Paul Szmal: And good morning, welcome to another edition of FLX Morning here on Finger Lakes News Radio 739, plenty of sunshine and a little on the cool side at 49, but it's going to warm up quick today. And I have guests in studio here as we kind of wrap up our little mini Earth Day slash Arbor Day series. Ryan Stachok is here.
Ryan Stateczny: Oh, good morning, Paul. Good morning to the listeners. I really want to thank you for your time and the listening the last couple of days.
Ryan Stateczny: You know, Paul, when I moved back from Colorado in 2008, I was at my friend's house. Now you know how much I love trees, Paul, right?
Paul Szmal: Oh, yeah. Yeah. We're talking about that history. All the time. All the time.
Ryan Stateczny: And so, and I'm at my friend's house and his name was Marty Dodge, and he had a fire going in his wood-burning stove, and we're sitting down talking in the kitchen, and he gets up in a frantic. He says, oh, I got to go. And he runs over to his stove and he opens up the stove, honest to God, this is an honest to God story, and he grabs his tongs and he grabs a hot burning log out of the stove. And I was like, what is this guy doing, right?
Ryan Stateczny: And he takes it and he dunks it, he takes it out of the stove, smoke going all over the place, dunks the log in a bucket of water to immediately cool it down. Okay. And then he was a little more relaxed, right? And he closes up his stove, and I said, Marty, what are you doing? He says, oh, Ryan, I'm making biochar. And I said, Marty, what? And so that's where my story with biochar started.
Ryan Stateczny: And so being a forester by training and someone that burns wood for heat in my home, I also burn pellets, I'm a forest management advocate, I had to learn more about this biochar stuff. And that's where my story started. And that's where Kathleen kind of came into play. She kind of brought your name up. My wife, Emily, worked with Kathleen quite a while ago when she was working in sustainability at Finger Lakes Community College. And so I really want people to learn about biochar. And so I thank you for your time. I'll hand it over to you and Kathleen to start the conversation.
Paul Szmal: All right. Kathleen, good morning. How are you this morning?
Kathleen Draper: Doing well. Thanks for the invitation. I appreciate you being here.
Paul Szmal: So what is biochar? How does it work?
Kathleen Draper: So biochar is a lot like charcoal. It's taking any kind of organic matter from manure to wood to crop residues and baking it in an oxygen-limited environment, think like an oven. And you're burning off the water and other volatiles and you're left with this really solid form of carbon that microbes don't like to eat as food. So it takes a lot of that carbon that the plants absorb during their lifetime out of the short-term carbon cycle and puts it into the long-term carbon cycle.
Paul Szmal: What kind of different applications are there for biochar?
Kathleen Draper: Well, mostly people think of it as a soil amendment, adding carbon to the soil. It can help things like reducing the amount of watering you need to do or it reduces nutrient leaching. But more and more, we're seeing people use it in filtration, in building materials like concrete and asphalt. So it's having a moment where we're finding all sorts of different ways to use it.
Paul Szmal: Now, how is this made in the area?
Kathleen Draper: We have one really interesting example that Cornell's been working on with a dairy farm over at Spruce Haven and they are converting their dairy digestate after it's gone through the biogas process and they're converting that into both heat and energy and biochar. So it's reducing the volumes, it's producing energy and it's producing a product that they can use right there on the farm.
Paul Szmal: This sounds like it's a pretty climate-friendly product.
Kathleen Draper: It is. That's one of the reasons it's been having a moment. It is one of the strategies called carbon dioxide removal that helps to rebalance atmospheric carbon. At the same time, it's helping farmers with food security and things like that.
Paul Szmal: Now, I get the whole concept of creating this as a soil supplement. It's kind of like a fertilizer, but it isn't. But how is it used in construction and things like concrete and asphalt?
Kathleen Draper: Yeah, so it is able to displace some of the aggregates, whether it's sand or something like that. And it's also displacing fly ash from coal plants, which is becoming more and more scarce. And it's able to not only replace those materials to some extent, but it's enhancing the performance of these materials, particularly in concrete. It's helping to provide more insulation value. In asphalt, it's helping to increase heat resistance and things like that. So it's a big area of not just research, but commercialization opportunities.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, this is fascinating because up until today, I had never heard of this product. I had no idea what it was. When Ryan brought it up to me, he said, oh yeah, on Thursday, we're going to talk about biochar. I was kind of like, what are you talking about?
Kathleen Draper: You're not alone. You're not alone.
Ryan Stateczny: And what's really interesting, when Paul walked in to get Kathleen and I, I have a bag of biochar that I had to buy. After I went to Spruce Haven Farm, I said, this has got to be commercialized. What an opportunity. What a solution, right? A real hard solution that can be economically prosperous for people that want to get involved in it. And as long as we can commercialize it and scale it up to be desirable for people.
Ryan Stateczny: And so I went on to Amazon. This is not a pitch for Amazon, but I just wanted to see how can I buy it and how much would it cost? And a bag of biochar that I could use for my garden this winter or this summer was only like 20 something dollars. And so, yeah, I don't have to purchase. And then the cool thing about biochar, and I don't want to step on Kathleen's, is that it adds a place for microbacteria to live. So they don't want to eat that space, but they want to be there. So we're actually providing habitat, if I'm correct, Kathleen, for microbial activity. So if you think about adding those values to the soil, it's really important.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, absolutely. I hear that Cornell has done a lot of work on this product over the course of the past couple of years.
Kathleen Draper: Absolutely. In fact, Johannes Lehmann of Cornell is one of the leading biochar scientists in the world. They've done research locally, and New York's really lucky. We have one of the only land grant universities that has a biochar expert, Dr. Debbie Allard, that goes around teaching farmers how to use it in all different cropping systems. So I feel very fortunate that Cornell is so steeped in biochar. And RIT is kind of getting with the program as well.
Kathleen Draper: Yeah, they look at it more from the material science perspective. So I've worked with them on different projects, putting it in drywall. There was a really interesting project putting it in agricultural mulch, which at the end of the growing season, you could spray something on to degrade the binder and leave the biochar. So you didn't have all this microplastics in your soils. So lots of opportunity out there.
Paul Szmal: Has the use of biochars started here locally within the Finger Lakes region? Have we got to that point yet?
Kathleen Draper: Well, I wish there was more of that going on. You can actually buy it locally from a local Mennonite. I think it's Friendly Fields or Friendly Farms. But I'm hosting a little class, if the rain doesn't kill it, on Saturday, and I'll teach you how to make your very own biochar.
Paul Szmal: Oh, OK. Now, that was my next question. If the Mennonites are selling it, chances are they're making it themselves.
Kathleen Draper: I don't actually think they are at this point, because they're selling it at scale. And that takes some more sophisticated equipment. But it is an easy enough process. It's been around for thousands of years in different indigenous communities. I first learned how to make it over at Ganondagan. And they were trying to show how local Native people made it. But it is a pretty simple process.
Paul Szmal: Now, I'm looking at, you brought a little sample box here. And I'm looking at what I assume is some of the biochar here in the red tin. And it looks like a little black brick. If I didn't know better, I'd say, oh, well, that must be some kind of charcoal briquette or something, except it's rectangular instead of square.
Kathleen Draper: These are actually tiles that somebody is using for interior design. And they have up to 70% biochar in these composites. And I just picked up this other structured insulation panel from Bill Hilgendorf in the Hudson Valley. And that has 20% biochar. And they're testing it for our value. It's a completely natural product. So there's a lot of people in the built environment looking to lower the embodied carbon in building materials. And this is one way to do it.
Paul Szmal: And this would be one way to get away, maybe, from some of the fiberglass insulation that is used so commonly.
Kathleen Draper: Correct. Yeah. And it comes from biomass. Right. And it's a renewable resource. Right. Right.
Ryan Stateczny: So if you love trees, I mean, why? It just seems like such an obvious solution, an opportunity for our economy to really capitalize on a good, environmentally safe solution.
Paul Szmal: So if I wanted to make biochar at home, how would I go about that?
Kathleen Draper: Well, you could do the Marty Dodge method, which is super easy. In a fireplace, you just capture it before it turns to ash and you dunk it in water. You can do the same thing with, say, a coffee can that has a lid and holes punched in it. And you put your biomass in there, throw it on a fire. I've done that to carbonize bones if I want some cool looking biochar. But basically, you can also just make it in a pit. As long as you are continually throwing biomass on to bring the flame up so that it doesn't turn to ash, then you're carbonizing it and not combusting it. And then you just add water.
Paul Szmal: Add water.
Kathleen Draper: Or you can add other nutrients. If you're at a camp, you can use urine and then you're actually putting nutrients into the biochar. So, yeah.
Ryan Stateczny: Wow. This has been around for thousands of years and we're just discovering a use for it. And the commercialization is really cool for me. I think there's opportunity here to work with the environment and not cost the earth.
Paul Szmal: Yeah. So, other than the Mennonites here, you'd have to order it on Amazon right now? Is that my understanding?
Ryan Stateczny: You know, there was a place in South Seneca County that was doing it. I think that the markets weren't there. Enough people weren't demanding it. Wasn't enough people purchasing it. So, if you're interested to do the right thing in your garden this year or on your landscape or in your lawn, go look up biochar. Give it a shot instead of purchasing fertilizer. That's going to be maybe harmful, right? Give biochar an opportunity.
Paul Szmal: Yeah. So, that to me, that and the building prospect of being able to use it as an insulator. To me, those two uses seem like the prime areas for the market for this product.
Kathleen Draper: I actually used it. I built a very sustainable home a few years ago and I used it in my septic system. I have it in my epoxy floors. I have it in my plaster walls. So, there's a lot of opportunity.
Paul Szmal: Yeah. And so, a little different way of thinking. It's something very old that's been around for a long time, but it's got multitudes of uses and it helps to reduce the carbon footprint, which is probably the most important thing of all.
Kathleen Draper: Yeah. It's one of those great things that makes you feel good.
Ryan Stateczny: Absolutely. Kathleen, Ryan, thank you so much for sharing.
Kathleen Draper: Thank you, Paul. Much appreciated.
Ryan Stateczny: Yeah. Thanks so much for the last couple of days. Have a great week, everybody. Don't forget Friday's Arbor Day. Plant a tree.
Paul Szmal: There you go. Absolutely.
Ryan Stateczny: Is there a, you said just kind of search biochar on the web is probably the easiest way or?
Kathleen Draper: I have a website called fingerlikesbiochar.com. It has a bunch of information and I wrote a book on all these uses. That's all one word, biochar, B-I-O-C-H-A-R, so go check that out.
Paul Szmal: It is 7.51 on FLX Morning.
