[Stoves] re Charcoal in Ganbia

[Richard Stanley]

Crispin,

 I an amazed at the tenacity with which you pursue all this and the level of detail  you put into your responses --tireless champion of the natural order and all. While I may agree with you on some points,  I do not necessarily agree on others but I for one, do not have the time or typing ability to devote the  hours it would take to respond...

Someday over a beer perhaps !

Aluta continua, 

Richard Stanley




On Aug 12, 2011, at 8:47 AM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott wrote:

> Dear Stovers with a Sense of Duty
>  
> As Ron (as usual) and Paal (as usual) have both taken time out of their busy days to make derogatory comments about me mixed together with partially informed (as we all are) and incomplete proposals to interfere with the natural, economic and social environments of whole nations, I will take the time to make an extended comment on the subject of charcoal, its production and use.
>  
> >Biochar has come to be, no doubt about that, and what happen in Cambia is what will happen allover as long as you have charcoal fans like Crispin and others.
>  
> Paal, you are (again) quite out of line to blame me for what happened to the forest in the Gambia. It is not helping your argument to turn erect a straw man of your choosing to knock down. You should listen more carefully to what I write, not just fling words at me and others who do not agree with your sweeping partial arguments made in support of your stove product. Your enthusiasm to assist the people on the ground is overcoming the social restraint needed to discuss the implications for societies of the grand schemes thought up on their behalf.
>  
> >People are desperate for money.
>  
> Yes, but are they more desperate for money than we are to promote our favourite solutions to their problems? Perhaps not. Can’t be sure. So also the people in also the financial district in London where they burn (your) money to implement their favourite schemes.
>  
> >The low prices of charcoal will lead to more use of forest, probably short time cheaper household energy, but also competition about the resources for production of charcoal.
>  
> The first question to ask is why the price is still so low if there is no forest to cut down. Two reason stand out: it is not from Gambia, and people can’t afford to pay more (though there are 1/3 higher prices in the richer parts of Banjul). So that is a supply-side argument, and an absolute poverty argument. As it tends to, the market sorted out what the price should be. The charcoal market exists because it is financially viable and the resources are there.
>  
> >The women of Richards will loose their material for making briquettes with the enormous quantities char needed for soil improvement.
>  
> Let me rephrase that: the briquette makers are now using a variety of materials and processing them into briquettes. Char dust is one ingredient.  At the moment there is nearly no competition for this resource – it is lying on the ground at the markets. The amount of char needed to achieve a meaningful amount of soil improvement is large.
>  
> If the special conditions needed to turn cooking char into soil amendment exist, it may be in Rwanda. Nat is implementing an experiment there on a large enough scale that it can be viewed as a test bed, an experiment. If it succeeds or fails does not mean it is automatically possible to do it somewhere else. There are many factors at play in something that complex. I hope it works because in theory it is a great plan. I also hope that it is not dependent on ‘carbon trading’ (CO2 offset selling) to be economically viable because there are many unintended consequences that emerge from subsidised behaviours.
>  
> >Taken into consideration the fact, the losses of combustible gases lost by production of charcoal,  could nearby cover the need of household energy for people using charcoal for cooking.
>  
> This has always been true. Let’s stick with tree charcoal for a moment. The difficulty has been to deal with the reality of where the wood is, where the charcoal use is, and to overcome the huge logistical problems of moving the tree logs from where they are to where the cooking is done (mostly cities), chopping and drying them into a size suited to the stoves and to producing stoves on a meaningful scale that can cook acceptably using the available material. We are not talking yet about making char, we are talking about the energy ‘lost’ turning wood into charcoal and cooking with the result.
>  
> Paal, you have several times stated that the losses are huge and, in effect, proposed that if the wood were instead put into a stove to make charcoal, and perhaps burn that too, there would be a gain in energy available. You have offered numbers that suggest the very low charcoal conversion efficiency and cooking efficiency indicate that charcoal as a fuel should be banned completely. I have countered with an alternative solution and alternative analysis. I suggest that the conversion efficiency of charcoal can easily and inexpensively be increased a great deal – approximately tripled. The solutions already exist. Next, the waste from the present production process should not be left I the forests and fields but sent to town as well to go into briquette production. That would increase the net efficiency. Then I proposed that the stoves be increased in cooking efficiency by approximately 100% - solutions exist here too.
>  
> I have also described in detail the calculated energy flow showing that even at present, there is not much difference between cooking with an inefficient wood fire and charcoal, taking the original tree into consideration as the raw material. The reason is simple: crummy charcoal stoves are much more efficient than crummy wood stoves. When one contemplates (fantasizes) that the charcoal production and cooking are done using much better technologies and skill, the charcoal fire again comes out looking very good compared with wood. Why? Because high quality, consistent, high carbon fuels are more efficient than inconsistent wooden branches. Because cities do not (yet) produce enough domestic energy fuels, ‘energy carriers’ are imported from outside. Charcoal has more energy density (29.7 MJ/kg) so it is cheaper to transport. It is also much easier to load and unload, and easier to transport by bicycle. It is more profitable to move on any scale and thus the impact of providing the energy can be spread over a larger geographical region. It can involve more people in the energy business as a part-time occupation spreading the money farther. Everything that works against these benefits will have negative consequences for people and the environment so be careful what you propose as sweeping changes to whole communities.
>  
> >By changing to charcoal-producing TLUD stoves, whatever Crispin will try to tell us, you will utilize this gases for cooking and in addition have about 20% char left, which could go back to soil improvement.
>  
> This of course has nothing to do with the argument that the energy ‘lost’ producing charcoal (outside town) could be used for cooking. It is a separate argument. Let us examine it.
>  
> A TLUD stove uses wood or other biomass to cook. A top-lit up-draft stove does not necessarily produce charcoal so we have to be clear: some TLUD’s produce cooking heat and ash, some produce cooking heat and if operated correctly at the end of the burn, leave unburned charcoal in various amounts. Top-lighting is an ignition technique and has been used for centuries to make low-smoke fires. Boy Scouts used it when I was young. It produces a smoke burning fire. Now that the stove body encloses the fire, it has become controllable to the point that the flame is primarily a non-carbon burning one which turns out to be very easy to make clean and hot. About ½ the carbon in the fuel is burned, the other half is not – but only with some stoves. It is not inherent in a TLUD. IT is inherent in certain designs. The initial attraction was not to the char, it was to the very low smoke level that was measured. ‘TLUD’s burn clean!’ was the cry from the lab. Well, yeah, they usually do. Now, how about burning all the fuel? After all, the main energy content of biomass fuel is in the carbon.
>  
> Not all the TLUD’s are good at burning the carbon (we are still talking about air-dried wood as a fuel). They had a lot of totally dry char left over which contained a significant percentage of the original heat content. If 20% of the original mass of the fuel is left, it will be about 0.5% ash and 85-90% Carbon with an energy content of about 30 MJ/kg which is about 40% of the original heat content. The proposal is that the TLUD stove cook with the same raw fuel (wood that use to be charcoaled) and that 40% of the heat will be lost, but charcoal will remain. I have pointed out that if you do not increase the thermal efficiency of the stove by more than enough to compensate for this loss, more fuel will have to be gathered to put into the stove to finish cooking. You can’t take energy out without a compensating increase in efficiency.
>  
> To recap: you have delivered wood to the city and it has about 16 MJ/kg. You can burn it directly in a fire at a certain efficiency.  Or you can turn it into chunks suitable for TLUD stoves and use about 10 MJ of the heat, leaving 6 MJ in the form of charcoal. That is the alternative offer. Well, to cook with the same amount of fuel the TLUD stove will have to be 1.6 times more efficient than the wood stove. If someone offers an improved wood stove, say 35% efficient, the TLUD will have to be 56% efficient to compete on an energy basis. That is a steep challenge but, possible I would say. I just haven’t seen it yet.
>  
> To get out 25% or 30% charcoal only makes the challenge more….challenging!
>  
> Then comes the argument (confessing that the efficiency challenge is impossible) that switching to other forms of biomass will fill in the missing raw fuel requirement. The proposal is that non-woody biomass can be used instead of wood so the efficiency challenge is avoided. Paal, this is your main argument: don’t burn wood at all, burn something else. But as you also pointed out, this creates demand for the raw materials people making briquettes from non-woody biomass also want. OK, for the moment let’s suppose those biomass resources exist in some communities for at least part of the year.
>  
> There are two proposals: burn the fuel completely, or burn it and extract the charcoal. The same argument above applies: show that you have enough fuel (we agree there is for the moment) to overcome the ‘inefficiency’ of subtracting 40% of the energy in the form of char. Arguments resting on PM and smoke do not apply because we have all sorts of clean burning stoves around these days. This is purely an energy question. Assuming the biomass exists, there is a net gain in the available energy supply. No doubt about it. Whether or not it is char burning or producing only changes the amount of input material needed.
>  
> >You would have a win/win situation. By changing from charcoal to TLUD, you will have more energy, better health, higher agriculture yields, forest conservation , more jobs, better household economy. What more do you ned?
>  
> We would have a win-win. It is not necessary to ‘change to a TLUD’ we need to make char producing stoves. I do not want to limit inventers to one type of stove layout. Any non-woody biomass burning stove can deliver the win-win. The TLUD is one way of doing that, assuming the biomass is available. We could even produce char, we could collect it (additional energy), we could sent it to the fields (additional energy), we could still cook. Great.
>  
> When proposing this great idea we have NO IDEA what the unintended consequences of the proposed transformation will be, only the fantasized intended consequences. That is why they are called ‘unintended consequences’. As we move into the field, our fantasies may be turned into realities, and at the same time the unintended consequences will also emerge to be dealt with, if possible.
>  
> The first reality is that the biomass energy does not exist in some places. It is sometimes already being burned whole (Harare), turned into briquettes (Nairobi?), or recycled into the gardens and fields (everywhere). That problem could be overcome by importing it from rural areas but the cost per unit of benefit is much higher than with wood of charcoal because of volume and the low energy density. The viable radius is small(er). From an energy audit point of view it would be far better for rural folk to turn their biomass into charcoal pellets and ship them efficiently to the city. But that promotes charcoal! Oh dear! And we have been told charcoal is bad. And what about the wasted energy in the grass-charring process? Well, I said above that we are assuming the biomass exists for this so let’s char it as an alternative.
>  
> Stop charcoaling trees, and charcoal non-woody biomass. How does that look? Looks pretty good! No trees cut, charcoal pellets produced (a-la-AD Karve) and can be done on a small scale. Still involves charcoal trade to the cities, but this time no tree cutting involved. The work can be spread over a larger area than with raw biomass (more transport efficient). It basically comes down to a choice of moving large amounts of raw biomass, or processed high-carbon fuels. Obviously the processed fuels are going to be more efficient. Given that all good high carbon fuel stoves are inherently more efficient than all good raw biomass fuel stoves (for chemical and combustion reasons) it makes the most sense for the most people to use charcoal processed in a rural area using non-woody biomass.
>  
> Quite separately, it people want to put char into the ground (the biomass existing to supply both cooking and biochar) they can avoid the complexities and costs of bring it from the cities by creating char in the rural area and applying it directly to the soil. That is far more efficient.
>  
> Next, let’s assume the needed biomass does not exist to supply the city’s cooking needs and a growing biochar demand. In short, the city dwellers will burn anything they can to completion, and never send char out of the city as it is fuel. The rural folk will only send into the city enough energy to provide income for their needs or only spare fuel. It might be processed charcoal, it might be whole biomass, but it will be what is left over.
>  
> Whether or not one uses a TLUD or advanced stove or raw wood or processed pellets, it is pointless to be against charcoal. It is like being ‘against energy’. Everyone is against wasteful energy use, wasteful charcoal production, wasteful wood burning, wasteful transport models, wasteful cooking methods.
>  
> Ron asks:
>  
> >If charcoal making is so great for the economy - why is production illegal? 
>  
> I think the real answer is pressure from people who see the disappearance of the forests. The forests (or savannah forests) are disappearing because the creation of managed woodlots turns out not to be a very high priority. This is a long-standing problem. The trees could easily be replaced but they are not. Some countries have addressed this. Niger is one. Canada is another, so has Swaziland.
>  
> Everyone complains about the disappearance of trees and no one does much practical to replace them even though it has been known for quite a while that trees can be replanted. The story of community managed forestry is not very encouraging though I remain convinced that it is the long term solution, as the Brits found out in the 1500’s.
>  
> >Second the cost we should be talking about should involve externalities - not just its availability because people have no other employment. 
>  
> Rural people are ‘an externality’ in terms of food pricing, dumping practices, unfair global trade rules and pro-urban political pressures. City people are not automatically better or more deserving people. Why are they there? They have been driven off the land because it is hopelessly uneconomic to remain there in miserable rural poverty. Many political parties encourage this because they see the future of humanity as urban. The more cynical say they do it because they are easier to control in the cities. The urban poor (our target market) are ‘an externality’ of the failure to address the needs of the rural masses. Promoting the further diminution of the rural economy is not going to help anyone.
> 
> >I still maintain that Gambia is probably being ruined from people breaking the law. 
>  
> A friend of mine (not Cecil) said he saw charcoal production 150 metres from the office (in Banjul) responsible for preventing charcoal production in the Gambia. Banning something usually means the price goes up, not that it is actually banned. It is banned because of pressure from outsiders who believe that making something illegal will produce a different outcome for the forest without having to address the need to change people’s attitude to the law. There are PV solar electric feed-in tariffs in Germany but not in Italy for the same reason.
>  
> And Biochar production in pyrolysis stoves by these same unemployed folk can be accomplished by people like me paying for taking atmospheric carbon out of their (and my atmosphere. 
>  
> Those are two quite different issues. A rural family that collects biomass now and that changes to a pyrolysing stove will have to collect more biomass, unless the stove is more efficient (see above). The management of funds (subsidies) is fraught with problems in an environment where the office in charge of preventing charcoal making has a charcoal production business 150 metres from its own head office. Think.
>  
> >Partly this can be done locally, but also these same unemployed can plant and manage trees. 
>  
> Those places which tried managed forestry have a spotty record, and I think there is a big future in it. It would be more efficient to turn some of the forest into char for local agriculture and to ship whole or processed fuel to the cities.
>  
> >The same tree used as wood can probably cook for 4 to 5 times as many people (I have seen the number 7).  And the properly managed tree (and its roots) will not be savaged - but rather coppiced.
> 
> I would like to see those numbers in a detailed form. I am suspicious that the stoves efficiency, good stove efficiency, has not been factored properly into the equation. People tend to pick the worst case with which to compare their best case scenarios. Stoves and fuels are hugely complex and huge in scale. Making sweeping technology changes without first hearing from the social scientists is plainly foolish. The number of urban people a rural tree can cook for might well be 4-7 times more in some cases, but that is not the whole energy equation – and the argument has been made on a whole equation basis. I don’t think there is any denying that. The proposal has big differences showing partial equations tacked onto holistic arguments.
>  
> >There is a good reason for most laws and I hate to see the subject of illegal charcoal making going undiscussed.
> 
> What would you like to say about it? It is like banning bread and saying, “Let them, rather, eat cake.”
>  
> >Thanks for the report below that Bakari has used the phrase  "very big improvement" from Biochar  I hope he can give us more detail. 
>  
> Cecil might be able to provide details. I see that George of the Disappearing Jungle also knows my e-buddy.  Cecil visited his garden to get a firsthand report.
>  
> >I don't know whether that is 20% (very big in this country) or 200%.(which I am hearing a lot in Africa).  The difference can start with the rural stove.
> 
> I take it then you are not against charcoal in general? Would you make trade in TLUD-stove char legal? That would be like legalizing elephant ivory if the elephant died of natural causes. When caught with tusks, people will claim the elephant died of ‘natural causes’, to wit, ‘lead poisoning’. It was a mistake to ban charcoal production, when they really wanted to ban tree cutting. There is a big difference. Perhaps we should lobby for the lifting of the charcoal making ban and ban tree cutting. No? Wouldn’t work? People would cut trees anyway? Quell surprise. The solution is planting and managing, not banning. It is a supply-side production problem, not an energy shortage problem. Running out of energy does not change the nature of the cause of the problem. It is secondarily an energy efficiency problem. By that I mean there is a demand-side partial solution to supply-side problem.
>  
> Joyfully, the stoves that burn most efficiently also produce the least PM and CO! I see all the elements of a win-win-win-win solution: faster, cleaner cooking, renewable energy self-sufficiency, rural employment and improving agriculture. Proposals dealing with these complex issues should include the whole energy equation.
>  
> Regards
> Crispin
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