[Stoves] Last? Alternative to Charcoal

[Mike Mahowald]

Great conversations on Charcoal verses everything else.  I can't understand
how percentages can be the same for all and less than charcoal?
What no one seems to be speaking about is the inefficiency of making
charcoal in the 1st place?  Cost of charcoal where there are no trees
increases until you have another Easter Island and everyone dies off.

I have done enough tests to know that pellets, sticks branches do not all
have the same density or percentage efficiencies as stated.  Pellets (I
have used switch grass made in Wisconsin not yet vetiver from Haiti) burn
much longer, more steady and easier to adjust heat output. With our larger
stoves they will burn for 4 hours and boil way more water than any charcoal
stove I have ever seen!  As a matter of fact for institutions who boil a
lot of water don't use charcoal, they use 3-stone fires with fire wood,
propane or recently some use rocket stove design.
Vetiver grass will heal degraded land and can be pelletized.  This will
have to be done with manual labor trimming grass hedgerows and leaving
grass lay to dry then carried to a portable hammermill, pelletizer and
bagging operation with generator that is mounted on trailers that are
pulled along closest roads.
There is more than facts and figures when you see the severe problem of
deforestation in places like Haiti.



On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 7:17 PM, Paul Means <paul at burndesignlab.org> wrote:

> Hi Crispin,
> In answer to your questions.  I assumed that the cost of transportation,
> for bulk products like this will primarily be based on weight rather than
> volume.  Therefore, in my analysis, the relative costs for transporting
> each of the different fuels is simply the product of:
>
>  1. the relative energy density (MJ/KG)
>  multiplied by
>  2. the relative haul distance.(KM/MJ) to pick up a MJ of fuel.
>
>   Sized & dried biomass (whether pellets, crumbled wood, dried chips,
> sticks, etc) has only 59% of the energy density of charcoal. On the other
> hand, the relative haul distance for traditional charcoal, because the
> process is so inefficient and it consequently has to be hauled from a much
> wider area, is 3 times more than for sized & dried biomass.
>
> For the "alternative to charcoal" I assume that the market for this fuel
> being brought into the cities is developed on the basis of modern/new
> micro-gasifier / TLUD type stoves.  It's assumed that the char is either
> burned in the TLUD (a few designs are coming out with this now) or the char
> is burned in a separate stove.  I have assumed that this TLUD / Char
> Burning together has an overall efficiency of 40%.
>
> - Paul
>
> Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2013 11:22:53 +0000
> From: crispinpigott at gmail.com
> To: "Stoves" <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
> Subject: Re: [Stoves] Alternatives to charcoal - transportation &
>         biochar
> Message-ID:
>         <798760741-1366284175-cardhu_decombobulator_blackberry.rim.
> net-357301314- at b5.c10.bise6.blackberry>
>
> Content-Type: text/plain
>
> Dear Paul M
>
> Could you please clarify two things (I can't see the slides. I am in
> transit).
>
> Are you basing the transport on a volume basis on the assumption that a
> vehicle bearing a higher density fuel can carry more?  Someone was talking
> like that.
>
> Next, I think you can (very) safely assume that any charcoal stove will
> deliver 1.5 times as much heat per available MJ into a pot. I aim higher
> than that but let's stick to average mediocre wood and charcoal stoves. A
> pretty ordinary charcoal stove will deliver 40% of the energy available to
> the pot.
>
> I don't know how that affects the outcome but it is the reality re the
> processed v.s. unprocessed fuels (char vs wood).
>
> Thanks
> Crispin
> Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network
>
> --
> Paul M. Means
> Research & Testing Manager
> Burn Design Lab
> (253) 569-2976 (mobile)
> http://www.burndesignlab.org/
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