A new local startup wants to use carbon removal tech to enrich soil -- and save the environment.

A new, Soledad-based startup has launched a pilot program testing its carbon removal technology: a pyrolysis machine that converts wood waste and other organic byproducts into biochar, a carbon-rich soil supplement that it aims to provide to farmers.

Sitos Group, the startup launched by Steve McIntyre of vineyard management company Monterey Pacific, officially unveiled its pyrolysis machine at ReGen Monterey on Friday, July 21. The year-long pilot will trial the technology using materials provided by ReGen and its composting contractor, Keith Day Company.

The machine takes wood chips, almond shells and other byproducts and heats them through slow pyrolysis creating biochar, a charcoal-like substance. The process sequesters the carbon in the materials fed through the machine, which would otherwise end up emitted into the atmosphere. In turn, the biochar produced can be mixed with compost and used by farmers to improve soil health.

McIntyre says Monterey Pacific began using biochar at its vineyards eight years ago. After meeting Sitos CEO and agriculture industry veteran Mayo Ryan a little over a year ago, the two co-founded their own pyrolysis startup – working with manufacturing partners who modified an open-source design to create Sitos’ machine.

Sitos hopes that the pilot will eventually lead to a permanent three-machine plant at ReGen, and has set a long-term goal of deploying hundreds of machines capable of sequestering 1 million tons of CO2 annually by 2030.

“We need hundreds of these [machines] in order to make a difference in CO2 emissions,” McIntyre says. He’s optimistic about Sitos’ prospects for scaling its technology by using California’s massive agriculture industry as a market – offering farmers not only biochar’s beneficial properties but also carbon credits enabled by government programs. “There’s 1.6 million acres of almond farms in California, and all those shells can get turned into biochar and go right back in [the ground].”

While agriculture is the main use targeted by Sitos, McIntyre notes biochar can also be sequestered as an additive in concrete, and plots a longer-term vision where household consumers are also end users. “I like to think that in the future, we’ll all have a little pyrolysis machine that will replace having to take your trash out,” he says.

ReGen spokesperson Zoë Shoats says the pilot program is the latest in a string of initiatives by the landfill to find the “highest and best use of any waste product,” especially compostable materials. “There’s not much value to the dregs of what’s left over from organics processing, but we’re trying to make something great with it,” Shoats says.

While McIntyre is self-financing Sitos, he hopes the pilot can convince skeptics and lure investors. “What we’ve found is, until we put this pilot plant in, everybody’s like ‘Yeah, right – it sounds too good to be true,’” he notes. “So we’re just going to have to put our money where our mouth is. Let’s build it, and they’ll come.”