ARTi Podcasts

In April of 2021 ARTi had the chance to sell and ship 40 cubic yards of biochar. 40 cubic yards weighed at approximately 16k lb of biochar which would represent (if the conversion is x3) 48,000 lb of CO₂ or 20 Metric tons of CO₂ sequestered . With 1 gallon of biochar able to sequester 6 lbs of CO₂ this shipment represents 48,473.76 lbs (3.84 metric tonnes) of CO₂ capture!

Want to get closer to the Real ARTi feeling everyday? You prefer to let the world know that you’re engaged in practical climate change solutions. One great way to do so is to show off carbon-neutral clothing from our new ARTi wear T-shirt line. Biochar sequesters CO2, the primary driver of climate change. These shirts can be purchased with biochar carbon offsets so you will know you’re wearing an item that has successfully addressed its climate change impact. You can even go an extra step beyond carbon neutral by donating to iTRApCO2. Through this initiative, we will produce more biochar than what is needed to offset the CO2 emissions coming from the production of your shirt. This is carbon negative which goes further than carbon neutral. ARTi conducted a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) on the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) involved in the production of our shirts.

The ARTi Team includes researchers. Indeed, this does mean studies into topics that directly revolve around biochar such as pyrolysis and numerous aspects of soil science. However, a large number of topics can be found not too far from biochar itself. One of these is wildfire behavior studies. In fact, the idea of wildfire prevention through turning dead fuel wood into biochar has generated projects in California and Washington State, US. Nevertheless, better understanding of how wildfires behave can add to better practices.

It is with great pride that we are able to share that ARTi was among the top 60 best teams out of 1132 registered entrants into the world’s largest incentive prize seeking to address climate change: This puts ARTi in the top 5.30% ‎of contenders! The XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition sponsored by Elon Musk and the Musk Foundation is a $100 million competition aimed to address humanity’s greatest challenge: combating climate change and restoring the carbon cycle on Earth. ARTi entered the competition through our project called iTRApCO2. Our project offers biochar and pyrolysis as a Land-Based solution to remove Carbon. We design Pyrolysis Reactors capable of sequestering between 4 and 20 tons of CO2 per day. Our cost-effective, proven and highly scalable land-based solution of biochar and pyrolysis is a real rival for this prize and for fighting climate change. Our reactors will prove to be the most cost-effective pyrolysis systems in the world. What’s even better is that when the Biochar generated is applied to soil it helps to recover soil health, fertility and structure. As biochar retains water and nutrients in its porous structure, it also promotes beneficial microorganisms. Together, this all adds up to healthier soils. Please follow us on our social medias to get updates on our journey.

ARTi is consistently working on Research and Development for biochar and pyrolysis under the direction of PhD. Bernardo Del Campo. Dr. del Campo is a biochar expert and co-author of Chapters 3 and 4 of the book Biochar for Environmental Management: Science, Technology and Implementation published in 2015 by Routledge. Dr. del Campo’s chapters focus on Biochar production technology. 

The study of biochar production technology or pyrolysis technology includes testing out many varieties of biomass feedstock to produce biochar material for various uses and with different characteristics based on the original materials. There are also differences in processing techniques and in the lengths of production times as well. These procedures include tests such as biomass analysis (CHON-S), biochar composition and characterization, surface area analysis for adsorption, filter media performance analysis, and emission testing. At ARTi we have our own laboratory and we communicate and work regularly with other laboratories and researchers in the field.

We all know we need to mitigate our carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere to fight climate change. It has been a great challenge to accept that climate change is a real and serious problem. It has then been a great challenge to accept that humanity’s activities, that have made life easier in many ways, are by far the largest contributors to global warming. Well, we have good news! We all know we need to mitigate our carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere to fight climate change. It has been a great challenge to accept that climate change is a real and serious problem. It has then been a great challenge to accept that humanity’s activities, that have made life easier in many ways, are by far the largest contributors to global warming. Well, we have good news!

Thirty years ago the father of Enrique Sanz planted trees and in 2021 it was now time to harvest them for their timber. The process of cutting trees for timber generates a great deal of excess wood that can be converted to biochar. Instead of allowing the extra wood to decompose or otherwise go to waste, the wood residues will become biochar with the intention of improving the soils. The improved soil will make for better grass which will be fed to the cows that also live on the farm. For over 20 years, no chemical products have been used on the grass eaten by the livestock and there are no plans to change this. Biochar was chosen as an instrument to increase the quality of the farm’s soil because of its numerous beneficial properties but also because it aligns with the elder Sanz’s vision for the farm. A vision that entails minimal impact on the land and circular resource usage.

ARTi’s is as compelling as the topics the company deals with. Characteristically, there always is a unique combination of the down-to-Earth and the global. Juan Proano, Edson Vendrusculo, Matthew Kieffer, and Bernardo del Campo founded ARTi in 2013. We came together as a group of graduate engineers and began working on ways to help farmers and gardeners make a healthier soil. ARTi has been working on developing renewable environmental technology and agricultural solutions since the beginning. ARTi and subsidiaries have grown to make up an international team of more than 30 team members from Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Germany, Mexico, US and Uruguay with a multitude of academic backgrounds. Mechanical, agricultural, chemical, and electrical engineers, as well as economists, physicists, agronomists, and lifelong farmers are part of the ARTi team dedicated to creating a variety of biochar-based products and improving our technology day by day to  help more companies to accelerate its journey to a greener future.

Central to the story of biochar is Amazoinian Terra preta, fertile anthropogenic (meaning human made) dark earths in Amazonia that were enriched with char more than 8000 years ago. 1 Terra preta is the result of char and  household waste (bone, broken pottery, compost and manure) mixed into the native soil, Oxisol, which transformed this otherwise low fertility soil into a more productive soil. But is Terra preta, ancient carbon rich soil only found in the Amazon basin?

On February 2nd this year, 2021 ARTi Team led by president Dr. Bernardo del Campo successfully acquired a patent in pyrolysis “Thermochemical conversion system and method”  del Campo, B., 2021, US 10907827B2. The patent can be viewed here as well as on the Google Patent page.