I am thrilled to welcome Darren Jones, Manufacturing Manager at Woodtek Engineering Ltd. (UK), to the pages of BiocharBiochar is a carbon-rich material created from biomass decomposition in low-oxygen conditions. It has important applications in environmental remediation, soil improvement, agriculture, carbon sequestration, energy storage, and sustainable materials, promoting efficiency and reducing waste in various contexts while addressing climate change challenges. More Today. Darren isn’t just an engineer; he’s a true pioneer in the world of biochar, deeply invested in practical, sustainable solutions.

With a background as a renewable energy specialist at Woodtek and a former Director at Kriger Boilers UK Ltd., Darren brings a wealth of experience to the design and manufacture of cutting-edge biochar systems. What truly sets Darren and Woodtek Biochar apart is their unique approach: their family farm serves as a living laboratory. It’s here, amidst their own R&D biochar combined heat and power plant, manufacturing facility, working farm, and surrounding woodlands, that innovation truly flourishes.

Darren champions small to medium-sized combined heat and power plants, fueled by locally sourced coppice and green waste. This isn’t just a business model; it’s a commitment to decentralized solutions that invigorate local economies and ecosystems. His insights on integrating biochar into regenerative farming practices, straight from the valuable lessons learned on his family farm, offer a refreshing and essential perspective on taking biochar from theory to real-world impact. Welcome, Darren, to the conversation!

Shanthi Prabha: Darren, in a world often chasing large-scale solutions, Woodtek Biochar champions small to medium-sized combined heat and power plants. What’s the compelling story behind this decentralized vision, and what unique benefits does it unlock for biochar production and energy generation that larger models might miss? 

Darren Jones: Our primary drive has always been to use locally sourced feedstockFeedstock refers to the raw organic material used to produce biochar. This can include a wide range of materials, such as wood chips, agricultural residues, and animal manure. More because when done right, it doesn’t just support the local economy, it actively improves the local ecosystem. In most cases, the biochar produced from local feedstocks is also better suited for use in that region. There’s a natural synergy there. Now, I have massive respect for the large centralised industrial projects out there, especially in places where there’s a reliable, high-volume supply of quality biomassBiomass is a complex biological organic or non-organic solid product derived from living or recently living organism and available naturally. Various types of wastes such as animal manure, waste paper, sludge and many industrial wastes are also treated as biomass because like natural biomass these More. But the reality is, those conditions are rare.

At Woodtek, we design our plants so that even with one to four machines running, all the feedstock can still be sourced locally without stripping or damaging local nature. It comes down to a simple question. Why sequester carbon if you’re burning fuel to haul feedstock across the country and then shipping the biochar halfway around the world? Decentralised systems allow us to make energy, create biochar, and deliver environmental benefits without a heavy footprint.

SP: Your article “Milking the Bull: This Is What Regenerative Biochar Farming Looks Like” highlights the importance of real-world application over theoretical models. What’s one critical lesson you’ve learned from implementing biochar on your family farm that might surprise our readers?

DJ:  Following academia too closely can sometimes send you down the wrong path. Throughout our journey we’ve been told we’re applying biochar the wrong way, doing this or that wrong, and so on. But I challenge anyone to show a regenerative soil transformation like the one we’ve seen on our farm over the past four years. My advice is simple. Make your biochar right in the first place. We always knew it was going onto land, so we made sure to produce EBC agro grade as a minimum. From there, the rest has been our own way, trial and error, and learning by doing. As a result, we’ve made real progress with biochar in agricultural systems. Now is the right time to take those results back to academia and consult properly, but letting farmers lead the application side has been the best route forward.

SP: Woodtek Biochar emphasizes utilizing locally sourced coppice and green waste. How does this local sourcing strategy contribute to your biochar operations’ overall sustainability and efficiency?

DJ:  Within our local woodlands, forestry, and green spaces, we are building in proper skilled management that actually leaves the ecosystem better than it was before. A lot of these areas were previously untouched and slowly dying. Now, through coppicing and high pruning, they are buzzing with life from insects to birds, with incredible regrowth. We also remove a lot of the excess biomass that is preventing the stronger trees from growing properly, helping the overall health and structure of the woodland.

When it comes to green waste, one of the best parts for me is how we process it. We screen out the fine fraction for compost or growing medium base. Microplastics are not a big problem at that stage because most plastics are still whole and get screened out with the oversized material. In the pyrolysisPyrolysis is a thermochemical process that converts waste biomass into bio-char, bio-oil, and pyro-gas. It offers significant advantages in waste valorization, turning low-value materials into economically valuable resources. Its versatility allows for tailored products based on operational conditions, presenting itself as a cost-effective and efficient More process, any remaining plastics are combusted and the emissions are scrubbed. Then we mix the resulting biochar with the screened fines. In my view, this makes one of the best peat-free growing alternatives available. If we just follow the standard composting route, those same plastics slowly break down and eventually enter the soil. With our method, we avoid that and produce something far better for both soil health and sustainability.

SP: Beyond the engineering, what’s it like to operate an R&D Biochar combined heat & power plant directly from your family farm? What unique insights or challenges does this hands-on, integrated approach provide that might be missed in a purely commercial or laboratory setting?”

DJ:  From a health point of view, this is very real for us. My parents live 100 metres southwest of the flue, and my sister, nephew, and two nieces live to the southeast. We also have a Ukrainian family living on the farm, so we want to be absolutely sure that everything coming out of that flue is as clean as possible. That is why we have always had continuous emissions monitoring on our plant, right from the beginning. It has pushed us to develop what we believe is one of the most advanced emissions cleaning systems on any biochar plant. Having our R&D plant right here on the farm and on the same site as our manufacturing business has made a massive difference. It has allowed my brother Stuart Jones, who is the engineering mind behind the technology, to take the system all the way from early concept through to a finished reliable product. Every improvement has been tested, seen, and lived with here on site. That is something you just do not get in a lab or from a purely commercial setup.

SP: Beyond carbon sequestration, what are some of the most impactful soil enhancement benefits you’ve observed from using biochar, particularly in the context of regenerative farming?

DJ:  My father, Mick Jones, has been applying biochar into the animal bedding since 2020 or 2021, and we have seen far greater results than just mixing it with standard farmyard manure. The increase in aerobic bacterial activity in the bedding has been a key factor. Biochar acts as a catalyst, and through this method we have seen a 64 percent increase in total exchangeable cations (TEC) and a rise in soil carbon of over 0.45 percent per year. Now we are producing large quantities of EBC Feed grade biochar as a way to get it into the animal, then into the bedding, and finally onto the land. This is how we see biochar not only becoming affordable for the agricultural industry but also delivering the greatest impact where it really matters.

SP: The concept of biochar providing a base for peat-free compost production is intriguing. What are the practical steps or considerations for individuals or farms looking to integrate biochar into their composting efforts? 

DJ:  I would say start with the feedstock. If you look at our main operation, and also the operation of one of our C1000 plant customers, Brodie Biomass, we both use arboricultural arisings and whole tree biomass. This material contains a high quantity of fine fraction biomass. By investing in good feedstock preparation, where this fine fraction is screened out, we can ensure that we consistently meet EBC Agro grade biochar quality. That biochar is then mixed back in with the fine fraction biomass, which easily passes compost soil standards. Biochar composting efficiency really starts with the feedstock source. If you get that right, everything else becomes much easier.

SP: Your business model includes the sale of carbon credits generated from the captured carbon in biochar. How do you envision this income stream helping to revitalize rural and forestry regions?

DJ:  Carbon credits really help drive these projects forward. By using pyrolysis with locally sourced feedstock, we are not just creating a carbon negative product, we are supporting and building local economies in forestry and rural regions. This model brings value back to the source. Instead of exporting raw materials or relying on centralised systems, rural areas can generate income from managing their own woodlands, processing local green waste, and producing high quality biochar. The carbon credit income helps make that financially viable, especially in the early years of a project. It is one of the few approaches that ties environmental benefit directly to rural economic growth.

SP: With your experience in manufacturing biochar systems, what do you believe are the most significant technological advancements or innovations we can expect in biochar production in the next 5-10 years?

DJ:  For us, or I should probably say Stuart the smart brother, we have two main advancements we are working on. The first is how to minimise the on-site operation of a pyrolysis machine. I would already put our system up against anything else on the market for operational reliability, but we are finding that each year, especially with every new audit, the actual work involved from feedstock to finished biochar is increasing. So we are focusing on automation. That includes automated sampling, better metering of both feedstock and biochar, and more integrated measuring throughout the process. Stuart is even working on a system that could give a live reading of the biochar carbon content, but that is still a bit of a secret. The second is in combined heat and power. We are entering what I would call a golden era for advancements in electrical generation at the scale of our plants. With the efficiencies now being achieved, seeing just a few of our machines powering entire towns is becoming realistic. Every time I walk my daughter to school, I look across the playing fields at the local government-owned farm and find myself working out what it would take to get heat and power to the school, the village church, and the village main power infeed. It is a daily reminder that this is not just theory. The opportunity to build local energy networks from local waste and woodland is right there in front of us. And with the way the technology is moving, it is becoming harder to justify not doing it.

SP: For someone new to the concept of biochar, what would be the single most important piece of advice you would offer them regarding its potential and practical application?

DJ:  Do not overthink it. There is a lot of noise out there and plenty of overcomplication, but the truth is biochar is just a really good material that has been missing from our soils for too long. There are so many different types of biochar out there, and not all of them perform the same. A lot of lab-made biochar has its porous structure completely blocked, which means it will not perform the way it should. Other people are using charcoalCharcoal is a black, brittle, and porous material produced by heating wood or other organic substances in a low-oxygen environment. It is primarily used as a fuel source for cooking and heating.   More dust and calling it biochar, which misses the point entirely. If you start by achieving a proper graded biochar like EBC, then keep it simple. Use it in a way that suits your system. I see so many reports and studies released every day that I have pretty much stopped reading them. The most important thing is to make sure whatever you are doing is financially viable and that it actually works in the real world.

SP: Looking ahead, what is one major challenge you foresee for the broader adoption of biochar technology, and what steps do you believe are necessary to overcome it?

DJ:  Looking at the UK, the biggest challenge I have seen is the ability to provide biochar at large scale. We are getting there now, but until there are large volumes being produced, there simply cannot be a proper market to sell into. It might turn out that biochar is never cost effective to deliver to the end user on its own. But that does not mean we can avoid putting biochar into the ground. We have to find other income streams that make it possible. For us, combined heat and power plays a big role. It allows us to subsidise the cost of biochar and make sure it is widely used, even if the biochar itself is not the only thing being paid for. That kind of integrated thinking is what will help biochar adoption move forward at scale. But for the moment, I am paying twenty five to thirty five pence to receive electricity, and yet if we export what is carbon negative electricity to a grid that is already struggling to make enough electric to supply, we only get five to eight pence. If we were paid twenty to twenty five pence, I would already have three projects live. I do not want the government involved in biochar. They did a bad enough job with the UK renewable heat incentive for industrial boilers. If we could just get a fair price for carbon negative export, then we could look after ourselves.

SP: For readers interested in following your work and the progress of Woodtek Biochar, what is the best way for them to stay updated?

DJ:  To be honest, the biochar industry is not a huge one, so we tend to put everything on LinkedIn. If you follow me, Mick Jones, and Stuart Jones, you won’t miss much. It has been a very busy time lately, but we are hoping that in 2026 Stuart will be more active sharing updates from the engineering and software side. Mick will continue to post his results, mistakes, and big wins from applying biochar on the farm. And I will stay active as always, mostly taking credit for everyone else’s hard work.