The Nebraska Center for Energy Sciences Research (NCESR), over the past eighteen years, has funded multiple researchers within each focus research area. It is the goal of NCESR to identify clusters of researchers that work in the same area and to form strong teams to pursue large external funding. Researchers working on biochar applications have been identified to constitute such a cluster. Biochar can be produced through pyrolysis (combustion with very limited oxygen) from different sources, such as wood and corn stalks, and provides carbon sequestration when used as a soil amendment for agricultural soils.
In this newsletter you can read an article about a very successful workshop on biochar that was hosted by NCESR. The research on biochar of six professors from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) and of Professor Robert Brown from Iowa State University was presented. Chuck Hassebrook presented government policy and permitting needs related to biochar use. Finally, Dr. Sandeep Kumar from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) provided an overview of research funding opportunities.
Our next step is to pursue major funding from USDA. We have identified requests for proposals for grants at the level of $1 million and $10 million. A meeting of the members of the biochar cluster has been scheduled to take place on June 14th to start working on the proposals.
The next cluster that we identified is related to research on hydrogen. We are currently working on planning a workshop during fall 2024 among UNL researchers that are conducting research on the different aspects of hydrogen (production, storage and consumption).