[Stoves] (stoves) Haitian cooking

[ajheggie at gmail.com]

On Wednesday 29 June 2011 17:09:05 Tom Miles wrote:
> At 1.5 kg/person per day x 365 days = 548 kg/year or about 1 m3 of
> solid wood per year. If the wood was converted to charcoal at 10-30%
> yield it would require 10-3 m3 of solid wood per person per year.

Only true if yield is 10-30% of volume.

In a kiln the char yield will be very dependant on initial moisture 
content. So, for instance, your solid cubic meter of wood weighing 548kg 
in a temperate hardwood such as English Oak would have an impossibly low 
moisture content of 3% and would comfortably yield 137kg of char in a 
tlud.

The whole wood calorific value would be about 10,000MJ and the char would 
have about 4000MJ.

So what are the comparative cooking efficiencies for the char compared 
with whole wood?

AJH