Project
Valuable carbon products from biomass side streams
Project sponsors
Abbreviation
Project type
Focus area
Implementation time
1.12.2024
-
31.5.2028
Unit
Financing program
European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) 2021-2027
UN Sustainable development goals
Project description
The project's goal is to promote the development of a business ecosystem around biochar and activated carbon in Central Finland.
-Bringing stakeholders together.
-Producing information on business opportunities and value chain development needs.
-Seeking solutions to the obstacles of industrial biochar and activated carbon production.
-Developing business models that enable companies to more effectively utilize circular economy side streams, refine them into higher-grade carbon products, and utilize them.
-Exploring the profitable integration of biochar production into regional heat production.
More information:
Janne Salmi
Project Manager
Institute of Bioeconomy
JAMK University of Applied Sciences
+35840 480 8636
janne.salmi@jamk.fi
Project results
The main objective of the HATTU project is to promote the development of a business ecosystem around biochar and activated carbon in Central Finland by bringing actors together and producing important information on business opportunities and the development needs of the value chain.
In the early phase of the project, the actor network surrounding biochar and activated carbon was assessed in Finland, with a particular focus on Central Finland. The assessment was carried out using actor network analysis, in which the actors in the value chain could be structured as an actor network: who the key actors are, where the bottlenecks lie, and which roles — such as producers, enablers and users — are emphasised within the network. The aim was to identify the actors, opportunities and gaps in the value chain, as well as to assess the risks and development needs of the network. In practice, artificial intelligence (LocalAI, Docker and the Gemma 3 language model environment), geospatial data and Greimas's actantial model were used to identify, classify and analyse the value-chain actors from the source data. Greimas's actantial model is well suited to structuring ecosystems. Its benefit can be summarised in two points: it provides a common language for observations collected from different sources, and it helps transform an actor map into an interpretable whole in which relationships and missing links are easier to identify.
The source material for the actantial model consisted of Bioenergia ry's member list and the Theseus and Finna databases of universities of applied sciences and universities. From the material, approximately 600 documents related to biochar and approximately 500 documents related to activated carbon were identified from 2015 onwards. Artificial intelligence was then used to filter and summarise the essential information for further processing.
The results show that biochar actors in Finland are concentrated particularly in Southern and Southwestern Finland, and partly in Central Finland. Of all the identified actors, the majority fall under the subject role in Greimas's classification, meaning actors involved in production, development or practical implementation. The share of objects — that is, end users and beneficiaries — is clearly smaller, which points to an important bottleneck from a business perspective: more buyers and users are needed.
At the national level, the main applications of biochar are water treatment, environmental protection, energy production, gasification and CHP solutions. In Central Finland, the profile is particularly focused on the combination of environment and energy. This suggests that the most promising development paths in the region are likely to be found in hybrid solutions where biochar generated from the side streams of energy processes is linked to environmental applications, pilots and reference sites.
In the case of activated carbon, Greimas's classification highlights the relatively small size of the subject role, which naturally reflects the high volume of activated carbon imports. At the same time, the object role is strongly linked to the development of activated carbon, especially in terms of applications. This is also reflected in the thematic classification of the actantial model, which differs from that of biochar.
Overall, actor network analysis that utilises artificial intelligence and geospatial data provides a concrete tool for identifying the structure, development needs and cooperation opportunities of biochar and activated carbon ecosystems. Particularly in the case of biochar, strengthening the beneficiary and buyer side, as well as building regional pilots, emerge as key next steps.
If this project has sparked your interest, further information is available from:
Project manager
Janne Salmi
first name.surname(a)jamk.fi
phone. +358404808636
updated 2.7.2026