CEO interview: CHAR Tech’s Andrew White

Last July, CHAR Technologies Ltd (CHAR Tech) closed a C$6.6 million (€4.5 million) strategic investment by leading steel and mine firm, ArcelorMittal. CHAR Tech’s CEO, Andrew White, tells Bioenergy Insight more.
CHAR Tech is a leader in sustainable energy solutions, and is headquartered in Toronto in Ontario, Canada. Its core technology consists of high-temperature pyrolysis – heating without oxygen.
The company’s focus is on upgrading the biocarbon stream derived from woody biomass into a metallurgical coal replacement. This is commonly known as biocoal, but CHAR Tech has branded its product as CleanFyre.
“We’re taking very specific feedstocks, in our case woody waste and woody residuals, and processing it through an oxygen-free pyrolysis unit, which means nothing can burn because there’s no oxygen,” said White.
“This cracks it apart into two streams. One is a high-quality syngas stream that we’re going to further upgrade into renewable natural gas (RNG), the other is a biocarbon generic stream.”
For CleanFyre, CHAR Tech targets fixed carbon-level percentages in the high-80s and low-90s, in keeping with...