[Stoves] The wood and char and fuel "debate" (was a long time ago called Re: Request for technology proposals - Clean Stove Initiative, Indonesia)

[Paul Anderson]

Dear Crispin, Ron and all,

It is interesting reading the back and forth between Ron and Crispin.   
I emphasize two paragraphs from Crispin,

On 2/24/2014 10:10 AM, Crispin Pembert-Pigott wrote:
>
> There is no dispute between us whatsoever as to the energy 
> consumption: the energy remaining in the char represents energy not 
> liberated from the fuel consumed.
>
> The important question is not what we want, but what the customer of 
> the test result wants. They are not asking how much energy was used 
> when cooking, they asked how much fuel was consumed. The answer is of 
> course different if there is char remaining and that char is not 
> 'fuel' to the same stove for the next fire.
>
For the vast majority of "customers" (including governments that want to 
reduce or reverse deforestation), the important question is "how much 
wood is burned."    The interests are highly related to WOOD, 
specifically related to TREES, not even counting sawdust that goes into 
pellets.

So, because TLUD stoves are VERY GOOD at burning NON-wood biomass, the 
wood saved can be 100%.   And we still get the char.

Concerning fuel and wood and non-wood and char and other such 
measurements, the real problems can come from rankings and Tiers and 
other reports that could give excellent stoves some poor results because 
the "authorities" are defining fuel as being exclusively wood, as in 
trees and woodlands that need to be protected.

If we could get past that "imposed intellectual construct" of fuel being 
wood, we could make more progress about some types of biomass stoves 
being even better than good for the environment.

Rest assured that the advocates of alcohol and kerosene and other 
NON-biomass fuels are pointing out that their stoves help minimize 
deforestation/enviromental degradation.

Biomass that is NOT WOOD needs to be recognized as being favorable for 
saving trees, and credit given to the stoves that can use those non-wood 
biomass fuels.

AND that recognition and credit needs to be EXPLICITLY STATED IN THE 
REPORTS ABOUT FUEL CONSUMPTION.

In some ways, this is all just another discussion about why the reported 
results of any stove testing need much explanation (which is usually not 
provided) and why the results are so easy to ignore as being poorly 
related to the realities of people and their stoves and their fuels.

I hope we can do better in the future.

Paul        (still another week to go on my vacation trip to Brazil, so 
I probably will not be sending replies.)

Doc  /  Dr TLUD  /  Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD
Email:  psanders at ilstu.edu
Skype: paultlud      Phone: +1-309-452-7072
Website:  www.drtlud.com

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20140225/401b5fa5/attachment.html>