[Stoves] {briquetting} Anticipation of fuels; Another interpretation

Sat Jun 25 10:02:34 CDT 2011

Dear Richard'n'All

Sorry for being slow off the response chair but this took some thinking.

>I think that only when the US gets to the point where local production of
solid fuel for local-only markets, is found viable and culturally favored
(as for example food is, in local farmers markets), will we see biomass
production for fuel as a viable concept here. I do not see them coming out
of COSTCO of Home Depot anytime soon.

Well, I think that is the point of entry for anyone in the fuel industry. We
don't buy coal or heating oil from Costco either because they are not in the
energy business.

Looking over the production scenario you describe, there is little doubt
that it is viable in some places/communities as a labour-based activity with
a tiny capital investment and the skill retained in the form of human hands,
not the form of hard metal as a material expression of a remote inventor's
artisanship. All quite correct with respect to the viability at what can be
described as the fringe of the market economy, though it is indeed part of
the local market economy.

Not very many years ago there was a similar wood fuel industry thriving in
North America, and in many small towns in the north, it is alive and doing
find. That is why there are log splitters to which you were able to refer in
your presentation. The log splitter is a technology that found a viable
market in North America because there is a local industry and activity into
which it feeds fuel.

If the local fuel market changes, the technology will change too, keeping
supplied with the tools they need to make a living in the local conditions,
whether that be a peri-urban Georgia cabin or a solar heated,
wood-supplemented house in Denver.

The costing of the hand-made low density briquette does not scale up in
North America for the simple reason that it is an energy densified economy.
We expect more energy per kg of product. That is why Roger Samson's
Switchgrass pellets are viable in Ontario. The biomass is available, the
technology needed to pelletize it to a density far higher than a hand-made
holey briquette, it flows and packs well, densely, you could say, so
transport is much better. Packaging is 'bulk'.

I asked one of my relatives (a farmer) why anyone would burn corn instead of
wood pellets and he replied that he could get corn delivered to his farm for
$110 per ton (at that time) and that wood was $150. Plus there is lot of
crummy corn that is not edible.  Simple matter of math. I asked how on earth
people could produce corn (which is after all just naturally pelletized
biomass) and he said' "Because farmers are extremely efficient." I had to
think about that. They really are. The current pushing of the corn price is
driven by a couple of things: ethanol, dumping exports outside the growth
country and a cooling climate reducing yield. All three continue and you can
expect the price to continue to rise in the immediate future.

So corn, in spite of being produced efficiently, will be more costly than
all forms of biomass even in the heartland of waving fields of grain.

Chopped wood, good for the tiny scale home producer and user is not really a
good market commodity. People want convenience so pellets are the future as
far as I see - with interesting size being 8-10mm diameter because they feed
well into automated machinery. As the present price is at or below $150 per
ton delivered, this is a pretty good price, and that has been achieved
without making it into a large industry where rail cars are full of pellets
instead of corn. It is economically profitable to ship pellets from South
Africa and British Columbia and Georgia to the EU. That means it is probably
viable outside to the producer's back door.  

Here in Waterloo vast amounts of wood are buried in landfills because there
is no local industry turning it into charcoal. Charcoal powder produced in
large gas generating kilns would be a great fuel for home heating. Certainly
better than coal dust which is very abrasive. That industry has yet to
emerge and when it does, it will be succeed really well because there are
millions of wooden houses that will be recycled at some point in the next
100 years.

Your points about transport are well taken. In an economy where the wages
are higher, fuel is energy densified to be cheaper to move. In a cubic metre
of wood pellets there is about 16 GJ of heat. If it were charcoaled first,
it would rise to about 25 GJ. That's a pretty good deal. Rail transport is
incredibly cheap - witness the cost of moving wheat from the Canadian
prairies to Vancouver. A 100 car train of charcoal pellets would contain
something like 110,000 GigaJoules of energy - about equal to 2.75m litres of
gasoline, I think. Someone can check the math. It's a lot.

When the inventions needed to render biomass unto the masses in North
America are brought on line, it will succeed like any of the other energy
businesses have.

The challenge facing us is to identify which package is the best fit in any
community we are intending to benefit. As the presentation of fuels are in
some (or most) cases limited by the nature of the raw material, the fuel
will probably precede the technology that burns it. A good example of this
is brown coal which has been around for centuries. The fuel is not amenable
to low cost processing, and the stoves to burn it really cleanly simple
never emerged until very recently. It is amazing that this is the case. In
fact people have believed for just about the same length of time that coal
can't burn without smoke. When brown coal or low density briquettes are put
into an existing stove (presumably optimised to burn something else) what is
the performance? Pretty poor, that what. 

My point here is that the fuels should be prepared to meet the local
economic and transport environment, fitting into the salary and land base
measures as needed. Then the products optimised to use those fuel product
should be created to burn them. Yes, there is a bit of back-and-forth to
match the fuel and the stove/heater/cooker but the principle remains: find
fuels first.

Interesting topic.

Best regards

Crispin

From: fuelbriquetting at googlegroups.com
[mailto:fuelbriquetting at googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Richard Stanley
Sent: 23 June 2011 19:37
To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
Cc: fuelbriquetting
Subject: {briquetting} Anticipation of fuels; Another interpretation

Hello Dean,

Now that we see you guys are getting into biomass processing, welcome: 

However, while I respect your insights about the macro data on trends toward
biomass processing, actual production trends turn out to be a bit of a
different reality on the ground: 

1) The costs you assign  to it's processing in fact much FAVOR the third
world and not our own over industrialised world--not at least yet for the
mass market here. The reason is that labor is about 90 to 95 % of the total
production cost at the local level..As long as one stays very local in
sourcing materials and local in distribution of the product to the market in
low cost labor environments, it works out well (read, economically viable
and environmentally sustainable) for them.   

2) Amp up the production to justify our wage costs here in the US part of
the Americas, the issues of bulk value and shipping cost and ease of local
replication all work against the US model of centralized mass production and
wide distribution. 

.  At a density of 0.3 to 0.4 sg. -and reducing that figure by another 30%
for realistic packing density- you have  one full cubic meter containing
only 120 to 150 kgs. Its street value is about 10 (US) cents per KG in the
third world generally, but as made for sales in the retail store here one
might get 5 x that  -wholesale to said retailer but thats still what,  $75
dollars / cubic meter /150 kgs of fuel --before shipping. 

Now how far can one ship that bulk before its cost doubles and again that
delivered price will again increase by at least 30% before it gets to the
customer. 

But the really big,  added nail in the "do it here, not in the third world
school"/  coffin, is that;

. it is an open sourced and easily replicated product. Even if one suceeds
in shipping their biomass product of the above density to the neighboring
town its going to be far more costly thant what can be easily replicated
right in that town.  Anyone with a few hand tools and some scrap lumber can
replicate it in no time. Two serious producers with a modfied yard chipper
(say 3-4 Kw ) and even the most efficient of hand powered presses can
produce   about 120 kgs of product a day. They might double that with a
modified log splitter but the point is that their market will be very
competitive with the transported product but its still going to remain
competitive only for their own local market area. 

It is not a case of making product in bulk and shipping it widely: Quite the
opposite case in fact. Ground transportation is not about to get less
expensive (although we keep hearing about this wonderful new thing called
natural gas (unless you've viewed Gassland). 

In sum, unless we go to specialty briquettes for selected ambiance/
armotheraputic or toursit markets, it will never really hit home here as a
product for centralised production and mass distribution--unless its  done
under someone's, or some institution's  largesse, for those who are
disnefranchised and destitute.

At least as we have seen it emerge over the past odd 17 years in now 45
nations, it seems to expand- not as large centralised produciton
activites-but rather as an increasing number of widely distributed small
scale production activities. 

However inefficient-from the idealised "economies of scale" standpoint-
these small local entities are  pretty good at generating lots of small
incomes, integrating communities, sustaining and self regulating themselves
outside donor or political or other sectarian influences.  Thye pretty much
function quietly like the vast majority of economic activity in the local
economies,  in what what the UN calls "informal sector".   You won't find
the briquette producers turning up in Shell grants, Ashdon Awards  or even
the PCIA.. but they are there and growing none the less. 

I think that only when the US gets to the point where local production of
solid fuel for local-only markets, is found viable and culturally favored
(as for example food is, in local farmers markets), will we see biomass
production for fuel as a viable concept here. I do not see them coming out
of COSTCO of Home Depot anytime soon.

Kind regards

Richard Stanley

www.legacyfound.org

Ashland Oregon 

On Jun 23, 2011, at 9:44 AM, Dean Still wrote:

Dear All,

Processing biomass fuel has a history of costing more than propane. Low
density biomass, high cost of transportation, drying, shredding, densifying,
marketing, can add up to lots of costs. Perhamps suitable to China, the US,
but hard for me to imagine in a poorer situation? Even India?

Dried found materials will be the biomass used in poorer rural situations?
Great to imagine found materials at no cost sustainably harvested burned
cleanly.

Dean

On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 7:11 AM, Tom Miles <tmiles at trmiles.com> wrote:

Crispin,

Your call for processed fuels echoes on of our main recommendations to the
Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. 

Projections by the US Forest Service indicate a substantial increase in
demand and price of wood for construction, paper and energy with any
scenario (high, low or sustainable development). The degree depends on how
quickly developing countries other than China impact global demand. Right
now Japanese paper production was reduced by the Tsunami - three paper mills
were put out of action - which, combined with increases in Chinese demand,
has had a dramatic impact on our wood and wood residues prices on the West
Coast of the US. Some wood energy projects that I am working on are no
longer economically feasible due to this external demand. A client in
Michigan tells a similar story. There is no wood fuel available for his
project at an affordable price. These are just early warnings about the
impact of fiber and fuel shortages.     

Tom

From: stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org
[mailto:stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Crispin
Pemberton-Pigott
Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2011 6:23 AM
To: Stoves
Subject: [Stoves] Anticipating future markets for stoves and fuels

Dear Friends

One should be aware of the emerging markets in order to plan ahead. The
reason for this is that technologies take years to develop, and the same is
true for fuel supply chains.

There is an excellent paper by at
http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/uploads/media/Moerner_Science_environm_sea_
level_3_11_Paper_534.pdf on the climate emerging in the next 40 years. 

The implications of his work, and that of many others who have studied this
in-depth (Stuiver and Quay, Hoyt and Schatten, Lean, Cliver, Rind, Bard,
Bond, Mazzarella, Friis-Christensen and Lassen, Schove, Sanders &
Fairbridge, Finkl and others) are that we are presently heading into a De
Vries cycle (event). 

The increasing need for space heating and processed space heating fuels that
are customized for dramatically improved stoves opens new opportunities for
inventors and market developers.

In particular the need for processed solid fuels is paramount. They can be
stored, shipped by many means of transport and are generally energy dense.
The appearance of torrefied wood pellets is an example of such a fuel. 

There are lots of new ideas to think about.

Regards

Crispin

_______________________________________________
Stoves mailing list

to Send a Message to the list, use the email address
stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org

to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page
http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_lists.bioenergylists
.org

for more Biomass Cooking Stoves,  News and Information see our web site:
http://www.bioenergylists.org/

_______________________________________________
Stoves mailing list

to Send a Message to the list, use the email address
stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org

to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page
http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_lists.bioenergylists
.org

for more Biomass Cooking Stoves,  News and Information see our web site:
http://www.bioenergylists.org/

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Fuel Briquetting" group.
To post to this group, send email to fuelbriquetting at googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
fuelbriquetting+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/fuelbriquetting?hl=en.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20110625/16c58add/attachment.html>