EASTHAM – Down a rutted road in a tidy industrial park bay, Bob Wells and his crew are building behemoth machines with the idea of saving the planet.

The devices – each individually designed and handcrafted – are non-polluting, closed systems that transform waste wood into biochar, a charcoal-like soil amendment used to make infertile land rich and keep greenhouse gases out of the environment.

Monday morning, three of New England Biochar LLC’s staff were winding up 13 months of work and preparing to pack up an AR3 Biochar Retort System for shipment to Ocean University of China in Qingdao.

It was a proud moment for the fabricators – Ryan Sverid, shop foreman from Eastham, Chris Thompson of Orleans and Jed Foley of Wellfleet. While some of the pieces were created at local machine shops, the in-house crew shaped, hammered and welded much of the 45-foot-long, 20,000-pound device.

“We come up with our own designs for things that do what we need them to do and we make it ourselves from scratch,” Sverid said. “The waste is minimal. We use scrap pieces to make other things we need.”

Since its founding in 2009, New England Biochar has produced dozens of systems that are in use in Florida, North Carolina and California and has built simpler models onsite in Chile and Indonesia.