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Field record.

The deployments behind the dataset.

In continuous field deployment since 2014. Over 150,000 operational hours. Three continents. More than 50 systems. The numbers come from the deployments below — each a different feedstock class, climate, and operating model, each one feeding the energy-balance dataset that sizes the next system.

Selected projects, de-identified except where partners and publications are public. Commercial deployments under non-disclosure aren't shown here, but can be referenced in scoping when relevant.

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§ 01 The numbers, grounded

What ten years in the field actually looks like.

Five figures resolve every "we've done this in the field" claim that the other pages make. The architecture and math behind them live on the data platform and sizing pages, linked below.

Since 2014
in continuous field deployment, with multiple systems past their full ten-year design service life and still running.
150,000+ hours
of operational runtime captured through the KELV°N® data platform across deployed systems.
~1B data points
of sensor, event, and process records — the dataset behind the energy-balance model.
3 continents
of deployment, in climates from tropical to −40 °C / −40 °F field-verified.
50+ systems
delivered to municipal, agricultural, industrial, research, and sanitation operators.
See the data architecture → See how the dataset feeds sizing →
§ 02 Deployments

Seven public deployments. Seven different problems solved.

Organized by class. Each represents a feedstock the platform has actually processed at field scale, with the system configuration, outcome, and — where applicable — the peer-reviewed reference or named partner that documents it. Project locations are de-identified where the operator has not authorized public disclosure.

Production deployments 04
Full-scale fecal-sludge treatment plant in India — Biogenic Refinery deployment
Decentralized sanitation
Full-scale fecal-sludge treatment — India
Production deployment
Feedstock
Dewatered, thermally-dried fecal sludge from septic tanks, co-treated with pellet fuel derived from agricultural waste (0.3 kg PF per kg FS, dry basis).
System
Model 4018 forced-air Biogenic Refinery; two full-scale plants; 360 kg FS/day dry basis.
Outcome
First full-scale demonstration of biochar production from human fecal sludge. Pathogens inactivated; macroporous, powdery biochar. Calorific value 14.9 MJ/kg; liming potential up to 20.1% CaCO₃-equivalents; heavy-metal mobility reduced by 48–65% for Cu and Zn.
Reference
Krueger et al., Water Research 169:115253, 2020.
Interior of the Kivalina, Alaska Arctic community Biogenic Refinery
Cold-climate sanitation
Kivalina, Alaska — Arctic community refinery
Production deployment
Feedstock
Community food waste, municipal solid waste, and container-based human waste from a remote Arctic village without road access.
System
Mobile, off-grid Biogenic Refinery; cold-climate package; verified operating envelope to −40 °C ambient.
Outcome
Eliminates pathogens and reduces waste volume by over 90%, replacing costly trucked- and barge-out disposal. Biochar used locally as a carbon-retaining soil amendment to combat severe Arctic soil erosion; recovered thermal energy contributes to facility heat during winter.
Reference
Teck Red Dog Suvisi Report, Q1 2017.
Remote industrial site Biogenic Refinery deployment — Alaska
Industrial food & packaging
Remote industrial site — Alaska
Production deployment
Feedstock
Institutional cafeteria food waste plus select compostable packaging (subject to feedstock pre-screening and permitting).
System
Model 4018 forced-air; indoor enclosure with covered char handling.
Outcome
Combined food-and-packaging stream pyrolyzed on-site, replacing trucked-out disposal at a remote location. Recovered thermal energy offsets fossil heating load during the operating season.
Reference
Dairy farm Biogenic Refinery deployment — containerized system for manure-to-biochar
Agricultural · manure
Dairy farm — separated manure to biochar
Production deployment
Feedstock
Mechanically separated dairy-manure solids from a free-stall operation, paired with upstream methane capture from the reception pit.
System
Model 4018 hydronic, integrated with the farm's existing solids separator, holding bin, and a rotary dryer feeding the heat-recovery loop.
Outcome
Separated solids dried with recovered heat, pyrolyzed on-farm, and returned to the field as a soil amendment that retains nutrients and water. Liquid fraction flows to existing manure storage. Reduces manure-storage methane emissions and lowers hauling cost; carbon retained in soil rather than released during decomposition.
Reference
Scanning electron micrograph of magnetic biochar produced from anaerobic digestion residues
Agricultural residues
Magnetic biochar from AD residues
Research deployment
Feedstock
Solid digestate from anaerobic co-digestion of dairy manure (≈70%) and industrial food waste (≈30%); from a 360-tons/day upstate New York AD facility.
System
Model 209 forced-air; pyrolysis setpoint 800 °C ± 25 °C; feedstock flow ≈ 5 kg/hr; ≈ 4-hour runs.
Outcome
First reported production of magnetite (Fe₃O₄) particles via thermochemical processing — formed from the digestate's native iron content with no iron precursor added. Coercive fields 98–130 Oe; multidomain particles. Opens biochar applications in heavy-metal adsorption, wastewater treatment, supercapacitors, and conductive polymer composites.
Reference
Rodríguez Alberto et al., IEEE Magnetics Letters 10:3504605, 2019.
Coffee beverages — research deployment turning spent coffee grounds into compostable packaging
Agricultural residues
Spent coffee grounds → compostable packaging
Research deployment
Feedstock
Spent coffee grounds from institutional dining, pre-dried in a batch dehydrator.
System
Model 4018 forced-air; feedstock flow ≈ 5 kg/hr; pyrolysis setpoint 800 °C ± 25 °C; ≈ 3-hour runs.
Outcome
Biochar incorporated as a sustainable filler (10–30 wt%) in starch / polycaprolactone composites; thermoformed into containers with mechanical performance suitable for packaging applications. Demonstrated a viable pathway from food-service waste to compostable-material packaging prototypes.
Reference
Díaz et al., Energies 13:6034, 2020.
Spent mushroom substrate — research deployment feedstock
Agricultural residues
Spent mushroom substrate — circular biochar
Research deployment
Feedstock
Post-harvest spent mushroom substrate (Shiitake and Blue Oyster) from commercial mushroom cultivation.
System
Model 4018 forced-air; pyrolysis temperature 622 °C (Shiitake) and 791 °C (Blue Oyster); measured ± 3.8–8.4%.
Outcome
Biochar meets European Biochar Certificate temperature-control guidelines. Molar H:C ratio < 0.7 across species (recalcitrant carbon, high carbon permanence); surface area ≈ 100 m²/g; elevated K and P content. 5% biochar loading in growth medium appears to enhance mushroom yield — closing the substrate loop within the same operation.
Reference
Trabold et al., NYSP2I project report, Rochester Institute of Technology, 2023.
§ 03 Lineage

How the platform got here.

The deployments above didn't happen in arbitrary order. The platform's design and the operating envelope it now covers are products of an explicit ten-year arc, starting from a public-health origin that shaped both the engineering posture and the resilience requirements every system inherits.

2015
Founded as part of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Reinvent the Toilet Challenge. Connecticut origins, with the initial mission of building an off-grid, energy-positive thermal-treatment unit for fecal sludge in low-resource settings. The engineering constraint — community-scale, no grid, no operator infrastructure — set the design lineage.
2017–2019
Arctic community deployments. Kivalina, Alaska established the cold-climate operating envelope. Teck Alaska and Launch Alaska as named partners. The same engineering that made an off-grid sanitation unit work in low-resource settings made it deployable in places where centralized infrastructure couldn't reach.
2019–2020
Peer-reviewed validation across feedstock classes. The India full-scale fecal-sludge treatment work (Krueger et al., Water Research 2020) and the parallel research deployments on AD digestate (IEEE Magnetics Letters 2019) and coffee-grounds composites (Energies 2020) extended the documented operating envelope from sanitation into agricultural residues, food-service waste, and downstream biochar applications.
2022
Peer-reviewed life-cycle and techno-economic basis. Rowles et al., ACS Environmental Au — the published LCA/TEA modeled across five country contexts using the open-source QSDsan toolkit. The independent, reproducible accounting basis that carbon-removal frameworks ask for. See § 01 LCA/TEA basis on the carbon-removal frameworks page →
2023–2025
Agricultural and industrial expansion. Dairy-manure-to-biochar at on-farm scale; spent mushroom substrate (Trabold et al., NYSP2I 2023); industrial food-and-packaging streams; cold-climate industrial deployments in Alaska. The dataset broadens further; the energy-balance model improves with every run.
Today
Three continents. 50+ delivered systems. Over 150,000 operational hours captured through KELV°N®. The deployments above are the public face of a record that keeps compounding.
§ 04 Peer-reviewed publications

The literature that documents the record.

Publications that document the deployments above, the engineering approach, and the carbon and sustainability evidence that carbon-removal frameworks depend on. Each is publicly accessible. Authors are listed with Biomass Controls authorship in bold.

§ 05 What we don't show here

The public record is a subset.

Commercial deployments under non-disclosure aren't named publicly. The reasons vary — competitive sensitivity for the operator, ongoing regulatory or permitting processes, contractual confidentiality, or the operator's own communication strategy. In a scoping conversation we can speak to relevant deployments in abstract terms — the feedstock class, the climate, the operating scale, the carbon-record posture — without identifying the operator.

The deployments shown in § 02 were selected because the operator authorized public reference, or because the work is documented in a peer-reviewed publication, or both. The full operational record is larger.

§ 06 Frequently asked

What buyers, verifiers, and developers usually want to know.

Six questions that come up the most about the field record itself.

Why isn't your full customer list public?
Most commercial operators do not authorize their projects to be named publicly. The reasons vary by operator — competitive sensitivity, regulatory or permitting timing, contractual confidentiality, or simply that they prefer to control their own communication around the project. The deployments in § 02 are the ones where the operator has authorized reference, or where the work is documented in peer-reviewed publication.
Are the production deployments shown here still operating?
Yes. The four production deployments named in § 02 are working facilities, not pilot demonstrations. The India fecal-sludge plants and the Kivalina installation are public-record references; the Alaska industrial-food site and the dairy-farm deployment are publicly substantiated through the brochure documentation and partner relationships. Several systems delivered earlier than these have completed their full ten-year design service life and remain operational.
Can we reference specific deployments in our project development?
Yes — within the bounds of what is public. The peer-reviewed publications in § 04 are openly citable, and the deployments in § 02 can be referenced as documented. Commercial deployments under NDA can be discussed in abstract terms during scoping, and direct introductions to operators (where consent is given) are sometimes possible. The cleanest path is to share what your project needs to evidence; we'll match that to the appropriate field reference.
Which deployment is most relevant for our project?
That depends on the feedstock class, the climate, the operating scale, and whether the project is sanitation, agricultural, industrial, or research. The seven deployments in § 02 cover the main combinations the platform has been documented against. Project-specific scoping is how we match the closest field reference to a new project, including selecting relevant peer-reviewed evidence from § 04 to share with verifiers, regulators, or offtakers.
How does the field record relate to the carbon-credit story?
The deployments in § 02 produced the operating runs that the KELV°N® data platform recorded, and the peer-reviewed LCA/TEA in § 04 modeled the life-cycle GHG basis across five country contexts. Carbon-removal methodologies — Puro.earth, EBC, Verra VM0044, and CAR — ask for both: documented operational evidence and a defensible LCA basis. The field record is what both halves rest on. See the carbon-removal frameworks page for methodology detail →
What about deployments outside North America?
The India full-scale fecal-sludge treatment work is one public example outside North America. Commercial deployments on other continents exist but are confidential. The "three continents" figure on the homepage and on /kelvn-data-platform/ refers to deployment geography rather than to a publicly enumerated list of named projects.

More questions on the FAQ page →

§ 07 Start with the project

The conversation starts the same way every deployment above did.

Send us a feedstock summary and the conditions your project has to meet. If you are scoping a project — a feedstock you want assessed, a site you want sized, a carbon-removal pathway you want documented, or a regulator who wants to see the evidence chain — we will return a scoping response that names the closest field reference and the next step.

Start the conversation → How we size → Data architecture → Feedstock catalog → Frameworks →