Page 6 - BusinessWest September 30, 2024

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.
Staff Photo
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 uti- lizes a computer-controlled vacuum tube to heat biomass, extract- ing 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 vacu- um 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% car- bon, 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 car- bon 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 con- tinued, adding that these amounts have been com- pounded 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 emit-
June alone. ted more than 1 billion tons of CO2 between May and
“By the time they burned out in November, months later, they had put more CO2 into the atmosphere than 138 countries,” Gar- jian 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
“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.”
kind of an agreed-upon CarbonStar
>>
upper limit. We’re now at
Continued on page 8
MORNINGS
MIDDAYS
AFTERNOONS
6 SEPTEMBER 30, 2024
<< FEATURE >>
BusinessWest