[Stoves] An Introduction

[ajheggie at gmail.com]

On Sunday 04 December 2011 04:21:38 Crispin Pemberton-Pigott wrote:
> Fortunately the poorest people are stuck in the middle of nowhere and
> are hard to get to so They will have first dibs on the resource. Good.

To my mind it is the fact that is a low value, distributed resource with 
high transport costs that makes agri residues an ideal fuel for stoves, 
and particularly char making stoves IF there is an agronomic benefit in 
biochar to the producer.

Fossil fuels are dealt by oligarchies from rich pockets underground and 
consumed by centralised processes yet the CO2 produced becomes fairly 
evenly distributed so can be sequestrated locally. My doubt remains that 
there is, or can be, a means of rewarding the small scale sequestration 
other than an increase in production from the treated soil.

Richard and others' work with medium density briquettes and the acceptance 
of them in simple bucket type stoves is leading the way with agri 
residues. From my feeble attempts in UK I find I cannot air dry things 
like corn cobs sufficiently for them to burn in small scale TLUD devices 
and previous experience with making briquettes I both failed to get the 
density or moisture content right. The former, I suspect from 
instructions Richard has given here, from inadequate retting and 
preparation.

Moving on slightly; does anyone know what the chemistry of banana skins is 
that they fail to suprort flaming combustion even when dry?

AJH