A quiet revolution is taking root in Heber City, where a state-of-the-art biochar facility is transforming waste wood into a high-value, eco-conscious solution with the potential to address one of the American West’s most visible environmental problems: beetle-kill forests.
The mountain pine beetle epidemic has destroyed millions of acres of forest. Specifically in the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest, there are other beetle epidemics, like the Western bark beetle, on which The Park Record reported in 2010.
“Western bark beetles may be only a quarter-inch long. But the insects are responsible for killing nearly 90 percent of the trees in large pockets of the Uinta Mountains east of Kamas,” wrote then-Staff Writer Patrick Parkinson.
Now, there’s also the balsam woolly adelgid, an exotic beetle species now seen targeting subalpine fir tree species, and the fir engraver beetle, both identified in the Pinebrook neighborhood in a late 2023 analysis. These pests are killing trees faster than forest managers can treat them, and some have evolved past control or remediation, meaning more and more dead wood is piling up.
A new venture, led by Utah-based CO2-Sync and developed in partnership with German company Carbo-FORCE, is meant to provide an answer. “The problem is the solution,” as CO2-Sync’s slogan says; all this dead wood is the perfect input for biochar, a carbon-capturing product with a wide range of sustainable uses.
Recently, talks of biochar and its uses has even reached the Park City governing team as they set their sights on a net-zero carbon goal by 2030, as part of the Mountain Towns 2030 group.
Biochar is produced by heating organic material such as wood, manure or crop residues in the absence of oxygen. The process removes volatile gases and leaves behind a highly porous, carbon-rich material that improves soil fertility, retains water, captures toxins and even purifies water.
And for this process, quality matters, said Darrell Huntsman, CEO of CO2-Sync. That’s why they’ve partnered with the team at Carbo-FORCE.
“Carbo-FORCE, that technology, it is objectively the best in the world,” Huntsman said.
Their whole partnership started as a personal pursuit: Kip Apostol, the managing director for CO2-Sync, is first and foremost a builder.
Apostol, the owner of Euclid Timber Frames based in Heber City, began building all-wood houses in 1987, and quickly becoming known for his traditional timber frame structures made with wooden pins, no glues, and mortise and tenon joinery.
As his company grew, Apostol brought in Hundegger machines from Germany, becoming the owner of Hundegger USA, whose computer-automated machines made it easier to cut and drill each timber to the correct shape, whether perfectly-sized window slots or bored holes for electrical wiring.
But the new machines produced a lot more wood waste, sending Apostol on a hunt for a solution: biochar. And in pursuit of the best engineered biochar machines, he ended up back in Europe.
Max Alberding, the business development manager at Carbo-FORCE, remembered that meeting more than three years ago:
“He reached out to us through LinkedIn, and a day later, we met at our demo plant. A week later, he said, ‘Well, I’m going to buy one of your machines.’”
It took time for the small team to figure out the logistics of expanding to the United States. But when they did, Apostol not only bought one machine, he purchased the exclusive rights for a newer, larger model, too.
The first machine was built on the Euclid Timber Frames property, and, recognizing biochar’s potential as a nationwide solution for wood waste, Apostol inspired other investors on board to create CO2-Sync.
Ready to sell their biochar product, CO2-Sync hosted an open house for industry partners like nearby Forest Service officials, nurseries, farmers and other forest management teams.
Kai Alberding, Carbo-FORCE’s managing director and co-founder — and Max’s father — said hearing and seeing the interest in biochar, and existing knowledge, from Wasatch Back attendees was shocking.
“It’s another world than in Europe. What you hear here, it’s positive, and the people discuss it, and they all have applications forward. They all have a view forward. And for me, it’s great to see it here,” Kai said.
They gave tours of the biochar plant, a collection of shipping containers that housed the equipment that turned wood chips into the carbon-dense char, totally smoke-free.
“A lot of people think, ‘Oh, you’re just burning wood.’ It’s the exact opposite,” said Huntsman. “All you’re doing is you’re heating it up, and it dries off all of the volatile gasses. … If you start to combust the wood, you’re combusting the carbon. And then that’s why it gives you the CO2, so you don’t want to burn the wood.”
The machine works by feeding in wood chips that pass a magnet to remove metals, then through a rotary valve that blocks oxygen. The chips are heated to around 800 degrees Celsius, and then rapidly cooled via a water-jacketed pipe system. Water is then added to the biochar before bagging, both to reduce dust and prevent the risk of combustion.
“Everything is recycled,” Huntsman said. “So we’re generating heat, and all that heat heats all these buildings, the sawmill, all the concrete there is all heated, and we still have more heat. We’re hooking a generator which will generate about 60 kilowatts of power.”
The end product is of the highest quality, measured in biochar through a handful of factors, said Huntsman. The first is carbon content: The higher the carbon percent, the more carbon captured, rather than released into the atmosphere as CO2. Theirs is 90-plus percent carbon, compared to most reactors, which measure between 40-60 percent.
“The second is what they call BET surface area or porosity. And it’s, if you were to look under a microscope, it just has all these little tiny pores in it. So we’re at 400 square meters per gram,” Huntsman said. “That’s where all the microbes live. That’s where the water is retained.”
That makes biochar amazing for water retention, Huntsman said, an obvious application in a drought-ridden state like Utah. Already, CO2-Sync is exploring partnerships with nearby golf courses.
“Their biggest operating cost is water, especially in the Intermountain West. And so you can use 20% less water with biochar underneath it, because it just retains and holds the water,” he said.
Those tiny pores mean biochar acts like a sponge not just for good minerals and water, but it’s also a tool to remove toxins from soil. That’s one of the uses CO2-Sync has found for Rio Tinto’s Kennecott copper mine.
“They have very acidic soil. They can’t get plants to grow. They have to do mine remediation in the soil,” Huntsman said. “(Biochar) is more alkaline than acidic, so it helps balance out the pH for plant growth, and then if you have heavy metals running off … it’ll capture all those heavy metals.”
While most of the current demand is for agricultural use, Huntsman anticipates its uses in construction to outpace it in the long run.
Biochar can replace sand or other aggregates in concrete mixes, reducing the amount of cement needed, and can also be mixed with binders to create plasters with improved thermal insulation and humidity regulation properties. Plus, it’s lighter and stronger than concrete. While concrete is one of the biggest emitters of CO2, biochar doesn’t have that problem.
In Europe, biochar is already also used as a livestock feed supplement to help with gut health by soaking up any toxins in their digestive tract. And because of Carbo-FORCE’s high-quality biochar, Kai said even humans can eat it,. To prove it, he put a pinch in his mouth and chewed.
Kai said partnering with people like Apostol has been amazing. Businessmen who understand wood, it’s part of their DNA, he said. The U.S. Forest Service is another one of those amazing connections, a win-win where this new biochar technology in the country can provide a solution to the vast amounts of wood waste in the National Forests from slash piles and standing dead beetle-killed trees. Right now, this biomass is processed through either chipping or controlled burning. If turned into biochar, it can be converted into a highly sustainable, versatile product.
The Heber location is just the beginning of CO2-Sync’s plans.
Two of Apostol’s larger-sized plants are already set to be built in Price, and they’ve identified locations across the western United States for another 54 plants to be built over the next three years. This means the potential for impact — and profit — is massive.
“There’s enough of this dead wood out here to power 1,200 plants like this for over 1,000 years with the existing beetle kill in the Intermountain West,” said Huntsman. “This is not a charity thing that we’re doing here. It has real economics behind it. … Energy deficit is real, and (with this) you have renewable energy that is reliable.”
Kai added: “I would say that’s our perfect way to sustainability, ecological and economical balance.”
If CO2-Sync’s open house was any indication, this project has plenty of attention as locals consider biochar as a sure way to address the impacts of climate change.
“For me, it’s really good to see what’s happened here. How interested all these guys are here, people for a sustainable future,” said Kai. “And if there are enough people looking for such systems and our partnerships grow, we can make a real impact for a better future, a real impact on climate change. We can do something.”
Learn more at co2-sync.com.