"NextFarm Energy And Food System" is a start-up company aiming to manufacture the tools for actively removing large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while making good profit. This is by simultaneously producing a low cost new fuel for heavy transport and farm vehicles, with the fuel being produced together with a charcoal powder made from non-food plant material, e.g. straw, which is a reliable form of carbon sequestration when put in soil with best practice. This helping farmers with greater financially profitability and sustainably.
With the "Energy And Food System" farmers can co-produce both biochar and slow pyrolysis oil, (using about 20% of the liquid and all of the syngas to provide energy for the two final products).
The long-standing past barrier to pyrolysis oil in automotive transport has been the prohibitively expensive up-grading of raw bio-oil to automotive quality diesel, or large pointless dilution with ethanol.
The best solution is a new engine that can use the non-upgraded, non-diluted liquid in its cheap state, and then finding the right initial market where such a disruption is still attractive on many fronts, especially financial.
The new engine's production cost would be about the same as diesel engines, and avoids the cost and critical minerals scalability limits of electrification of heavy vehicles in the large numbers needed for the global climate situation.
Overall the system has 340% negative CO2 emissions energy, and this in the agricultural and heavy transport sectors which are difficult to decarbonise. This is much better than the zero CO2 emissions goal, which is no longer adequate with climate tipping points being passed on several fronts, and climate change accelerating, especially since 2023.
For more details contact Dr Errol Smith; errol.smith@nextfarm.co
