Ten KPIs per run. Five operating states. One record for operators, owners, regulators, and carbon-credit verifiers.
KELV°N® is the IoT spine that ties our Intelligent Biofuel Controller (IBC) to a cloud database designed for compliance-grade reporting. It is not a bolt-on dashboard. It runs on every Biogenic Refinery, on the unit and in the cloud, and produces one operating record that operators, owners, regulators, and carbon-credit verifiers all draw from.
A pyrolysis system without an operating-data record is opaque to the people who most need to trust it: the operator running it daily, the owner reporting on it monthly, the regulator inspecting it annually, and the carbon-credit verifier auditing it before issuance.
Real-time sensor feedback on pyrolysis, catalyst, stack, and heat-exchanger temperatures. Actuator percentages. System state. Audited Standard Operating Procedures checked off in sequence on the touchscreen. If something drifts, the operator sees it before it becomes a problem.
The same data streams to the KELV°N cloud database. Owners and supervisors monitor multiple systems from anywhere, set alerts, export run data, and assign roles to staff and partners. A multi-site deployment is a single dataset, not a stack of disconnected log files.
Run-by-run capture of the operating evidence carbon-credit verifiers, regulators, and inspectors use to evaluate process control: KPI data, state transitions, operator actions, alerts, and production records. The same numbers the operator sees are the numbers a verifier will ask for. No reconstruction, no after-the-fact spreadsheets.
That overlap — the daily operator workflow is the audit record — is what KELV°N is built for.
KELV°N is a single architecture with four operational surfaces: at the unit, in the cloud, scored by ten run-level KPIs, and resilient to off-grid conditions.
Touchscreen interface for the operator. Real-time sensor feedback on pyrolysis, catalyst, stack, and heat-exchanger temperatures; actuator percentages; system state; and audited Standard Operating Procedures the operator must check off in sequence. The system will not advance through state transitions without the procedure-driven checklist completed.
All sensor and event data streams to the KELV°N database. Owners and supervisors can monitor multiple systems, set alerts, export run data, and assign roles to staff and partners — operators, supervisors, service technicians, third-party verifiers, regulators.
Run-by-run scoring on start-up time, water and gas temperature, air-to-fuel ratio, thermal generation and efficiency, fuel rate, run time, and electricity consumption and generation. The same numbers the operator sees on the touchscreen are the numbers a carbon-credit verifier or a regulator will ask for.
Sites without reliable internet collect data locally. KELV°N Direct uses a phone-based handoff to upload runs the next time the operator is in coverage, preserving the run record for later upload. The deployment envelope includes remote and off-grid sites; the data envelope follows it.
KELV°N is not a standalone software product; it ships with every Biogenic Refinery as the control, monitoring, and operating-record layer.
Three thermal sections plus the KELV°N controller make up the four-component system. Numbered sensor points feed the ten KPIs that score every run.
| # | KPI | Unit | What it flags |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Start-up time | minutes | Reduction of start-up emissions |
| 02 | Water temperature | °C | Increased thermal control · thermal efficiency · reduction of emissions |
| 03 | Gas temperature | °C | Condensation flag · catalyst performance · reduction of emissions |
| 04 | Air/fuel ratio | ratio | Increased thermal-chemical efficiency · reduction of emissions · failure flag |
| 05 | Thermal generation | kW | Operational efficiency · sub-optimal operating-specification flag |
| 06 | Thermal efficiency | % | Operational efficiency · sub-optimal operating-specification flag · electricity-generation potential |
| 07 | Fuel rate | % of max | Operational efficiency · sub-optimal operating-specification flag |
| 08 | Run time | hours | Reliability indicator · failure flag |
| 09 | Electricity consumption | kW | Operational efficiency · sub-optimal operating-specification flag |
| 10 | Electricity generation | kW | Performance indicator · system-failure flag |
The Biogenic Refinery is managed through five defined operating states. Each state has its own KPI thresholds, sensor priorities, and required operator procedures.
Operator checks off pre-startup procedure on the touchscreen. Start-up time KPI runs. Combustion-air dampers, heaters, and blower controls are managed against jacket-temperature and catalytic-input targets.
The system brings the catalyst into its operating window and the heat exchanger up to thermal generation. KPIs for thermal generation, air/fuel ratio, and gas temperature come into normal-operating range.
All ten KPIs are scored in real time while oxygen-level and air/fuel-ratio controls adjust dampers, blowers, and heaters as feedstock energy content varies.
Air/fuel-ratio control is covered by U.S. Patents 9,513,005, 10,139,166, and 10,557,632.
The system holds catalyst temperature, monitors stack and jacket sensors, and waits for the next batch without shutting down the catalyst — preserving start-up time on the next batch.
Operator completes shutdown procedure; KELV°N writes the run record; data syncs to the cloud (or queues for KELV°N Direct upload on offline sites).
Each state transition is gated by an on-screen Standard Operating Procedure. Operators check items in sequence — pre-ignition safety, feedstock load confirmation, catalyst-window verification, shutdown sequence — and KELV°N records each check with a timestamp and operator identifier. The procedures and the records they produce are the same artifact: the SOP the operator follows in the moment is the audit trail an inspector reviews later.
The record moves through the same four hands every time, in the same order: it is created by the operator, managed by the owner, inspected by the regulator, and audited by the verifier.
Touchscreen-led procedures, real-time alerts, failure flags, and remote-diagnostic support. A field service technician dispatched from headquarters can see the same data the on-site operator sees, including the last 24 hours of context, before arriving.
Owner dashboards spanning all deployed systems. Role-based access for staff, partners, and external auditors. Exportable run data for internal performance reporting, carbon-removal documentation, or regulatory filings. A site portfolio is one dataset, not a folder of PDFs.
Emissions-control logs, jacket and stack temperature records, operator-action audit trails, and state-transition histories. For non-sewered sanitation deployments, KELV°N also supports SDG 6.2.1 reporting by preserving structured records of collection, treatment, operating status, and system performance in settings where reliable sanitation data is often missing.
Run-by-run KPI data, state transitions, feedstock characterization, and biochar production — captured continuously, exportable on demand. Methodologies under Puro.earth, the European Biochar Certificate (EBC), and Verra protocols require the kind of operating record that KELV°N produces by default. See carbon-removal frameworks for methodology-specific eligibility detail.
Many Biogenic Refinery deployments are decentralized by design — remote communities, agricultural sites, industrial facilities, sanitation deployments, and other locations where reliable connectivity cannot be assumed. KELV°N is designed for that envelope.
The unit collects sensor and event data locally to onboard storage during operation. KELV°N Direct is the phone-based handoff: the operator approaches the unit with a paired device, KELV°N Direct pulls the queued run data, and the runs upload the next time the operator's phone returns to coverage. No run is lost; no record is missing.
Field deployments including Kivalina, Alaska and full-scale fecal-sludge plants in India show why offline data capture matters: the operating record has to survive real deployment conditions, not ideal network assumptions.
KELV°N has been the operating-record layer for the Biogenic Refinery for more than a decade. The dataset compounds every time a system runs.
That is the depth behind every new sizing model the energy-balance equation produces. Each deployment improves the operating dataset behind the next one. How we size describes the energy-balance model that the KELV°N dataset compounds into.
KELV°N® is a registered service mark of Biomass Controls PBC.
The mark covers downloadable computer software and SaaS for controlling and monitoring equipment fueled by biomass, for tracking, reporting, analyzing, and sharing data generated by that equipment, and for providing real-time reporting and alerts to operators.
More questions on the full FAQ page
Start by sending us a feedstock summary — composition, moisture range, daily volume, site conditions — and the operating-record requirements your project needs to meet.