[Stoves] Continuous gasifier for household scale - experience sharing

rongretlarson at comcast.net rongretlarson at comcast.net
Tue May 14 21:16:14 CDT 2013



Paul etal adding Tuong in case he is not on list. 


I am on your side. 

But I hate to discourage any innovation at this stage. Alexis' two burner down draft seems to be a nice addition to the options users will have. Maybe that is the right starting point. 

Ron 

----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Olivier" <paul.olivier at esrla.com> 
To: "Discussion of biomass cooking stoves" <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org> 
Cc: "alexis belonio" <atbelonio at yahoo.com> 
Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2013 7:37:15 PM 
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Continuous gasifier for household scale - experience sharing 




Ron, 

I am primarily concerned about what happens on a household level. Here stoves have to be small, lightweight, mobile, simple, durable, long-lasting, beautiful and inexpensive. The moment the process is continuous, so many of these features are lost. At the same time, if I'm not prepared to put it in my kitchen, why should I expect poor people to do so? 

Paul 








On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 8:26 AM, < rongretlarson at comcast.net > wrote: 




Paul etal 

I'll bet you are right, but maybe a small restaurant? He seems to want continuous operation. Maybe heating. Maybe he and Alexis can pull it off. 

Have you seen what Alex English has done? All automated. Super clean. Only have to drop the size by about 1000x (maybe 100x) 

Ron 


From: "Paul Olivier" < paul.olivier at esrla.com > 

To: "Discussion of biomass cooking stoves" < stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org > 
Cc: "alexis belonio" < atbelonio at yahoo.com > 
Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2013 6:22:08 PM 


Subject: Re: [Stoves] Continuous gasifier for household scale - experience sharing 




Ron, 

Note the subject of this thread: "Continuous gasifier for household scale". I come back to my initial response: is this device not a bit complicated and messy to operate on the level of a household ? Think about the dust associated with continually loading rice hulls into the device, and think about the dust and fumes associated with continually scrapping out char from the bottom of the device. This continual loading of rice hulls and unloading of char takes place in the kitchen where food is in all stages of preparation. Would you want to install such a device in your kitchen? 


Thanks. 
Paul Olivier 






On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 5:57 AM, < rongretlarson at comcast.net > wrote: 

<blockquote>



Tuong , Paul, Alexis, and list: 

1. First, thanks to Paul. I was preparing a response with the same recommendation to speak with Engr. Belonio 

2. Tuong's message is an important one for this list. Thanks for bringing this investigation to the list's attention. It is great that SNV is supporting your work - that is the first important reason in your. message 

3. When I first looked at Tuong's video and read the interaction with Dr. Olivier, I thought this was all TLUD. It is not, which is the second and third reasons your message is important. You are describing two differences: a) BLDD, and b) continuous operation. Both we rarely hear of for stoves. I can agree with Dr. Olivier on the advantages of batch - but I think it great that you are making this effort to expand the range of stove options. 

4. When googling, I found that there is a lot of info at Paul Anderson's site (even though we are not talking TLUD here - which Paul has not mentioned below. Clearly all the individual addressees know this but the list may not. Many Belonio designs there including the one we are being asked about by Tuong. 

5. . As to your request for some thoughts on improvements. Paul gave all mine, save one: these nice units still require a manual removal of the char - a feature we'd all like to improve upon. The following addresses that. 

6. Before learning of the above, and only knowing of your desire to have a continuously operating stove, I thought I would mention several larger units that might offer some possibility at smaller scale (while still producing char, of course) 
a. Look up what Alex English has done to modify an existing chain grate burner. By speeding it up, he could have char instead of ash come off the end. He has or can have a water barrier at the output to control air. 
b. Danny Day (Eprida) had a horizontal auger system maybe a decade ago - and is just this month beginning to operate a new one, I believe 
c. I believe Paul Anderson may have something similar for residential heating - company Chip Energy 
d. Jerry Whitfield maybe same. See http://www.whitfieldbiochar.com/ 
e. Marc Pare worked with a large continuous system in Ho Chi Minh City for brick making. Might be transferable to small scale. 

All these char production designers should be easy to locate via googling. Mostly not thinking cook stoves, but they are thinking continuous, non-TLUD char-making. Your and Alexs' efforts with BLDD may also pay off in the same way, but it seems you will to move the char in some way mechanically - as all five above do. 

Ron 






From: "Paul Anderson" < psanders at ilstu.edu > 

To: "Discussion of biomass cooking stoves" < stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org > 
Cc: "alexis belonio" < atbelonio at yahoo.com > 
Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2013 2:36:20 PM 

Subject: Re: [Stoves] Continuous gasifier for household scale - experience sharing 




Dear SNV and Tuong DoDuc, 

I have not worked with continuous feed rice-husk gasifiers. I have had success with using dry woodchips/pellets, but not financially viable at household level. 

The rice husk expert is Alexis Belonio. I am sending him a copy of this message because he does not always read all of the Stoves Listserv messages. I suspect that he would agree with the remainder of my message: 

Note: Your current level of activities are already advanced because your starting point is based on the Belonio work. And your level of questions cannot really be addressed via email messages. What is needed is hands-on work by experienced people with advanced equipment (at least PEMS-level measurements) with a timetable and a budget that can cover some serious expenses by the best people. Or go to Belonio, paying your own way and paying something to him and the entity where he is working, and there you will find answers with real depth. 

Opinion: An organization the size of SNV (and others) should bring in the assistance you need, or be prepared to re-plow the same fields (re-inventing the same wheel) that Belonio and others have done at considerable personal expense and sacrifice. 

Technical note: I have for a long time been impressed by the beautiful blue flames from the rice husk gasifiers. But your materials call attention to soot deposition from these flames. So I conclude that the blue flames from rice husk should not be equated with the super-clean combustion with blue flames from natural gas, LPG, biogas and alcohol. Super-clean burning is harder to do than meets the eye that sees blue flames. 

Your work is to be commended, and encouraged to continue. But this is serious research. And I do not normally associate SNV with such technical research (but I could be mistaken). Somebody needs to get this work done, and I hope that SNV and others will put the needed resources into resolving these important issues. 

And the studies need to address the issues of cost of a device that is targeted to serve single households. Even when a unit such as you are constructing is functional, it might not be affordable or even appropriate for the HOUSEHOLD target. Maybe for restaurants??? or for small commercial needs such as significant heating of water for hotels, etc.??? 

Dr TLUD 
Paul S. Anderson, PhD  aka "Dr TLUD"
Email: psanders at ilstu.edu Skype: paultlud  Phone: +1-309-452-7072
Website: www.drtlud.com On 5/13/2013 8:23 PM, Tuong DoDuc wrote: 

<blockquote>

Dear Dr.TLUD, Paul Oliver, and others, 





The team in SNV Vietnam is adopting the continous gasifier model developed by Belonio. The manual has been obtained from the CRHET. 

Watch our first propotype: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQGS-VQIj5M 
We were able to control the fire, load fuel without affecting the fire, and easily remove char at the bottom of the reactor. 


We also adopted the computer fan-casing by a cheaper, more popular fan in Vietnam (often used for coal and fixed wood stove). Fan costed 2USD (while to replicate Belonio's fan-casing, we bought the adapter for 5USD and a computer fan for 1.5USD) 


However, this is just our first step and we still have so many problems to fully control the fire and ease the operation. 
1) For instance, uncontrolled moment happened when combustion occurs rigt on top of the fuel hopper, a lot of smoke was produced and later the fire burnt the fan. 
https://www.dropbox.com/s/43fkjs0axuye4oj/uncontrollable_moment.jpg 
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rd1g1cg0a9ue8qt/fan_casing.jpg 


2) Another problem is that a lot of tar is produced. It deposits on pot bottom, burner and other part of the stove. That would also harm the user. An idea is to create a layer of char in the burner pipe (to filter the tar). Not tried yet. 


3) We observes 5-10% of the gas leaked out through the char removal door. We burnt them, but user may not know (or they simply just don't care) that it is toxic. 


4) One more, it is very hard to control the final minutes of the gasificatoin process. It always cause inverted combustion to the fuel hopper. 


By this email, I would like to ask if some of you have done similar work with continuous gasifier like this to share more experience. We can thus reduce our time and effort in localizing this technology. 


Best regards, 


Do Duc Tuong, 



Renewable Energy Advisor 
SNV Vietnam 




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</blockquote>



-- 
Paul A. Olivier PhD 
26/5 Phu Dong Thien Vuong 
Dalat 
Vietnam 

Louisiana telephone: 1-337-447-4124 (rings Vietnam) 
Mobile: 090-694-1573 (in Vietnam) 
Skype address: Xpolivier 
http://www.esrla.com/ 
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</blockquote>



-- 
Paul A. Olivier PhD 
26/5 Phu Dong Thien Vuong 
Dalat 
Vietnam 

Louisiana telephone: 1-337-447-4124 (rings Vietnam) 
Mobile: 090-694-1573 (in Vietnam) 
Skype address: Xpolivier 
http://www.esrla.com/ 
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to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page 
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