[Stoves] Re Looking for sustainable non wood biomass offtake info off Miombo forest

Richard Stanley rstanley at legacyfound.org
Wed Nov 30 02:06:32 CST 2011


Dear Anand, 

Thanks as ever, for your keen insights. Those are interesting numbers you have as we find the biomass briquettes here run 3 to 5 cents per 140 grams about double your costs--as produced and sold by self sustaining micro entpreprenur production teams--in their respective local markets. 
Costs per family per day are 25 to 50 cents depending …It's relatively easy to calculate as the process is almost completely and directly governed by labor costs. 

The briquette costs about 1.5 to 2.5% of one producers daily wage... 

On the question about sustainability of resource off take, as compared to Paal's mentioned Miombo forest wood yield here in East/central-East Africa…one can readily access wood yield per species at maturity but determining s safe off-take (leaving canopy cover on the ground untouched) is another, relatively unexplored  matter. It all may be a bit academic though as few will roam the fields to gather biomass when they can just as easily gather it in topical depressions roadside ditches,depression in the land, wind blown biomass collecting against wind breaks (walls fences etc etc).

 Kind regards, 

Richard Stanley


On Nov 29, 2011, at 5:35 PM, Anand Karve wrote:

> Dear Richard,
> agriculture produces a lot of waste biomass without using extra land, water, fertilizers or efforts. In India, we generate annually about 800 million tonnes of agricultural waste. It contains almost 2.5 times as much energy as the petroleum that we import every year. The only disadvantage in the case of agricultural waste is that it is not centrally available but lies scattered in millions of small farms. If a fair price is offered to the farmers for this biomass, they transport it at their own cost to a central processing factory. About 100 factories in Maharashtra State (India) buy the agricultural waste from farmers and press it into briquettes. These briquettes burn just like wood. Fuel oil, which is traditionally used as boiler fuel in the factories, costs about 1 US$ per litre. The calorific value of the petroleum based fuel oil can be matched with about 2.5 kg biomass briquettes, which cost only about USCents 30. Retrofitting furnaces to accept biomass briquettes has grown into a big business here. 
> Yours
> A.D.Karve 
> 
> On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 3:12 PM, Richard Stanley <rstanley at legacyfound.org> wrote:
> Paal, 
> 
> Thanks for that insight on wood availability. As related to it, the question the biomass briquetter has to ask is, how much NON wood biomass is generated yearly and of that how much is available for use in biomass briquetting. Of course its a small faction of the wood harvest but its available each and every year the tree is live… We had prepared some tables of different biomass sustainable offtake, in cooperation with a long established Japanese agrofrestry project in Uganda and the Uganda Forestry department back in 2003 when we were writing our theory and applications manual  but the tables are only generalised for a set of different bioregions and land use types. 
> 
> It would be interesting to get your own take on Miombo forest per se. 
> 
> Richard / freezing in Dar es Salaam 
> 
> 
> On Nov 13, 2011, at 10:47 AM, Paal wendelbo wrote:
> 
>> Crispin, Anderson and others
>>                 A common Miombo forest in Africa will give about 3 ton wood per ha a year. 3 ton of dry wood will give 800 kg of charcoal. A household of 5 consume 2-3 kg charcoal a day or about 800 kg a year. To produce 3 kg of charcoal you need 10-12 kgof dry fire wood in a common kiln. That will give one day cooking on a charcoal stove, and almost no biochar. 10-12kg dry chopped wood will give 3 days of cooking on a TLUD-ND or another FES and 2.5 kg of biochar   
>>                 Energy forestry using just the sprouting every year can give up to 10 ton wood per ha a year, easy to cut to appropriate fuel for TLUD-ND’s or other types of FES. By adding some biochar to soil of bad quality 20-30 % increased yields can be obtained, which will give more food, more household energy, more jobs, better economy, better health for women and children and saving the forest. It can probably be as simple as this and is that not some of what we are looking for and need?
>>                 We know some changes have to take place on the household energy sector and we have to start somewhere. Why not start with small scale farmers on sandy soil, and from there develop the new household bio-energy strategy for developing countries. Probably also with the charcoal business, they have the whole infrastructure intact and can easy change from charcoal to alternative biomass like chopped wood or pellets from agriculture and forestry related waste. Or do you have a better solution Crispin?
>> With regards Paal W
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