[Stoves] LPG and TLUDs. subtopic from Re: How Results Based Financing is spurring solar market development in Tanzania

Paul Anderson psanders at ilstu.edu
Tue Mar 3 13:32:13 CST 2015


Ron Larson asked:
> f.  I wonder if any TLUD proponent believes we can ever achieve a TLUD 
> stove as healthy as the LPG variety?  (fans/blowers permitted).  Or 
> sufficiently low emission to allow TLUD/fan stoves to compete on a 
> health basis with LPG?   Same question for rockets.
LPG is a REFINED fuel, produced to very specific standards.   As a 
liquid, it flows and mixes easily and is quite uniform.   The closest to 
refining of "biomass" is probably wood pellets.   But being made of 
solid particles (like sawdust), it is less uniform and can have 
variations between manufacturers.   And there are pellets that are not 
from wood, so that contributes to  additional variability.

But if using good quality wood pellets, and a well-made TLUD, with 
forced primary and secondary air, and (in my opinion) separate control 
of the primary and secondary air, the micro-gasification processes will 
approach the cleanliness of LPG.

Consider modern pellet burning heaters.   I believe that their emissions 
are quite low, but I do not have those numbers.   And with the use of a 
chimney with the pellets but not with the LPG, the biomass is probably 
cleaner for heat INSIDE a closed space.

We do not want to have a situation of the "best" being a enemy of the 
"good" or "very very good".   LPG is a fossil fuel that is backed up by 
big business.   Without similar financial resources, biomass stoves will 
be challenged for quite a while to be as clean as LPG.

But is LPG as clean as an electric hotplate / electric stove?   No, and 
never will be.

Note:   Discussions comparing types of stoves should not focus on only 
one issue (such as emissions).

Paul

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

On 3/2/2015 11:18 PM, Ronal W. Larson wrote:
> Christina:   (cc list)
>
> I believe you are the first person to be advocating LPG on this list. 
>  Your vision is receiving support from some important actors in stove 
> development.  I can easily conceive that you have a system that no 
> biomass stove can compete with -  mostly on the basis of emissions and 
> human health, but also probably on saving time while cooking.
>
> But I am confused about some messages I hear about LPG.
>
> a.   I have hear of safety issues with LPG.  Any data on safety?
>
> b.   I know nothing about the cost of LPG stoves or fuel.  Can you 
> tell us the price of your stove (and the storage can) and the cost of 
> LPG fuel (sold by weight?)  Does Guatemala subsidize LPG prices?
>
> c.   Could you give us some basis for comparing with prices in 
> Guatemala for wood (sticks, chips, pellets) fuel?   if you have these 
> (and LPG) prices on an MJ or per standard meal or day basis, that 
> would be helpful.
>
> d.   Because of the highly superior emissions characteristics (I 
> understood how good for the first time at the ETHOS conference),  I 
> could get behind LPG stoves if that fuel was biomass-based - and even 
> more so if the fuel came with a co-product char  (my reasons for 
> supporting char-making stove development).  Do you (or anyone) know of 
> anyone working on a bio-LPG?  (and one with a char co-product?)
>
> Googling gave me this site: 
> http://www.biomass-asia-workshop.jp/biomassws/09workshop/jp/full/16fujimoto.pdf, 
> showing use of a CO-H2 syngas as one approach.
> and also from Japan
> http://www.ieatask33.org/app/webroot/files/file/2012/IEA%20Bioenergy%20Conference/SessionI4-Ogi.pdf
> and this one seems pretty well done;
> http://www.propanecouncil.org/uploadedFiles/Council/Research_and_Development/New_research_programs/Fuel_Parameters_and_Analysis/REP_15866%20Expert%20Analysis%20of%20Biopropane.pdf
> and there are more cites - but I think that there may now be zero bio-LPG.
>
> None of these mention char - maybe the Cool Planet approach to a 
> bio-gasoline can be modified.
>
> e. Does LPG fuel in Guatemala come with a well-defined (controlled, 
> certified) mix of propane and butane?
>
> Thanks in advance for any more of a sales pitch for LPG that you can 
> provide.  (Your web site http://gentegas.com/ is very well done.)
>
> f.  I wonder if any TLUD proponent believes we can ever achieve a TLUD 
> stove as healthy as the LPG variety?  (fans/blowers permitted).  Or 
> sufficiently low emission to allow TLUD/fan stoves to compete on a 
> health basis with LPG?   Same question for rockets.
>
> Ron
>
>
>
> On Mar 2, 2015, at 12:45 PM, Christina Espinosa 
> <c_espinosa1 at u.pacific.edu <mailto:c_espinosa1 at u.pacific.edu>> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 11:32 AM, Crispin 
>> Pemberton-Pigott<crispinpigott at outlook.com 
>> <mailto:crispinpigott at outlook.com>>wrote:
>>
>>     Dear Christina
>>
>>     >Its a good first step to testing something for larger scale, but
>>     funders will want to see that their investment is having an
>>     impact and fuel stacking will continue to provide problems for us
>>     in the cookstoves sector.
>>
>>     The critical things seems to be that program funders what to know
>>     that they are getting what they are paying for. It has been a
>>     concern to me that most lab tests don’t predict what the stove
>>     will do, yet they are almost always used to ‘select stoves’. 
>>     After that, they are promoted there is only some field checking. 
>>     We call that ‘picking winners’. A ‘winner’ is the lucky product
>>     that gets promoted. Often behind that promotion is a claim that
>>     ‘this is the best stove’ based on numbers that are not typical of
>>     what is going to happen in the field.  We have to be practical
>>     about this. The idea that there is a ‘best stove’ is alive and
>>     well, yet the best is different in different circumstances. That
>>     is why we are doing ‘contextual testing’.
>>
>>     The first thing to do is not to ‘pick winners’. The screening
>>     should be something like, ‘remove from the candidate list
>>     everything that is not worth promoting as far as we are
>>     concerned’ which in the case of the CSI is anything that does not
>>     get one star in each category of PM, CO and fuel consumption.
>>     Depending on how picky you are, you might end up with one or five
>>     products. You have to test and see.  High altitude stoves burning
>>     dry, woody biomass (bushes) will be quite different from stoves
>>     burning damp wood in the Congo.
>>
>>     But performing that elimination round means having some clue what
>>     people are burning and what they are going to do with the stoves.
>>     You can’t pick a stove ‘in absentia’. If you want low PM, you
>>     have to test them using the fuels and burn cycle people are going
>>     to use because the PM production is strongly affected by the
>>     fuel. Some stoves are designed to burn particular fuels (well,
>>     hopefully that are) and they should perform much better than
>>     stoves that aren’t.
>>
>>     What this means is that there must be foreknowledge of the
>>     community before one picks or ranks stoves to perform there.
>>
>> I agree. Another thing that I find very difficult with non-market 
>> based approaches is that the consumer at times doesn't get to choose 
>> the stove, the program does. They don't get to choose the style, 
>> color, and options that regular consumers do.
>>
>>     >We are getting ready to do SUMs and an adoption study here in
>>     Guatemala with LPG, but most of the households are adopting
>>     pressure cookers, so it will be interesting to see if we have
>>     lots of fuel stacking with the pressure cooker.
>>
>>     Do you mean people are going to be using LPG for a pressure
>>     cooker and then wood for something else? I want to be clear if
>>     you consider stove stacking and fuel stacking as separate things,
>>     then how do you count that in your surveying?
>>
>> The study includes CO, PM and SUMs monitoring. The baseline before 
>> the introduction of the LPG stove will include SUMs monitoring of any 
>> stove in the household. At the time of the introduction of the LPG 
>> stove both stoves (or all stoves) will be monitored with the SUMs.
>>
>>     What do people cook in a pressure cooker, and what effect does it
>>     have on fuel consumption?
>>
>> Here people typically cook beans for long periods of times on wood. 
>> Typically households in Guatemala that use both wood and LPG tend to 
>> use wood for cooking beans and tortillas. Most families that have a 
>> pressure cooker here use it every 2-3 days to cook beans. If you cook 
>> beans with wood it can take typically 3 hours, but some families 
>> leave them cooking all night long so they don't have to tend the 
>> fire. If you cook beans with gas typically 2 and a half hours. In the 
>> pressure cooker 1 hour 15 minutes total.
>>
>>     Cecil Cook is very clear there should be a period of re-selection
>>     (viewing the lab tests as ‘pre-selection’ or ‘winnowing’) that
>>     involves focus groups. Focus group composition is very important.
>>     Being a random person does not necessarily make one a good focus
>>     group member.
>>
>> This is interesting what do you mean by re-selection? We are not 
>> trying the funding model I was thinking about. Our air pollution and 
>> adoption study is market based, so consumers are picking the stove 
>> model that works for their needs (home, baking, business, etc.). We 
>> ran lots of different types of focus groups before we designed the 
>> components of the business model and educational material.
>>
>>     A difficulty we faced with the CSI Pilot is that people have
>>     several stoves and replacing one of them does not mean they use
>>     the new one only. We have to accept (and hope) that eventually
>>     all will be replaced with improved products. How are you going to
>>     deal with that? Do people have multiple stoves, burners, rice
>>     cookers etc that they use every week?
>>
>> Some people are ready to abandon wood completely and other families 
>> will continue to use both fuels for different things, it depends on 
>> the type of current stove. We are working now in urban and peri-urban 
>> areas. We obviously hope for full adoption, but thats unrealistic in 
>> many cases. Currently we are trying to study when families do switch, 
>> do they continue to use wood (yes, for certain things), what do they 
>> use that wood to cook (usually beans and tortillas), and if they 
>> purchased a stove package that included a pressure cooker and a 
>> plancha for torillas did they fuel stack less or stop using the wood 
>> stove completely. The idea is that we are trying to learn about 
>> behavior of consumers that switch from wood to LPG. There is an 
>> educational component as well, but again we are trying to assess 
>> everything.
>>
>>     Thanks
>>     Crispin
>>
>> Best,
>> Christina
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Christina Espinosa
>> University of the Pacific '10
>> School of International Studies
>> c_espinosa1 at u.pacific.edu <mailto:c_espinosa1 at u.pacific.edu>
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