Optimizing deployment of mobile biochar production equipment for enhanced slash management

Abstract

Concerns have grown over the environmental impacts of open pile burning, which has the potential to degrade air quality and harm soil. Additionally, pile burning is constrained by narrow burn windows in areas with high wildfire risk. As a result, technologies such as the CharBoss - which converts slash into biochar - are gaining attention. However, optimal deployment remains uncertain because of variability in performance due to pile locations, slash-pile size, and site conditions. We address this challenge with a two-stage simulation - optimization framework. First, a mixed-integer programming model integrated with Monte Carlo simulation selects the cost-minimizing set of deployment sites under uncertainty regarding site conditions and their impact on CharBoss throughput. Second, a capacitated vehicle-routing problem model sequences visits to those sites for fleets deploying multiple units at the same time from a centralized depot. Generally, the model favors piles with large slash volumes on flat terrain near the depot. However, in optimization, some relatively larger piles were skipped because of the longer setup times due to site conditions and long distance to travel to the site. Although direct biochar production constitutes the dominant cost (95-96%), the framework shows that total system cost is minimized by strategically forming larger, accessible piles at sites with low preparation requirements and then sequencing visits efficiently. Our framework was tested with both theoretical and real-world cases, demonstrating its utility in establishing slash-to-biochar strategies as an alternative to traditional pile burning.

Citation

Kim, Geonho; Chung, Woodam; Anderson, Nathaniel M.; Woo, Heesung. 2026. Optimizing deployment of mobile biochar production equipment for enhanced slash management. International Journal of Forest Engineering. https://doi.org/10.1080/14942119.2026.2646586.