level and An application level of this system and at our approach to that then is through the modeling effort we also have the Techno economic analysis of paralysis systems We have economists looking at markets indirect land use issues and a diverse other systems So just briefly Apsum as I said is a cropping system model. It's very widely used to over 3,000 Users worldwide and its use is growing very rapidly. It's originally developed by CSIRO out of Australia It functions at a soil pedon level So soil is essentially divided up into a sequence of layers in which we're Controlling the or quantifying the mass and energy balance of the system Growing a crop on that system watching the roots grow in silico Inputs obviously are a daily climate time step So rainfall solar radiation As well as you know runoff run on leaching of nutrients and so on And of course you can run this with any historic climate database or with any synthetic future database Although it works at a pedon scale. It can be readily scaled up to landscape or even global scale So what we've done and and through Apsum support here is to add into the Apsum model a Biochar module which allows us to input the type of char that we're dealing with a series of physical chemical properties of those chars And this feeds propagates through the entire Apsum model and this is a very simplified diagram the upper left box basically represents What happens to fresh biomass as it is? biochemically transformed into humified Organic matter or co2 which is emitted out to the atmosphere The lower left box is the nitrogen cycle So looking at nitrogen mineralization and mobilization nitrification denitrification processes The upper right is a water box a water mass balance box. So we're looking at the Inputs obviously, but also hydraulic Properties of the soil. It's drainage upper limit. It's strange lower limit change in reservoir Properties and the lower right hand box is the plant phenology. So it controls what type of how that plant grows in the system and Apsum currently by the way handles over 30 different crops and new crops are Being added on a daily basis What we've done is everything in red has now been modified and this was Published earlier this year and is currently being vetted by the Apsum Apsum oversight committee and If it passes vetting and I'm quite confident it will since one of the directors is a co-author on that paper We will be in the next public release of Apsum This is as I said, it's actually a public domain free access model And so it will be made white worldwide So in addition to doing the math, we also have to validate Calibrate this system and so we have a number of different agronomic Field trials underway. This is just one example in which we're comparing a number of potential biomass crops a switch grass high-diversity polyculture low-diversity grass Prairie system and then obviously continuous corn with in maize Stover harvesting Another example of our field trial. This is a much Almost 216 different plots in this system Balls series of different crop rotations that integrate switch grass into the system But because we have an indimensional problem We've got all these different types of soils and chars and climates and so on We also have to do a lot of work in at a greenhouse soil microcosm scale And this allows us to look at the interactions that occur You know bring in a lot more different interactions at the system and it's also allows us to control the system much better So how's this how's the model working at this point? This is some some data from actual field trial work The line represents model predictions. So in the upper Left-hand corner, we have the estimate of soil organic matter and looks like in this case We might be overshooting it just a little bit that could easily be a consequence of Not knowing the depth of incorporation of the char precisely in that system So above density, we're right on the money with that in terms of being able to predict it Soal pH looks pretty good. Soal water content. Also, we're doing very well In terms of grain yield, that's a little more complicated Cropping systems are incredibly complicated systems and For example, the absent model as good as it is doesn't account for things like insect predation Doesn't account for management errors and other things that go on so we're not yet fully able to Predict at on an individual field basis that we believe were pretty good on a statewide or you know A larger area when you integrate across the system Here's a second test of it and this was data from published data from Julie Major down in Columbia and in this case we actually did a pretty good job of of Predicting yield response to char applications down in these highly weathered soils in the tropics In this example, this is out at one of our field trials. We have Soil moisture sensors buried in the ground and we're monitoring soil moisture content every 30 minutes at Four depths in these soils and this happens to be for the maze system The upper layer shows you the control in which there is no char And the red line shows you the model prediction for this system The lower system shows the char amended site, which is there these are four reps of each of these And the first thing to notice is that in the char system, we're able to retain substantially more water in this soil and this is so because of the Increased infiltration and increased retention that the char is adding to the system We're also able to predict that fairly well with the absent model We do see a few problems in a couple places and Some of that may be the quality of the climate data that we're comparing this against that is the rainfall input Okay, so switching now to the contribution of the engineering team, which is led by Robert Brown He's one of the world's leading experts in fast paralysis technology And this is just a schematic of the fast paralysis unit that Robert and his team have developed and in this you'll notice that there's a fluidized bed Pyrolyzer the char is separated out with a couple of cyclones and then the key points here are that the volatiles are Stage they use a stage fraction approach to condense out a heavy end a light end And then of course the non-condensable gases So if we look at the products that come out of the fast pyrolyzer, here's the char and Here is a fraction the heavy ends simply by a water separation this water soluble versus insoluble You're able to isolate a sugar fraction, which is dominantly libel glucosin and is readily fermentable It needs to be cleaned up a little bit, but that is technology has been developed On the other side the phenolic oil fraction it's Essentially a bio crude if you if you hydrogenate it you can send it off to a Any existing oil refinery and turn it into diesel or jet or other fuels You can also turn it into Higher value products like carbon fibers. We paved part of a Bike path in Des Moines, Iowa with the bio oil with this phenolic oil fraction But intriguingly one of the course one of the biggest challenges we have is scaling up if we could send a unit train load of This material to a refinery every week They'd be happy to take it if we try to send them one one truckload a month. They're gonna laugh at us so how do we scale up and One of the key innovations that has occurred in the near future in the recent past is the development of a product We're calling lignin coal Basically, all you have to do is heat this stuff up a little bit to about a hundred and forty degrees and it Polymerizes into a brick which has Same energy density of coal can be crushed and handled same as coal and can be burnt in any Proportion with a coal fired with coal in any existing boiler So here's the unit that Robert is operating right now at a quarter ton a day and You see this phenolic oil is about 21% of the mass the sugars are about 8% and the basically acetic acid and other like light oxygenates are the balance of this material Mark Wright who's been doing some techno economic analysis Looking at the opportunities of this system and where it fits in has compared two scenarios in this system he's looking obviously at a Char and a bio fuel scenario and in the lower system Essentially, all of the products are being combusted using running through a steam Turban system to generate electricity. So the products are char and electricity and At this point in time his his analysis is suggesting and okay the way to read this this would be the biochar Price and this is the unit price of electricity in green and the unit price of the liquid fuel products in Dollars per gallon. So essentially at ten cents a kilowatt hour the char would be essentially free and and for the Liquid fuel program or process at about three dollars a gallon Then no value would have to come from the char and if the price obviously goes down Then then the value of the char has to go up to reach a this is all set for a 10% internal rate of return and This considers no External credit carbon credit or government subsidy. So it's close to being economically viable Obviously the cost of fossil fuels is a huge factor in determining the competitiveness of this technology Now Dermot Hayes and the economists have been trying to look at more of a macro scale They use a the factory model, which is a major primary model used for setting agricultural policy And they've interfaced this with green ag sim Which is the model that is used by the environmental protection agency in setting renewable fuel standards in in assessing indirect land use effects and So Dermot is is working trying to say well You know what if how's the impact of a paralysis by our biochar bioenergy system going to be on global markets on on indirect land use and this is just an example of some of the prior work that Dermot did in this area in this system he considered what would happen if you had a one acre of of Grain of land that you converted from food production take corn grain to corn ethanol and And obviously be primary factor that is impacting the net emissions of CO2 from that is the indirect land use effect however, he said well, what if we also Harvested the stover and use that for Bioenergy through the paralysis biochar platform And it turns out that one of the really key things here is the net impact of the char on agricultural productivity and if you can increase that productivity by 6% then suddenly you have an Inversed indirect land use effect it can turn this entire thing into carbon negative and this means that the the power of Increasing yields increasing intensification of agricultural production can suddenly turn this thing Around into a carbon negative system can turn grain ethanol into a carbon negative system and Finally, I want to just end by Mentioning some of the work that's ongoing we've built a collaboration with easy energy systems and Stein seed company to commercialize this technology as We speak or building a 50 ton a day pilot scale system which hopefully by this time next year will be up and running and the primary energy product out of this will be the lignite coal which will be Actually co-fired with with coal in the ISU power plant and Biobutanol will be the fermentation product coming out of it And then of course the biochar which will be tested on agricultural soils And so finally I want to thank GSEP for funding that has supported this work And I also want to acknowledge all the graduate students postdocs technicians and many other people who have been Involved in this overall very broad team. So with that I thank you Okay, I'll start with a question a lot of National and subnational governments are currently considering the potential role of soil carbon towards their for example 2030 goals and there's been a fair amount of agonizing over the uncertainties So if you were to say here's how to think about possibilities for biochar in the real world of the next decade How do you see the risks and opportunities? That's an excellent question and the French have taken lead on this and so I want to applaud their effort in that regard The uncertainty is a huge problem and this is of course why we are working on a modeling system I can measure very accurately how many tons of char I put on the ground. That's easy But there are is is a potential priming effect does the char Accelerate mineralization of soil organic matter. Does the char Accelerate the formation of new humic substances from biomass and It works in both directions and we think on average. It's increasing it Secondly this indirect land use effect is huge if we can quantify that impact Then it you know, it's not just the tons of char carbon we put down It's all these other ramifications through the economic and agro ecosystem that are important And we're never going to be able to predict accurately for any one field But we think we can get the at the model to predict at a regional level what the average is and Obviously any kind of policy Will discount relative to a regional average not on a specific field basis When we think about a bio refinery we're always have to be mindful about the transportation costs of the feedstock to the bio refinery and So I was interested that your model now Incorporates a new transportation component back to the field And so even if the bio even if the biochar is free Do you have a sense for what those cut? You must have a sense for what those costs will be how much farmers will pay for it? given various Benefits that they would drive plus the cost of course for them to distribute that over across the field Yeah, transportation Logistics storage handling are huge issues with with biomass harvesting I live seven miles from Dupont's cellulosic ethanol plant and over the last Four years as they've been ramping up for this they've had I think at least four biomass fires It just seems like you put that much biomass in one place. It's gonna burn and Also, it's all very low density material. So transporting it to a centralized location Is hugely problematic the original DOE vision of thousand ton a ton a day Bio refineries quite frankly in my judgment will never work just because of the transportation storage logistics handling issues associated with any biomass harvesting Storage and transport system Yes, we do have a reverse transport of the char But you're also adding value to the soil quality and the farmers reaping some benefit of that In fact in in long-term continuous corn on high quality soils in Iowa We've recorded about a 13 bushel per acre yield increase And that is not sick not insignificant So there is value there for the farmer to purchase and transport that from the plant gate We don't envision huge refineries we're thinking of a much more distributed system Perhaps topping out at maybe 200 ton a day type of a plant And we think that that is a really critical piece in mitigating some of the problems of transportation storage allowing for on-farm and relatively short transport distances both to the plant and then a char coming back I have Acre gen the Central Valley and I'm wondering When I might be able to apply this material biochar on my soil How much would it cost per? Acre or what Hectar for and how much would I apply and We're in the drought side of the valley down down in the southern half the valley all right, so there is a In emerging a biochar industry in the US and around the world. There's about 300 entrepreneurs Who you can buy biochar from in the US at this time? However, they are mostly backyard garage scale operations and They are overwhelmingly targeting niche markets, so they're looking at horticulture High-value niche markets horticulture land remediation mine lands urban brown fields and Very high-value crops, so perhaps something like strawberries in the Central Valley where the cost is Over $50,000 an acre to bring in those strawberries if you can increase water use efficiency by 10% or so that would be really valuable and be be willing to You could afford to put the char on For Iowa corn farmers who have very thin margins The economics aren't there at this time For that to happen this whole industry has to scale up dramatically So that the supply is high and the cost starts coming down You can purchase char today anywhere from 200 to a thousand dollars a ton We need to see those prices coming down to Maybe under $100 a ton before it will be economically viable for broad-scale production agriculture It is already viable for these niche markets, so How big are your margins? Right, okay that we've run trials on that and and most The optimum seems to be between 10 and 20 tons per acre from an agronomic perspective Okay, thank you very much. Why don't we give one more round of applause and I'll turn it over to Richard for posters