[Stoves] Alternative to charcoal

[Jonathan P Gill]

Paul et al:

I hope more people will consider alternatives to wood biomass as fuel.  Combusted wood does not sequester carbon, but simply returns it to the atmosphere from whence it came.

Question:  What is the value of charcoal?   Is it more valuable as a soil amendment for increasing crop yield or as a fuel?  

Question:  Can we put a value on sequestering a stable form of carbon that will remain sequestered for many times longer than carbon in biomass?

That is, we have to try to include the entire system in our evaluation, not simply selected bits.

Jock



On Apr 8, 2013, at 5:31 PM, Paul Anderson <psanders at ilstu.edu> wrote:

> Dale and all,
> 
> Thank you for your input, especially the quantitative parts.   I confirm and agree with your comments, such as about 1 inch maximum of diameter of wood in the residential size TLUDs.
> 
> I hope that more people will be considering alternatives to charcoal.   
> 
> Paul
> Paul S. Anderson, PhD  aka "Dr TLUD"
> Email:  psanders at ilstu.edu   Skype: paultlud  Phone: +1-309-452-7072
> Website:  www.drtlud.com
> On 4/8/2013 4:09 PM, Andreatta, Dale A. wrote:
>> At the recent ETHOS conference Paul Means and Chris Lanning gave a very thought-provoking talk about an alternative to charcoal.  The basic idea was to use a gasifying stove with prepared wood fuel.  The prepared wood fuel would be bought by the user instead of charcoal, and the supply chain would be similar to charcoal.  The big advantage is that the very inefficient step of charcoal production is eliminated.  The stove would hopefully be easy to use and would smoke very little, so as to retain the benefits of a charcoal stove. 
>>  

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