[Stoves] Anticipation of fuels; Its all the producer environment and the market niche'

Richard Stanley rstanley at legacyfound.org
Sun Jun 26 00:52:56 CDT 2011


Crispin et al., 

Interesting response as usual, but you miss one point: We are working from the local producer to local market standpoint perspective, not because we feel better about it ( low density briquetting versus higher density pellets) but because the low density product just makes better sense for the majority of the globe's solid fuel-using citizenry. 
Bette sense from the standpoint of transport, labor rates, technical skill sets and availability of a efficient distribution network.

If you  go to higher densification you need lots more pressure and much higher tech machinery. The local producer n a normal produciton mode, tends to  compress at about 12 to 15 bars to get on average 0.3 to 0.4 sg. To get to the 0.5 to 0.75 sg range , you CAN do it with the wet process -in this pressure range- if you blend really well pulped fibrous residues with a heavy amount of more dense materials (charcoal dust and or the heavier wood sawdust.  I have seen several examples  here with densities in that range...

Otherwise, densification will require several times that pressure  will incur many times that pressure---

It may well be that this is the market reality for the? 20% of the us that occupy the so called developed nations, (assuming they will not be induced to use semi mechanised presses and pulping equipment onsite) but for the rest of the 80% of us , centrailised production and widespread distribution is not a likely option. Shipping costs in east Africa and other nations I know of, are a good deal higher than what you quote for the Canadian part of the americas as well as the US part.. ...(indeed outside europe and parts of Japan, where else does one have  a widely distributed smooth road network much less a functioning railroad.

By default the producers objectives normally become one of  NOT attempting  ship from a central mass production location but rather create large numbers of local sites. 
Similarly labor rates are of course far lower as is employment rates and the skill sets required for centralised mass production. 

You will of course get greater fuel value with greater densification but you will also generally wipe out combustible oils and most certainly unique aromatic properties in the process. Does it matter that we have a means of preventing malarial mossies in the village household ? Probably lots in the village but not much in the westen world.  
Does it matter that the notion of store bought  fuels (Ok you name your likely mass pellet fuel supplier) generate income amongst your neighbors? Again its probably very significant  to the microeconomy of the village but not too important to the average urban citisen of the industrialised nations.

Different markets /environments; beget different production scenarios. Its not just a question of single economic model. And of course we leave out any consideration of the actual costs of petroleum fuels used in transportation...
Cheers,

Richard Stanley

 
> Dear Richard’n’A
>  
> 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 costat 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
>  
>  
> 
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