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Pitch

ATP's CRBBP Process cost-effectively remediates and/or stabilizes challenged soils, while producing lower-cost and beneficial bio-products.


Description

Summary

Agri-Tech Producers, LLC (ATP) is hoping to soon deploy its founder’s patent-pending, Combined Remediation Biomass and Bio-Product Production (CRBBP) Process, which cost-effectively remediates contaminated and/or stabilizes eroding sites, using the enhanced phytoremediation and soil stabilization capabilities of the prodigious root systems of bio-crops and bio-trees; then converts the resulting, cost-effective biomass feedstock into a variety of bio-products, including: biochars, to increase soil productivity; fillers or extenders, which are used to make stronger, lighter and water-resistant plastics; a safer alternative to wood-based charcoal cooking fuel, which reduces deforestation pressures and improves family health; and a bio-coal, which can be co-fired in coal-fired power plants, with minimal equipment upgrades, to proportionately reduce carbon and chemical pollution. 

The CRBBP Process can substantially increase the availability of lower-cost biomass from various challenged sites, like reducing nutrient pollution in farmland, like that of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed,stabilizing and enriching eroding soils in a place like Haiti, cleaning up coal ash deposits,  as well as lowering the cost of new, wastewater treatment plants and reinvigorating spray fields in existing, rural wastewater plants.


What actions do you propose?

ATP seeks to demonstrate the CRBBP Process, initially in one, and later in a total of  three settings, to more fully demonstrate its full potential.  The CRBBP Process will be applied to three land use settings and each of these demonstrations will show how the process remediates challenged lands, reduces climate change impacts, along with offering other societal benefits.

In Maryland - If the demo is successful, federal and state conservation programs will offer farmers incentives to treat their acreage in a way which will generate substantial amounts of new biomass.  Local utilities will have a supply of bio-coal for co-firing, reducing chemical and carbon pollution.

In Haiti - If the demo is successful, more consumers will be using plant-based charcoal, fewer trees will be cut down, allowing the forests to begin expanding, more crops will be growing and extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

In South Carolina - More land will be in production, which will generate substantial amounts of new biomass and more crops will be extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  Local utilities will have a supply of bio-coal for co-firing, reducing chemical and carbon pollution.


Who will take these actions?

ATP is collaborating with all levels of government, local businesses, non-profits and local producers and land owners in each of the three, likely demo project sites.

Examples include:

Chesapeake Bay Watershed - USDA NRCS, MD Dept. of Natural Resources, Univ. of MD Eastern Shore, Chromatin Sorghum Genetics, Local Farmers, etc.

Haiti - USAID Haiti, Haiti Ministry of Agriculture, Heineken Brewery, Yunus Social Business-Haiti, Chromatin Sorghum Genetics, Local Farmers, etc.

South Carolina - USDA Rural Development, USDA FSA, United Sorghum Checkoff Program, State of South Carolina, Chromatin Sorghum Genetics, Contaminated Site Owners, etc.


Where will these actions be taken?

Demonstrations are proposed at sites in three locations:

1. In farm soils of Maryland, USA, where there is phosphorus nutrient pollution that runs into the Chesapeake Bay, creating algae bloom and ultimately kills fish and other aquatic life;

2.  In Haiti, where deforestation has resulted in eroded and low-nutrient soils and where a plant-based alternative to wood-based charcoal cooking fuel is needed; and,

3. In the southeastern region of South Carolina, USA, where staff from EPA's RePowering America's Lands Initiative say there are approximately 170 sites, contaminated with chemical pollution, within a 75-mile radius of ATP's proposed pilot torrefaction plant.


How much will emissions be reduced or sequestered vs. business as usual levels?

Emissions will be produced to the extent that the bio-products produced replace fossil alternatives. 

At a pilot plant scale, 13,000 tons of torrefied biomass would be produced annually.  if it were all made into bio-coal, it would thereby displace the chemical and carbon pollution attributable to an equal amount of coal.  Bio-coal will have almost no mercury, sulfur or other chemical contaminants commonly found in coal, and it will be carbon neutral.

At full scale and given the need to grow biomass in a way that does not compete with food production, and recognizing that placing idle land into production would increase the absorption of carbon dioxide, the combined impacts could be very significant.


What are other key benefits?

The CRBBP Process enhances the environment by cost-effectively removing toxins and putting underutilized lands into production, which may have otherwise remained unused.

It cost-effectively produces biomass feedstock which can be converted into the bio-products mentioned earlier, which each have environmental and societal benefits.


What are the proposal’s costs?

The CRBBP Process is a cost-saving process, which actually provides a lower-cost alternative for certain types of soil remediation/stabilization practices, while decreasing the effective cost of the resulting biomass and bio-products.


Time line

In the near term, ATP hopes to implement one of the three demo projects mentioned above.  In the medium term, it is hoped that each of those three projects will expand to commercial scale.  In the long term, the CRBBP Process can be applied to tens of millions of acres, across the world.


Related proposals

N/A


References

REFERENCES

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