[Stoves] Diesel as an excellent fuel for rural households

Sat Apr 18 11:57:44 CDT 2015

Dear Ken

Your point is well taken. Even the coal fuel could better work if turned into gas first – saves the grinding.

There is a lovely little gasifier for running engines at the YDD workshop which I would like to see running. It seems to me a combination of wood and char waste might be good. No need to use only a single fuel.

On another topic, Ken have you seen any working thermoacoustic generators for small scale application? I have been talking to a Canadian company that is making a 5 kW unit for trucks – works off the exhaust. They are planning a 2 kW unit for next year which I intend to try.

It is a form of Stirling engine that shakes a magnet in a coil. The efficiency is high compared with TEG’s. If there is something to try I would like to give it a shot – something between 5 and 500 Watts. What’s on your radar?

Thanks
Crispin

Crispin,

Any solid fuel - regardless of how finely ground will cause undue wear to all moving parts of an IC engine - not to mention lubrication oil contamination.

Simplest route is to convert biomass to a gaseous fuel and run IC engine with a spark ignition conversion.

1.5kg biomass produces 1kWhe of electricity using gasification and spark ignition route.

That gives biomass to electricity a 20% conversion efficiency - plus a load of useful waste heat

No diesel required.

Ken

On 18 April 2015 at 14:35, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com <mailto:crispinpigott at outlook.com> > wrote:

I recall that the dream of such a multifuel engine was achieved by ITDG, now Practical Action. 

They had an engine that would run at 500 RPM on coal dust. It could also run on various oils. If the oil has long chain molecules they should be shortened (for example by transesterification) to reduce the minimum injection pressure requirement by turning it into 'biodiesel' or bioparaffin. 

Here's an island technology: how about grinding old palm leaves into powder and using that in a low speed diesel engine? The engine could be used to grind more fuel and have energy to spare for other tasks like pumping water and lighting and making briquetted stove fuel. 

Studies in the '70's showed that about 15%‎ of a farm needs to be planted in sunflower to power the whole farm. In South Africa one can buy a container sized setup that will produce three litres per second of biodiesel from sunflower oil. 

Regards 

Crispin 

It seems a bit ironic but it is like the world has forgotten the Rudolph Diesel originally developed his engine to run on farm

produced plant based oils to promote self sufficiency.  Wikipedia-----Diesel was interested in using coal dust [6] or vegetable oil as fuel, and in fact, his engine was run on peanut oil.[7] Although these fuels were not immediately popular, 

From: nari phaltan <mailto:nariphaltan at gmail.com>  

Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2015 1:56 PM

To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves <mailto:stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>  

Subject: [Stoves] Diesel as an excellent fuel for rural households

Dear stovers,

This article proposes fossil fuel based clean combustion technology for rural poor. www.nariphaltan.org/diesel.pdf <http://www.nariphaltan.org/diesel.pdf>  

Cheers.

Anil

-- 

Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI)
Tambmal, Phaltan-Lonand Road
P.O.Box 44
Phaltan-415523, Maharashtra, India
Ph:91-2166-222396/220945/222842
mailto:e-mail%3Anariphaltan at gmail.com
           nariphaltan at nariphaltan.org <mailto:nariphaltan at nariphaltan.org> 

http://www.nariphaltan.org

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