South Africa’s first large “reverse coal mining” plant launching in weeks

South African startup B10 Char is set to open the country’s first major biochar production facility in the first quarter of 2025.
B10 Char was founded less than a year and a half ago by two commodities traders — Tobias Munk and Philip Edmonds.
The firm hopes to process over 22,000 tonnes of organic waste and convert it into 7,000 tonnes of biochar in the facility’s first year in operation.
“Our aim is that B10 becomes known as the brand that produces one of the world’s highest qualities of biochar,” B10 said.
“Biochar is an ancient product whose time has come. B10 will be at the forefront of this revolution.”
B10 describes what it will do with biochar as “reverse coal mining.”
Biochar is produced in a similar way as regular charcoal. The latter is made by heating wood at temperatures above 400°C in an oxygen-deprived oven, a process called pyrolysis.
Biochar is made using the same process but has biowaste, including food and plant waste, agricultural residue, and animal waste, as its starting ingredient.
While biochar can also be burnt to produce heat for cooking, its primary benefit is as an environmentally-friendly soil additive with water and nutrients-retaining benefits.
Recent research has shown that the earliest known human inhabitants of the Amazon used “dark earths” that included biochar to boost tree, plant, and crop growth in the rainforest thousands of years ago.
B10 Char will sell its biochar to farmers and the agricultural industry in both raw and “pre-charged” formats.
The company said early adopters will be offered “highly attractive” incentives to try the product before they buy to see the effects on their crops during a full cycle.
A 2015 pilot biochar production study commissioned by South Africa’s environments department found that feedstocks and sawmill waste held great local potential for conversion into biochar.

The other major benefit of biochar is that it can help reduce carbon emissions.
The production process for biochar converts the carbon emissions that would have been released from burning biowaste at a waste disposal facility into a stable, solid form.
“Instead of extracting carbon (coal) that was sequestered millions of years ago and burning it, thus adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, we reverse the process,” B10 said.
“We produce (char)coal and return it to the earth for long-term carbon storage.”
B10 Char plans to remove 15,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in its plant’s first year of operation.
Local air quality is also improved as the emissions that the burning of the biowaste would have produced is stored rather than put into the air.
Biochar can also help in Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) when used in the soil for trees planted specifically to offset emissions.
Carbon is one of the essential resources that trees need to grow.
If the soil in which their roots are buried is filled with biochar, it can retain more carbon than non-enhanced soil.
Businesses with large carbon footprints can offset them by buying CDR credits from carbon capturers.

While biochar is already being made in South Africa, production is currently limited to small mobile units.
B10’s facility is being constructed on a four-hectare site in an unspecified rural area. The company has fully refurbished several dilapidated buildings it inherited on the property.
These will be converted into modern offices, a lab, and on-site accommodation for its employees.
The machine that will produce the biochar will be shipped from China and is expected to arrive at the site in early March 2025.
B10 said its biochar will be produced in advanced fully-automated continuous kilns, the thermally insulated ovens used to make charcoal.