[Stoves] Liquid fuel stoves (following Karve's "Lactic acid")

Ronal W. Larson rongretlarson at comcast.net
Sun Jul 13 09:58:42 CDT 2014


AD  cc List

	I wish you luck in making that lactic acid (or any other liquid fuel) work.  It sounds appreciably more difficult than your household biogas contributions, but I hope not.

	I was trying to open the discussion wider in two ways.  First hoping that the material collected for lactic acid (or any fuel) could instead be bartered for a different (hopefully optimum) fuel - which would require less investment and time for the fuel gatherer/cook.  Would necessitate big business and (for me) charcoal production for climate, soil, and eventually lower cost energy reasons.  

	Second to get advice from the list on which of hundreds of possible liquid cooking fuels has the best overall flame properties.  Maybe companies producing liquid fuels have a component from their pyrolysis processes that they wouldn’t miss, or might even want to get rid of.

	The production of char still to be a big part of the process as we strive to provide clean, low-cost, time-efficient cooking.

Ron


On Jul 13, 2014, at 1:06 AM, Anand Karve <adkarve at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Ron,
> I have worked both in biogas and also in pyrolysis. About 5 years ago
> our Institute installed an electricity generator at a remote village.
> This generator runs on wood gas. I have now retired from Appropriate
> Rural Technology Institute due to my age (I am 78), but I still keep
> tinkering around on my own. I was looking for a combustible liquid
> that can be obtained from biomass and then test it in a traditional
> kerosene stove. The German company Mico Bosh developed a stove using
> vegetable oil as fuel, but vegetable oil is very costly in India. Due
> to the same reason I also ruled out biodiesel. Lactic acid is easy to
> produce from biomass by a very simple process, even under rural
> conditions in the developing world. Since it is intended to be used as
> domestic fuel, it need not be very pure. The main criterion would be
> good combustibility and low price.
> Yours
> A.D.Karve
> On Sun, Jul 13, 2014 at 12:01 AM, Ronal W. Larson
> <rongretlarson at comcast.net> wrote:
>> A.D.   cc stoves list
>> 
>> I am glad you have raised this topic.  I have changed the thread name to
>> broaden the topic area a bit.   To others, who don't know AD - he has been
>> been one of the most valuable members of this list from day 1.  He and his
>> daughter ran the first (?) stove conference 14 years ago - in Pune, India.
>> Look at his site (ARTI).  His use of the term "gasification" below means
>> "biogas" and "digestion" here,  I believe - having won a (two?) Ashden
>> awards for that area.  The term "gasification" hs different meanings,
>> unfortunately.
>> 
>> I presume AD is moving in this liquid fueled stove direction because such
>> stoves seem to be the handiest and cleanest around.  Much easier to store a
>> liquid fuel than a gaseous fuel, especially if the latter needs pressure.
>> Kirk Smith has argued that we should move in this direction - for Indoor
>> health reasons - even if the fuel is fossil.  I can only support the liquid
>> fuel idea if we are talking a bioliquid - the same as AD, perhaps.  But
>> especially because a biofuel can be carbon negative.
>> 
>> The option I have in mind is to use a biofuel like that produced by Cool
>> Planet - which has a biochar co-product.  So the more the rural Indian woman
>> cooks, the less CO2 is in the air (as is the case with TLUDs, if the char is
>> placed in the ground)`.  I don't believe AD is proposing a carbon negative
>> approach through Lactic acid, but I doubt he is opposed to placing char in
>> the ground.   Where I guess this proposal would fail (wearing his ARTI hat)
>> is that the Cool Planet approach is not as small scale as he would like.
>> Not enough benefit to the poor.butanol
>> 
>> My counter argument is that the climate situation is so serious that we have
>> to think large scale.  But that "large" scale can be very helpful to the
>> poorest parts of the world, since it is tiny compared to typical refineries.
>> The Cool Planet folk told Google that wages could increase by a factor of 6
>> (I recall, haven't checked).  They need what this hypothetical Indian woman
>> is probably more skilled at that anyone reading this - growing things.  Cool
>> Planet (and hopefully many competitors) needs that continuous reliable
>> source of raw biomass.  Surely incomes will rise as land is increasingly
>> used for energy production as well as (not instead of) for food.  The
>> application of biochar can ensure more food on less land.  There can be
>> productive use of ALL the grown biomass that is inedible.
>> 
>> But to the main point of this reply to AD - Cool Planet has said they can
>> make many fuels - mostly so far gasoline, but I have heard jet fuel is in
>> the works (brings a higher price), and have heard diesel.  One can buy
>> camping stoves that will burn (with adjustments) all of these.  I have been
>> told that mountain climbers prefer gasoline because it is the most readily
>> available in remote locations - and is the cheapest.  But it is probably not
>> the best for the cook (odor, volatility, etc).  This is to ask  AD and the
>> list, if the world moved from solid fuels to liquid biofuels, what would be
>> the best choice?   I assume that if Cool Planet can make gasoline out of
>> wood chips, they can make ethanol, methanol, propanol, butanol, lactic acid,
>> etc.  What should the stove community be telling Cool Planet that it wants
>> (besides charcoal).
>> 
>> One of the reasons that Cool Planet is moving so fast is that the output
>> gasoline (or other bioliquid) is available within hours of the biomass being
>> inserted, along with the char.   We are not talking Fisher Tropsch - higher
>> efficiency.  We are not talking of days needed to process using enzymes,
>> microbes, ec.  We are talking a $1 million dollar facility within
>> (potentially) a few hours donkey cart ride from anywhere in India - paid off
>> in a year or two.  The soil and atmosphere are continually improving, and
>> the kitchen is cleaner and healthier.  And local incomes seem sure to climb.
>> I do not mean this to be an advertisement for Cool Planet - it is only that
>> I know of no other company that can supply both a liquid fuel and charcoal -
>> with the latter driving my thoughts these days - for climate reasons.  This
>> is intended as asking a similar but broader question than that of lactic
>> acid.
>> 
>> AD  -  Your thoughts?
>> 
>> Ron
>> 
>> 
>> On Jul 11, 2014, at 11:16 PM, Anand Karve <adkarve at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Dear Stovers,
>> After having worked on charring and gasification of biomass, I am now
>> attrempting to convert biomass into a standardised liquid fuel, which would
>> burn cleanly. Alcohol is one choice, but the raw material, sugar or starch,
>> is costly. The method of making sauerkraut and silaged grass shows that it
>> is relatively easy to make lactic acid from cellulosic biomass. The relevant
>> literature states that very little energy is lost in this process. This acid
>> can be easily eluated from the reactor by using water. However, the lactic
>> acid obtained in this manner is in a very dilute form. How can one
>> concentrate it? Does one distill it like alcohol? Can one use reverse
>> osmosis to remove the water? And would it burn in its concentrated form? I
>> know that glacial acetic acid burns.
>> Yours
>> A.D.Karve
>> 
>> On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 10:33 PM, Richard Stanley <rstanley at legacyfound.org>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Kevin,
>>> 
>>> I heartily agree with Ron re, Beck and Tanton et al. Ron's counterpoint
>>> reference is well taken;
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> <snip>
>> 
>> 
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> ***
> Dr. A.D. Karve
> Trustee & Founder President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)
> 
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