[Stoves] wheat husk pellets

Wed Jun 12 20:05:00 CDT 2013

Paul (cc Alex) 

This is to respond to your question: 
Do you have any other other alternative to the use of fossil fuels? 

Here are three alternatives, from my perspective: 
a. Continued growth of the electrical system. Electricity is a great way to cook. As we decide to get off fossil-fueled electricity, biomass will be used for backup to wind and solar. As we realize the need to get back to 350 ppm CO2, then the best biomass option is with biochar - Backup with CHP in 10 -20 MW scale, not the GW scale assumed for BECCS. 
b. Natural gas for cooking will be replaced slowly by pyrolysis gas (and electricity). City gas (from biomass) came before natural gas. 
c. Liquid fuels can also come from pyrolysis with char co-product when we decide we need to get to 350 ppm. Cooking can be that way as well. 

Half the world can still rely on TLUD designs for cooking. Not for most on this list, including Alex and I, because we can afford to keep what we now use. But for half the world, a TLUD could be the cheapest - and so you need to keep developing your type. That's a big market. One caution - solar cooking for some meals will creep in - because it will be the cheapest. 

Note that all four approaches involve char-making - since I assume an eventual recognition both that all fossil fuels must go and also that we need 350 or lower. 

No doubt Alex agrees with all this. Your reaction? 

Ron 

----- Original Message -----
>From : "Paul Olivier" <paul.olivier at esrla.com> 
To: "Discussion of biomass cooking stoves" <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org> 
Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 5:28:57 PM 
Subject: Re: [Stoves] wheat husk pellets 

Alex, 

You say: Visions of pyrolysis stoves in the kitchens of North America are borderline male fantasy. Be realistic. Do you have any other other alternative to the use of fossil fuels? Such a double standard: we use fossil fuels to cook our meals and we expect poor people to use biomass fuels. 

Yes, you can start with the patio and then later move indoors as you acquire more skill in operating the unit. Also, at this early stage in the evolution of the technology, I would not recommend doing away with your gas stove. Leave it there, but try to use your biomass stove as much as possible. 

Pellets are available at so many retail outlets in the USA, and they are so easy to handle. I think that there are many households along the West coast who would be happy to break away from the stranglehold of Big Oil. 

In my kitchen I have not yet set up a hood and fan. So I will operate the pellet gasifier in my living room on a small coffee table. All that I have to do is to open up the two big windows in the living room. The problem that I have had all along was dealing with loose rice hulls. I have no place to store a large sack of rice hulls in my house, and I dislike having to load them into the reactor: they are so dusty and dirty. With pellets this problem is solved. 

Thanks. 

Paul 

On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 8:20 PM, Alex English < english at kingston.net > wrote: 

All Pauls and all, 

Interesting subject title. Having grown,combined,ground,sifted wheat and burned wheat 'berries" and wheat short blended pellets at times over the past 35 years, this is the first time I have heard the term 'wheat husk'. My failure to separate husk from chaff. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Wheat_middlings 

We can buy into energy conspiracies but they only go so far. Having watched greenhouse boiler fuel gyrations during energy price spikes, I can pull my head out of the oven and tell you that cleaning and maintaining a 'natural' gas fired boiler is as close to the 'aspirational' desk job as a farmer gets. A boiler fired with oat-hull/wheat-short blended pellets is continueally coated with sticky ash. It all makes work for the working-man to do, or avoid doing. Opposite ends of a fuel spectrum with labor and equipment costs playing a huge role in the decision. Where is that spreadsheet? 

There are quite a few pellet mills experiments around and most are having significant difficulties with ag residues and energy crops. Youtube videos only go so far, but its early days, or decades. 

Visions of pyrolysis stoves in the kitchens of North America are borderline male fantasy. Try the patio dadios first. That will be a tough enough sell. Not enough smoke flavor. 

A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's pyrolysis for? 

"That's nice, now take it outside dear, I have a meal to prepare, and also the insurance company said no" :) 

But your rice hull stove still seems like a pretty good niche. At least from a distance. 

Alex in Wonderfulland. 
A practitioner of the combustion arts and letters. 

On 11/06/2013 10:37 PM, Paul Olivier wrote: 

<blockquote>
Yes, Otto, you are right. 

Big Oil receives subsides from the US government. Its lobbying effort is colossal. It has succeeded in convincing most of us that it has all the answers. The infrastructure it has set up is vigilantly supported by the US military. In our design of stoves, we should do everything we can to make sure that we are not taken in by their lies. As Shell Oil, says in an advertisement: "We at Shell believe that the world should have a broader mix of energies". And then they point to natural gas. 

Paul Olivier 

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