Eprida is a USA based company that helped poineer the channeling of research on BioChar into a commercialization process. Danny Day was one of the first people to talk about BioChar. His vision centered on a dual purpose wood burning system that actually built biomass sequestration potential. Much of this is in the early research phases and still debatable but the assumption is that something about the ability of char in certain soils to boost soil production, esp with the addition of certain fungi into the soil. In tropical soils, some researchers say this led to very productive soils that resisted rapid leeching of the soils which is a common problem in these tropical regions which are warm all year and also get a lot of water to facilitate rapid leeching of soil nutrients thus depleting the soils.
Several Amazon tribes figured out how to do this and apparently grew into simple civilizations about 500-1000 years because they discovered how to use this relatively simple technique of not burning wood but turning it into char. Thus they were able to really maximize the benefits of the warm moist climate by creating a soil that could handle those and conditions and even prosper in them. That is why these research became so excited about the potential of this approach because they saw it as way to reverse present patterns of entropy (meaning that we are on the whole reducing the viability of ecosystems to produce a certain amount of ecological value per unit of land or biomass) in regards to ecosystems losing productivity as they are dismantled for their component parts (wood, fibre, growing livestock, etc) by humanity. So the BioChar method they believe reverses this trend and that is why they are so excited by it.
Here an article in Nature documents the BioChar (Terra Preta) process http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v442/n7103/full/442624a.html
However there are those who are quite unconvinced of this technology and they believe it is another hyped approach that is more talk than walk. The well known Guardian Columnist George Monbiot is one such skeptic: http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2009/03/the_biochar_backlash.html
The reality is that this movement has grown rapidly and now some of the leaders of the Global Climate Change movement are seeing it as a real solution (James Lovelock and James Hansen), which is interesting because I have been tracking it since I became aware that Jim Fournier (who started the Planetwork Conference in SF where I was first introduced to P2P concepts and ideas) invested in Eprida.
In further exploring this idea I met Robert Flanigan an Irishman who travelled the world doing R&D first for Eprida and then on his own as a social entrepreneur in China, Indonesia and New Zealand. As alternative to Eprida's more sophisticated large scale approach and Fournier's medium scale business plan Robert is targeting the small farmer in emerging markets. I would think that his practical expertise, knowledge and research in the field might be worth looking into.
However Robert's approach is not automated and is really homestead or farm scale - the smallest scale. I assume from reading the below that what they are doing is at the community scale which may way be an ideal model to invest in, because that is something the development groups are going to want to give out grants to see it deployed on a large scale to mitigate global climate change.
The key problem is to make sure that this technology does not lead to the further depletion of our world's biomass stock, further degrade ecosystems and contribute to CO2 emissions that worsen GCC and that is the root of concerns about BioChar.
My point to all this is that if there can be a link to biochar and their process can be scaled at the community scale as a true appropriate technology then there is major potential because there is rapidly growing interest in BioChar as compared to just making a gasifier that eats up more of the world's finite wood stocks. The existing technologies and approaches need to be further studied to understand where things are at and what the potential blindspot of the existing competitiors are.