[Stoves] Inquiries on Prototypes of Stove Carbonizers

Joshua Guinto jed.building.bridges at gmail.com
Mon Apr 23 19:14:57 CDT 2012


Dear All,

My name is Joshua Guinto. YOu may call me Jed (or Josh). I am here in the
PHilippines and am an avid follower of stoves design. I did my master's
thesis on stove design in Wageningen University in 2008 and has since then
doing my stove prototypes.

I am now in search for any prototype of *clay stoves* in the open source
community which has the capability of *producing biochar while cooking*. I
strongly believe that there is such an interface between the use of the raw
fuel for cooking and that of the carbonization using kilns to produce
biochar.

In 2002, iI have been into an episode of producing charcoal from green
coconut waste (we call "buko" here in the Philippines ). We collect the
waste green coconut shells from the market as well as the brown coconut
husks from farms, have them (1) dried and then (2) carbonize them.
Afterwhich, they are (3) milled,  (4)mixed with starch and (5) pressed into
a manual charcoal briquette press and then (6) dried again.Therefore, from
the raw fuel, the material takes six steps before they get used for
cooking. It was a lot of effort and fatigue. We even get fevers in the
evening because of the exposure to the heat of the hot charcoal not to
mention colds from the fine powder that we inhale as we handle the
charcoal. Finally, when sold in the market, it did not really compete with
the price of the conventional wood charcoal from the forests. More
importantly, i realized that there is so much heat and gas wasted during
the carbonization process. This gas and heat would already have been used
for more productive functions like cooking or running an engine.

Therefore after three months of production, i abandoned the project and
instead focused on improving the stove design so i may use the full power
of the raw fuel. It was then that i was lead to the rocket stove of Dr.
Winiarski, the holey roket stove of Rok Oblak and the holey briquettes of
the Legacy Foundation. Infused with my own innovations, i have now created
several models of the basic holey roket stove. It also lead me to discover
a whole range of raw fuels that can be fired using different methods namely
direct combustion, gasification (as in the  TLUD), and the use of holey
briquettes. You may see my report at the www.holeyroket.wordpress.com

My interest with the biochar re emerge during the series of disasters in
the Philippines. There is a huge need for biochar for water filters and at
the same time the need for cook stoves in the refugee camps. And so, the
idea of a stove that feeds on raw fuel and at the same time produces
biochar for water filters came up like a big bang !

Before i venture into another cycle of prototype development, which will
require several months and a lot of learning from mistakes, i am now in
search for anyone's work under these concepts.

I  hope you can help me find anyone's work on a stove-carbonizer that can
be

              built with clay in a village workshop

              without any electricity

              using simple tools and skills

              can cook for endless hours, (not the batch type)

              can be fed with a wide range of options like wood pellets,
wood chips, wood sticks, nuts and shells, holey briquettes... etc


              and can produce high quality bio char at the same time


Thank you very much for your time.


*Jed Guinto*
Philippines

P.S, I am now fabricating a stove model of the rice husk gasifier from the
designs of Engr. Alexis Belonio but this time using clay. As the clay is
still drying, i still have to know its performance in the coming weeks. It
however, is designed solely for rice husks.

Josh Kearns of Aqueous solutions also argues that bio char from woody
materials are much better for water filters because they are more effective
in sequestering unwanted elements in water. He openly shares his work  at

http://www.aqsolutions.org/images/2010/06/handbook-vers-1.0-March-2012-hi-res.pdf
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