Down to a Science
Mike Garjian
Mike Garjian likes the symmetry.
Indeed, standing in front of a massive manufacturing space in downtown Holyoke, complete with overhead cranes, where waterwheels, used to generate hydropower, were assembled more than a century ago, he envisions that same space soon being used to produce equipment he has invented that will reduce the amount of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere.
“A century later, a different kind of green energy,” he said as he talked about the CarbonStar Catalytic Pyrolysis System and what it might mean for a planet that is heating up, he and many climate experts say, due to rising amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere.
CarbonStar is a company that Garjian, a serial inventor and entrepreneur, and his wife, Irene, created. And catalytic pyrolysis is the process by which biomass (wood chips, seaweed, and canola meal) is converted — through thermal decomposition under oxygen-limited conditions — into what’s known as biochar and other byproducts, such as wood vinegar, a liquid fertilizer.
Gargian calls biochar “almost a miracle substance,” one that can be used for everything for reviving depleted soil to acting as an additive in concrete to reduce the massive CO2 emissions from the production of that product.
In simple terms, Garjian’s system takes a tree that is dead or dying — as well as the biomass lying on forest floors — and essentially interrupts that part of the carbon cycle whereby the tree or biomass decomposes into CO2 or methane. And it creates a use for the biomass that has sat on forest floors, fueling fires from California to Canada to Australia.
All this is, as Garjian said, a different kind of green energy being produced at this same location on Main Street.
“The process of biomass decomposing and returning to CO2 in the atmosphere … that contributes 17 times more CO2 than all human activity combined annually.”
But there is much more to like beyond this symmetry. There is the environmental impact, driven home by numbers that Gargian uses to get his points across.
“The process of biomass decomposing and returning to CO2 in the atmosphere … that contributes 17 times more CO2 than all human activity combined annually,” he explained. “There it is, sitting on the sides of roads, spewing CO2 and methane. That’s the material that we’d like to get, chip it into smaller pieces, and run it through the system.”
Mike Garjian calls biochar “almost a miracle substance.”
There are also the business implications. Indeed, that space Garjian was standing in is intended for the production of catalytic pyrolysis systems, and he can envision that space being transformed for that purpose within the next few years.
And then, there are the jobs, involving everything from the production of these systems to the prospect of people being hired to remove the biomass from forest floors — “just 100 feet off the highway,” as Garjian noted — to feed those systems.
Overall, there are many potential wins from this, the latest venture for Garjian, who has nearly a dozen patents to his name and has developed products ranging from flat light sources (tubeless neon) to alternative fuels — specifically running diesel vehicles on waste vegetable oil — to conversion of waste agricultural products into pellets for wood stoves and then cat litter.
For this issue, we take an in-depth look at his latest project and its far-ranging potential — for the region and the planet.
Burning Issue
As he walked around the prototype catalytic vacuum pyrolysis system in the middle of the 7,000-square-foot space he’s now leasing, Garjian explained how it works while also giving a brief history of how, and why, it was developed.
He noted that while the environmentally friendly cat litter he produced sold well, that wasn’t exactly what he wanted to do with his time and energy. So, as a side venture, he got interested in pyrolysis and set out to develop a workable system.
After getting involved with a few different partners, he took the technology he helped develop and, with Irene, created CarbonStar to design, patent, and license the current mobile system now siting in that Holyoke manufacturing building.
Garjian and some investors subsequently formed E3 LLC to build the current system and act as the exclusive licensee to operate and manufacture systems in the New England region.
As for how it works, he said it’s rather simple — the system utilizes a computer-controlled vacuum tube to heat biomass, extracting moisture and leaving behind biochar, without combustion.
“We’re taking woodchips, any plant matter — it could be paper or cardboard — but mostly wood chips from lumber mills that would normally go to waste, and we introduce it into a vacuum tube, with a catalyst,” he explained. “That vacuum tube is heated — it’s computer-controlled — and with that catalytic action, we break down the long-chain hydrocarbons in the wood.
“The way the natural carbon cycle works is … the plant or tree absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere, gives off oxygen, and keeps that carbon to build its own physical structure — a tree is 40% to 50% carbon, depending on the species,” he went on. “That’s how the tree sequesters carbon from the atmosphere. When the tree dies, it decomposes, and all of that carbon is released back into the atmosphere as CO2. Or, if the tree falls in the water or lies on its side where there’s no oxygen involved, it becomes methane.”
As noted, this natural carbon cycle puts a large amount of CO2 back into the atmosphere, he continued, adding that these amounts have been compounded by taking oil out of the ground and burning it, the growing use of other fossil fuels, and the large numbers of fires that have been destroying forests at alarming rates; last year’s forest fires in Canada emitted more than 1 billion tons of CO2 between May and June alone.
“When the tree dies, it decomposes, and all of that carbon is released back into the atmosphere as CO2. Or, if the tree falls in the water or lies on its side where there’s no oxygen involved, it becomes methane.”
“By the time they burned out in November, months later, they had put more CO2 into the atmosphere than 138 countries,” Garjian noted, adding that such fires will continue in the years to come.
All this explains why the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have been growing at alarming levels, and what those rising levels mean.
“It’s pretty much agreed to now by most scientists now that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere increases the temperature of the planet because CO2 holds more heat,” he explained. “Right now, we’re higher than we’ve been in hundreds of thousands of years. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, it was 250 parts per million in the atmosphere; 350 is kind of an agreed-upon upper limit. We’re now at 420.
“And the level of increase per year is increasing,” he went on. “It’s going in the opposite direction we want it to.”
All this also explains why Elon Musk created the $100 million XPrize for Carbon Removal, which Garjian sought a share of with his catalytic vacuum pyrolysis system, which he describes as one of the most carbon-negative processes in the world, meaning it sequesters CO2 from the atmosphere permanently.
CarbonStar didn’t win a cash prize — only four teams will, and these will be announced next spring — but the company was recognized in the official top 100 list; it officially placed 80th out of 1,400 entries, and in the top 28 among land-based systems.
It Comes Naturally
But there may be some even more important prizes in store for this company.
Indeed, Garjian and his team have made some improvements to the prototype, which is the next generation of a system he helped develop several years ago, and have started running it with wood chips supplied by a lumber yard in Westfield, with the goal of eventually running it 24/7, maybe 300 days a year.
Mike Garjian, standing in the large manufacturing space where water wheels were once assembled, says it will eventually be used to manufacture catalytic pyrolysis systems.
“Over the past three years, since we turned it on the first time, we’ve made some improvements in it, improved its throughput, and achieved better control over some areas,” he explained, adding that, while working on the systems, those involved also secured the space in Holyoke and moved in last year.
The system, which sequesters 367 tons of CO2 for every 67 tons it emits, will, as noted, produce biochar and several other products, including heavy and light bio-oils, which can be used as heating oil or refined to produce aviation and automotive fuels, as well as wood vinegar, which can be used as fertilizer.
“When we go in with a ton of wood, we’re going to get 520 pounds of biochar, which is 85% to 90% pure carbon, as well as 100 gallons of liquids, a combination of liquid fertilizer and bio-oils, and we’re going to get 75,000 cubic feet of a gas that we can use to generate electricity to run the system,” he explained, noting the highly sustainable character of this system.
As for biochar, as he scooped out a large handful of the substance, which he called “solid carbon,” Garjian said it has a number of practical uses.
“When I first began to produce it and sell it in 2006 — Irene and I were the first ones ever to sell biochar online — we were selling it as an additive for agricultural land. It improves the quality of the soil; it will replenish and bring life back to depleted soils,” he told BusinessWest, adding that it can also be an additive in the production of cement, and he is in preliminary talks with Sublime Systems, which will build a plant in Holyoke to produce environmentally friendly cement, about partnering with that venture.
While operating the system in Holyoke, the company plans to move into production of such systems in the adjoining manufacturing space, said Garjian, adding that needed capital to do so could be secured from any of several sources, including major corporations such as Microsoft and the federal government, which is pouring billions of dollars into carbon-removal technologies.
The systems themselves are mobile and able to operate in remote areas, he noted.
“Theoretically, when you have one these machines and you get it started with a small generator, it will begin to produce its own power to run itself, and provide electricity as well. So you can put them is small villages in isolated places, third-world countries, or places like Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria; they didn’t have electricity for six months in the middle of the island.”
Manufacturing these systems will obviously lead to the creation of jobs for Holyoke and the region, he said, adding that, overall, jobs can be created on many levels, including the removal of biomass from forest floors and even spaces just off country roads, as he noted earlier.
These jobs, not to mention the myriad benefits for the environment, are just some of the many things, beyond mere symmetry, to like about this intriguing new business venture.
