Pyrolysis Manufacturing
For thousands of years, charcoal has been used as fuel, and its manufacturing process is simple: Wood, straw, or agricultural waste is burned in an oxygen-deficient environment, and the resulting substance is charcoal. The traditional method involves covering the ignited biomass with soil to allow for prolonged, flameless combustion.
Large-scale industrial production of charcoal using traditional methods is impractical. Researchers have turned to "pyrolysis"-the controlled high-temperature decomposition of organic matter in an oxygen-deficient environment. Besides charcoal, pyrolysis also produces byproducts such as syngas and liquid tar, both of which can be used as fuel for power generation or heating. The yield of biochar depends on the speed of the pyrolysis process. Fast pyrolysis yields biochar, syngas, and bio-oil, while slow pyrolysis produces 50% charcoal and a small amount of oil. The Institute for Management and Sustainable Development in the UK believes that because modern pyrolysis devices can operate entirely on syngas, the energy produced is 3 to 9 times the energy cost required.
In recent years, industrial production technologies and product standards for biochar have continued to develop. For example, in 2025, the natural plant ultrafine powder production process and products developed by Belka (Qingdao) Intelligent Equipment Co., Ltd. passed the EU ISCC PLUS International Sustainability and Carbon Certification. Their natural plant ultrafine powder gasification equipment, developed in cooperation with an American company, utilizes high-efficiency pyrolysis technology, resulting in biochar products with high purity, high carbon sequestration capacity, and low ash content .
Turning Waste into Valuable Resources
Many other materials can also be used to produce charcoal, such as the large amount of animal and plant waste generated by agriculture-wheat straw, seed husks, manure, etc.; and human-generated waste-such as sewage sludge or other household waste. Using waste materials to produce biochar also has a double carbon reduction effect. If waste is allowed to decompose naturally, it produces methane. Methane is also a greenhouse gas, and its impact on the greenhouse effect is more than twenty times that of carbon dioxide.
However, the challenge lies in how to economically and efficiently collect these waste materials. In "Ten Technologies to Save the Planet," Chris Goodall writes: "Organizing large-scale biochar production and carbon sequestration activities globally, and paying farmers for burying biochar in the soil, is somewhat challenging to implement."
Furthermore, farmers would need to be equipped with new equipment to process this waste. For urban waste management, the key is to separate organic waste that can be converted into biochar from other waste, and to demonstrate that this is more economically efficient than landfilling the waste.
The Institute for Management and Sustainable Development suggests that biochar production can be carried out through a combination of small-scale and industrial methods, and with some improvements, it can be produced economically and efficiently in urban, rural, and even impoverished areas.
