[Stoves] 2 Papers: "Burns, scalds and poisonings from household energy..." and "Emissions...Paraffin Thermoelectric Generat

[Ronal W. Larson]

Neil and list:

	Normally on this list we don’t talk about anything other than very low-cost biomass-powered cook-stoves.  We stay away from anything related to a stove that could be used in a developing country.  We stay away from anything related to fossil fuels.  Lighting might come in peripherally - but only if cooking is also involved.

	One topic that has occurred on this list but we haven’t heard about for years is bio-based liquid or waxy fuels.  A good bit has been on ethanol/methanol stoves, if bio-based.  We are trying to avoid all promotion and use of fossil fuels. I assume that most Aladdin fuels are fossil.  But unless it is also able to supply some cooking (as you suggest), it still doesn’t fit here.  The main question for me (if non-fossil) is - can a mainly lighting application save money for cooking.  (But there are other issues).   I haven’t looked but I presume there are discussion lists for lighting.

	Hence not particularly needing much discussion, but I happen to be on the board of a small company (Elephant Energy) working in Namibia with LED lighting.  You said:
> “….we are talking instead of burning the paraffin in 
> doubtless much higher tech capital intensive generators to produce 
> incomplete spectrum light with LEDs!  Who’s agendas are these?”

	Point #1 -  Everything I have seen with LED lighting is based on solar PV.  You’d be surprised how many hours of good lighting you can get for $20-$50 - and you can charge your cell phone as well.   This is a huge industry throughout the developing world - with a lot of competition.  Most of the products coming out of China.  Elephant Energy is able to sell PayGo systems with household savings over the cost of candles and paraffin from day one.  And zero cost lighting to the solar lantern user after maybe half a year.

	Point #2 -  The “agenda” is driven by any user who can’t connect to the grid or whose grid reliability isn’t so good - a few billion people in the world.  Not many technologies with as good a payback as this.  I mention this because there are potential similarities to charcoal- making stoves - which also can be sold via Paygo - and can provide free cooking within a year.

Ron





> On Jul 5, 2016, at 2:05 PM, neiltm at uwclub.net wrote:
> 
> On 5 Jul 2016 at 7:46, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott wrote:
> 
>> " Paraffin lamps are commonly used as light sources in low-income,
>> off-grid households. Pollutant emissions from these appliances are a
>> potential health hazard and a cause of material soiling by soot deposits.
> 
> and from one of the links:
> 
> "The emission of black carbon, a product of incomplete combustion is a 
> requirement of a paraffin lamp to produce bright yellow light under 
> optimum combustion conditions, the flame would emit a weak illumination, 
> mainly in the blue wavelengths."
> 
> A point exploited to perfection towards the end of the 19th century, and 
> still available commercially as the 'Aladdin lamp'!
> 
> This has to be a problem of politics not technology surely?
> 
> If you burn paraffin with a blue flame in a chimneyed stove then you have 
> a clean cooking stove with a turn down ratio superior to this day to gas 
> or electric hobs as my Great Aunt taught me when she moved into a 
> bungalow with electricity, but retained her 'oil stove' for its low 
> simmering heat she could not achieve with her new electric cooker.  I've 
> used them myself - they are excellent stoves, and the most controllable 
> of any.
> 
> As far as lighting is concerned, why if the political decision is made to 
> retain paraffin as an affordable fuel by the poorest in SA, cannot the 
> obsolete (in the west) 19th century technology of burning it with a blue 
> flame under an incandescent mantle be made available instead of dirty old 
> yellow flame wick lamps?!  Candles are paraffin.
> 
> For those without first hand experience of the Aladdin lamp (40 candle 
> power), or the 'Tilley lamp' (paraffin pressure vapour lamp), (300 candle 
> power), or the 'primus stove' (paraffin pressure vapour) - All late 
> nineteenth century technologies, they burn cleanly without any smell, 
> except perhaps briefly when extinguished.  They prove Crispin's point 
> that there is no such thing as a dirty fuel.
> 
> What is the matter with a world which having long since abandoned these 
> excellent clean burning technologies, underlining this abandonment in the 
> west by the political decision to end coal, and to price paraffin way 
> above petrol for cars (which attracts two thirds of its price in tax), 
> and is about £6 for 4 litres in the UK, whereas a few decades ago its 
> cost was a trivial fraction of petrol, none the less makes paraffin 
> affordable to the poorest in SA, but then fails to make clean burning 
> 19th century technology, of no real residual interest to the west, 
> available by the same fiat decision?  The answer is provided in one of 
> Crispin's links, and reveals that the fate of the poor is of so little 
> real interest to the political determiners of markets that they can't 
> even be bothered to leave piles of municipal woodchip lying around long 
> enough for collection as biomass fuel, but would rather transport it to 
> landfill!
> 
> Yes, the cost of producing an Aladdin blue flame circular wick burner, 
> plus the cost of fabricating a silk mantle will be higher than the 
> production of producing a yellow flame flat wick burner, but by how much 
> if the third world got given the plant?
> How much compared with converting the fraction of a barrel of crude into 
> paraffin in a modern refinery, and selling it in a global market such 
> that the poorest South Arican can contemplate buying it, while it is 
> priced out for all practical purposes in the west?
> 
> What is the future of the Aladdin lamp, the sole manufacturer on the 
> planet of this type of lamp?  It only survived at all to this day by the 
> skin of its teeth.  Yet it seems that there is a whole 'market' out there 
> that would be grateful for such a 19th century advance to its living 
> standards, and yet we are talking instead of burning the paraffin in 
> doubtless much higher tech capital intensive generators to produce 
> incomplete spectrum light with LEDs!  Who's agendas are these?  Has 
> anyone thought to approach Aladdin to find a way to release its patents 
> for third world use?
> 
> I greatly admire the work you are all doing to improve biomass 
> cookstoves, an 'intermediate technology' the west whizzed past so fast it 
> never developed at all, but I sometimes wonder if somewhere there should 
> not be some efforts made to at least make the decent burners to go with 
> the fuel if they are going to continue to make fuel like paraffin 
> available at all.
> 
> Neil Taylor (whos Great Grandfather in the19th century made paraffin 
> burners apparently superior to anything available to the world's poorest 
> today!)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Stoves mailing list
> 
> to Send a Message to the list, use the email address
> stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org
> 
> to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page
> http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org
> 
> for more Biomass Cooking Stoves,  News and Information see our web site:
> http://stoves.bioenergylists.org/
> 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20160705/f1aaa261/attachment.html>