[Stoves] converting solid biomass into liquid or gaseous fuel

[Andreatta, Dale A.]

(Dr. Seay, see the last paragraph regarding the work of your student, John Higgins.)

Hmmmm, this is a tough challenge.  Gaseous and liquid fuels can be wonderful for many reasons.

Regarding gaseous fuels some years ago, you, Dr. Karve, came to ETHOS talking about fast biomass digesters.  As I recall, they could turn starchy substances (such as flour) oily substances (such as pressed seedcakes) or cellulosic substances (such as fine bits of wood) into biogas in about 12 hours.  I’ve not heard much more about this, but as I recall, you said the problem was getting the fuel into fine enough bits that the microbes could do their work.  “Microbes don’t have teeth” is what you said, I think.

Methyl alcohol is called wood alcohol, I presume because it is made from wood.  Fermentation of ethanol has been done on a small scale for thousands of years, but I’m sure it’s not as easy as it sounds.  Would the alcohol necessarily need to be distilled?  My father, when he was sick, would sometimes make a curative wine drink by boiling wine and setting the fumes on fire.  It wasn’t a very intense fire, and I’m not sure how much is cured his illness, but it did burn.  You could set up a small burner to boil your weak methyl alcohol, then use the vapors as the main flame for cooking.  Turning the little flame up or down would turn the cooking fire up or down.  Methyl alcohol would work better than ethyl alcohol because of its lower boiling point.

I learned in my Ph.D. work years ago that pretty much anything that can be burned can be gasified by burning it with limited oxygen.  But then what do you do with the gases, store them or turn them into liquid fuel?  Both are difficult in small scale.

At the recent Stove Summit, there was a presentation by a student from the University of Kentucky, where they’ve found that most types of plastic, if heated, melted, boiled, and raised to the right temperature range, form a pretty good quality liquid fuel oil.  The hardware is simple and applicable to biomass heat, but it takes a fair amount of energy to melt and boil the plastic.  I’ll attach a photo of the amount of fuel oil he got in a simple demonstration with 4 empty 1-gallon plastic milk cartons.  He said for each gram of plastic you can get something like 0.9 grams of fuel.  The technology is simple and can be made on a small scale, but then how much waste plastic is available?.  Would it work with common biomass, probably not?

Dale Andreatta

From: Stoves [mailto:stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Anand Karve
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2016 12:44 AM
To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
Subject: [Stoves] converting solid biomass into liquid or gaseous fuel

Stovers,
using gaseous or liquid fuel in a stove gives higher efficiency and also less harmful emissions. Most of the gaseous and liquid fuels, that are currently available, are under some government control or other. Solid biomass, especially in the form of agricultural waste, belongs to farmers and at least in India there are no government restrictions on its use. Simple processes are available for converting the biomass into liquid or gaseous fuels. What we need are cottage-scale, decentralized units producing such fuels from agricultural  waste.
Yours
Dr. A.D. Karve

Chairman, Samuchit Enviro Tech Pvt Ltd (www.samuchit.com<http://www.samuchit.com>)

Trustee & Founder President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)
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