[Stoves] going bananas

[Richard Stanley]

Hi  Alex,

The kind of variations you, Paal and others are experiencing in attempting to combust such as a bannana peel, reflect much of the fine tuning we have to do when selecting  agro residues even those of a particular species in different bioregions.. Intersting eh ? The notion that one could waash out soloubles such as potassium to make the bananna skin more combustible is well practiced in many plants at the local level. Its in finding and incorporating  technico-cultural practices like this,  that the more clever biomass briquette maker thrives. Combined with an analytical assessment of the process its a powerful tool  eh ?

But you are not alone on the western front either: 
 A one Joel Chaney has recently completed his PhD in Mechnical Engineering at Nottingham University. Prior to that asn erhaps as part of it, he had been working on banana briquettes for some time in Africa. ( His crowning demonstration of the feasability of using the peels was in the briquetting of them and  cooking with them to make …Banana fritters…

Less facetiously, Joel has done a wonderful technical analysis of the briquette combustion as a function of shape in the course of his studies…
 Here is his email contact:  Joel Chaney <joel.chaney at gmail.com> But I see that Marc kindly sent you more specific referencesto Joels work and to a BBC piece on him while at Nottingham.

At the same time a on Lee Hite, a professional engineer and woodworker, with Engineers without Borders in Ohio, US, has been working on technologies for processing agroresidues focussing on bananna bark --for briquetting. His efforts have culminated in new forms of simple hand operated  presses, a chopper and grinder. 
Lees site is;
   http://home.fuse.net/engineering/ 

 
Richard Stanley 

Dar es Salaam Tz.



On Dec 4, 2011, at 3:10 PM, ajheggie at gmail.com wrote:

> On Sunday 04 December 2011 13:31:11 Alex English wrote:
> 
>> The numbers here
>> http://ejeafche.uvigo.es/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_view/gid,
>> 495 don't add up but other sources suggest peels are around 15% ash.  8%
>> potassium, a component of fire retardant, might be the reason. I think
>> they sub'd manganese for magnesium.
> 
> Which seems to show they should be a good animal feed, I've never tried to 
> eat a banana and its peel but baana peel was the preferred titbit for our 
> dairy bull.
>> 
>> You could try blending the peels with water which should remove a lot
>> of the soluble K and then after drying it, or even before, make a holy
>> briquette :)
> 
> 
> When pelleting & briquetting has been discussed here I've often wondered 
> id pressure cooking, draining under pressure and then flashing the 
> residue would be a means of quickly leaching out soluble salts.
> 
> Thanks for finding the info Alex, I eat a banana most days so will try and 
> save a few skins for experiment.
> 
> AJH
> 
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