Graphyte's Forest Waste to Carbon Credits Project

A startup company will begin to sell carbon credits created from forest product mill waste products including sawdust and bark that have been dried and compressed into blocks. The credits are expected to yield $100 metric ton (of carbon equivalent weight).

An initial sale of credits was announced by the startup Graphyte, and American Airlines for credits equivalent to 10,000 metric tons. The $100 per metric ton price includes not only the value of the forest product waste, but also its processing into bricks, and sealing and burying it.

Graphyte calls the process “carbon casting” and said it provides an “immediate pathway for billions of tons of low-cost carbon removal with durability over 100 years.”

American Airlines said that the purchase of credits will accompany efforts to reduce CO2 omissions from its aviation operations and that credits will “play a critical role in eliminating aviation residual emissions.”

Graphyte is gearing up its commercial project at a facility in Pine Bluff, Arkansas to make the carbon blocks, and is advertising for an engineer to head up the project.

Much wood waste like sawdust and bark is used by the mills that generate the waste to fuel boilers that heat their facilities and the kilns used to dry timber. However excess waste from other mills can end up being disposed of in landfills.

“Carbon casting preserves nearly all the carbon captured in the biomass and consumes little energy in the process,” Graphyte said in its announcement.