[Stoves] Drawing down the dung pile

[Richard Stanley]

AD, Crispin, Frank,  Kevin and all others concerned with dung briquettes, 

While in Arusha Tanzania recently, I discovered that one of the lead briquette trainers in Kenya, Francis Kavita, has been teaching the Masaai how to make co dung briquettes for the past several months. Your insights, Kevin and frank  about carcinogens/ chloride blindness etc are intersting and I have duely passed them on to Francis.   
As to dilution of nasty compounds the normal wet low pressure briquetting process uses water--- but rarely is anything wasted in the process. The water expelled for the cylinder on compression, is recycled as well. 

However the practice of washing away unwanted elements is common to briquetters as it is to conventional washing of seeds, beans cassava  and other plant material in traditional food preparation. In briquetting,  certain carcinogenic and foul smelling glues in certain types of cartonboard are diluted nad washed off this way. There is no real reason that the same technique could be applied for preparing "clean cow dung" as well.
 Will revert back to the group with what Francis says about all this..when  he next finds a nearby internet cafe with electricity or at least petrol for their generator.  
Thanks again though for the insights.
Richard Stanley

On Dec 6, 2010, at 7:32 PM, Anand Karve wrote:

> Dear Crispin,
> dung cakes are regularly used as fuel even in India. In areas where the rainfall is scanty, and there are no trees, dung is used as the main cooking fuel. In the high Himalaya, above the tree line, yak dung is the only fuel available to the locals. The ash content of dung is normally very high. In the case of animals eating mainly grass, the ash would consist mainly of silica. I have heard of a of filter press, which can remove the water from the dung along with the dissolved minerals. This would leave a product with a higher calorific value.  It can be briquetted and sold as a standard fuel.
> Yours
> A.D.Karve
> 
> On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 12:47 AM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Burners of Recycled Biomass
> 
>  
> We took delivery today of three (barely) steaming bags of goat and cattle dung with a view to starting to look for ways to burn it cleanly in space heating stoves.
> 
>  
> If there is interest from anyone in cooperating (by making stoves and trying them) we should start a thread here, preferably.
> 
>  
> I have already heard from a couple of people and Prof Lodoysamba is particularly interested. He says there are large amounts of goat dung which is normally not burned by nomads, though cattle dung is. Probably the reason is that no one has made a stove tuned to consume Capra Crap. Well, let’s put that omission behind us!
> 
> We can call it the Crapra Stove Project – an international effort to turn steaming pellets into steaming pullets.
> 
>  
> The focus will be on North Asia because that seems to be where the current interest is.
> 
>  
> Regards
> 
> Crispin
> 
>  
>  
>  
>  
> 
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> -- 
> ***
> Dr. A.D. Karve
> President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)
> 
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