[Stoves] LPG versus gasifiers with dry biomass .... was Re: NIH and Gates Foundation-Funded Research to Measure Health Benefits of Clean Cookstoves

[Traveller]

Paul, Tom, List members:

I have agreed about gasifier stoves. I first learnt about gasifier
technology back in 1980 (from Russ deLucia, if anybody on this List knows
him), and in my publication-quality advocacy writings for "modern energy
transition", I always (I think) added a qualifier for either "advanced
biomass" or specifically "bioliquids and bio-gaseous" (though without being
specific about methanation v. thermal gasification).

I confess that last I did any concrete advice or advocacy (ten years ago),
it was for methanation, not thermal gasification. I didn't think the
technology was ready at the household scale. It was around 2008/9 that I
began to see the promise, probably after meeting Steve Joseph in Sydney and
learning about biochar.

I am willing to concede - because I have long hoped - that "On a dollar for
dollar basis (or even 1 :4 ratio), gasifier stoves can easily reach and
benefit more poor people in developing societies than can LPG."

Still, that proposition needs to be made more credible - I am not looking
for proofs - in terms of i) identifying the relevant economic geographies
(a difficult but not impossible task, just that one should prepare "dynamic
baselines"); ii) articulating project design and implementation
arrangements, including large-scale pilots; and iii) in my view, covering
all cooking (incl. commercial) and possibly small-scale heating, in large
towns and peri-urban areas, with a diversity of fuels (LPG included).

I am glad you say only "reach and benefit", so your metric is # of people
reached and benefitted per  $ (or million $, say). I am fine with that;
reaching people who actually find the technology useful and use it is a
good enough. I'll leave it to bean-counters to quantify the benefits and
assign monetary values to it. (I will do it for money. My benefit, you
know.)

I think the time has come to get past old obsession of saving trees and new
mania of saving lives by assumptions (reverse of GBD), and looking for
"ready markets", not just "poor rural households". But I don't hold too
tightly to that view.

I don't particularly care for 'carbon positive' (I am carbon positive;
shoot me!) or 'renewable' (the best renewable resource is the minds of
youth, compromised by the drudgery of traditional cooking and heating).
**********
You say,

"Perhaps the medical / health evidence is strong for gasifers, but not as
strong as for LPG.  I can accept that.   BUT, for every household that can
be supplied with LPG SUSTAINABLY,  there are thousands (or tens of
thousands?) of households that can be SUSTAINABLY  fueled with dry biomass
fuel and gasifier stoves.


Therefore, for actual "body counts" of how many millions of lives will be
saved, my bet is that gasifiers (when adequately supported for use in
impoverished homes) will out-perform the LPG / fossil fuel by 100 to 1."

Sorry to say, "medical/health evidence" is a delusion. All we have is
spotty evidence - I will get around to reviewing WHO's "Evidence Reviews"
at some point; it's not worth the hassle, the horse has left the barn - of
correlating this with that, and then making up a "WHO database" of fuels
and emissions - a grand fiction - plus theories of PM2.5 toxicity, plus the
manipulations of "Integrated Exposure Response" to cook up GLOBAL burden of
disease. There isn't very much to the INDIVIDUAL or COMMUNITY burden of
disease except ALRI and possibly pneumonia.

To me, SUSTAINABLY refers to how long subsidies can last. Like Social
Security and Medicare. We are all dead in the long run.

To vote for LPG doesn't mean ruling out gasifiers and vice versa. Leave it
to the connoisseurs on the lawns of the White House and the Imperial Hotel
to make up "body counts". To explain "millions dead" is one thing, to
forecast "millions saved" is quite another. (Because "premature mortality",
by definition, is a cohort-specific metric, as are DALYs and "risk
factors". Anybody who can confidently and verifiably forecast DALYs for the
130 million babies born this year will get a Nobel Peas Prize next year. I
am accepting applications.)

In any case, "we" have been voting against LPG and coal-fired electricity
all too long, in search of saving forests. The poor have been wiser not to
listen to us or donor propaganda, and found their own solutions, thanks to
their own hard work and common sense.
**********
I notice in Prof. Smith's presentation on Paraguay last year (Health
Impacts of Household Air Pollution in Paraguay #2: What is to be done?, 25
August 2015),

The cleanest stove models have been disseminated to only a few thousand
households in the region

And, as yet, no biomass stove in the world comes close to the boundary – is*
clean enough to be truly health protective in household use*

*Perhaps they can be clean enough, but much more work is needed*"


To me, this begs the question, what is "truly health protective" and what
are the "baselines" and "boundaries" of health?

I for one am an incrementalist, and believe i) the best can be an enemy of
good, ii) technical opinions and prognoses are secondary; the cook is
supreme (in and outside the household).

I know I will get into boiling water if the water boilers of ISO IWA take
notice. Oh, well; insolence will be one of the risk factor my premature
mortality will be assigned to.

Prof. Smith also took the position, against a Nature editorial, "Contrary
to the impression you convey (see Nature 509, 533; 2014) *biomass-burning
cooking technology is advancing steadily. Stoves are now more efficient and
emit much less smoke, and will remain popular as long as users can access
biomass, such as wood and dung, at zero direct cost. Efforts must therefore
continue to make clean fuels available and available fuels
clean*."("Cookstoves:
clean up fuel on two fronts, Nature, July 3, 2014)

I happen to think that it's not just "cooking technology" (device, fuel,
operating practices) alone but also ventilation and quantity, quality of
food that makes cooking "truly health protective".

But leaving nutrition aside, we need some Total Drudgery Quotient, as
perceived by the users, to see how adoption new technologies is influenced
by the users' balancing of perceived cost, convenience, cleanliness, safety
in particular contexts (which remain to be well-characterized).

Otherwise, all "Up in Smoke". Again. No matter what the lab efficiencies
and emission rates for boiling waters. (Whose meals are being cooked?)

Nikhil


---------
(US +1) 202-568-5831


On Sun, Nov 6, 2016 at 5:25 PM, Paul Anderson <psanders at ilstu.edu> wrote:

> Stovers,    (sorry this is a long message, but I think you will find it
> lively.  At least read what is at the bottom.)
>
> On 11/6/2016 2:18 PM, Traveller wrote:
>
>
> Maybe someone wants to prove Kirk Smith wrong - for him saying LPG is "the
> fuel that could save millions of lives every year. • By definition!"
>
> That comment has great depth to it -- the way "Burden of Disease" has been
> computed is by treating "Solid Fuel Use" as the sole source of Household
> Air Pollution (with quantities and emission factors cooked up in collective
> fantasies). Therefore, LPG is the savior fuel BY DEFINITION.
>
> I have no problem with that,
>
> I can agree with Nikhil on that.  LPG is good.  Can save lives.  Fine.
>
> But let's separate the gasifier stoves from the 3-stone fires and simple
> improved cookstoves.  ESMAP (World Bank) did that in the major 2015
> document:
>
> THE STATE OF THE GLOBAL CLEAN
> AND IMPROVED COOKING SECTOR
>
> available at:
> https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/
> handle/10986/21878/96499.pdf?sequence=1
>
> And the GACC certainly knows about it, because the GACC is the
> co-publisher.  And Kirk Smith knows about it.
>
> If you have not seen it, please take a look.   Summary is on page 13, and
> a copy of that page is attached to this message (with yellow highlights
> added by Anderson)
>
> The ESMAP and GACC publication CLEARLY classifies the gasifier technology
> of solid biomass fuels as "Advanced ICS" (separate from the Legacy, Basic,
> and Intermediate ICS stove technologies).    The Advanced ICS (gasifiers)
> is one of three of the major headings of "Clean Cooking Solutions" along
> with the "Modern Fuel Stoves" (fossil fuels LPG, Natural Gas, and
> Kerosene-with-footnote), and with "Renewable Fuel Stoves" (Biogas,
> alcohols, solar).
>
> As Nikhil says, and I have agreed, Kirk Smith's comment about saving lives
> "by definition" has some validity (if it was properly qualitied about other
> "fuels" like alcohol as also saving lives BY DEFINITION.).    But he is not
> acknowledging or advocating alcohol stoves, or natural gas stoves.   LPG is
> clearly the glory child in this case.  (and dry biomass is the whipping
> boy).
>
> Using similar wording, I would like to say that the following is also true:
>
> Gasifier stoves are "the [stove technology] that could save millions of
> lives every year. • By definition!"
>
>        AND
>
> WHEN USED WITH MODERN, PROVEN, AVAILABLE GASIFIER STOVES, then wood
> (chips, segments, pellets, etc) AND even agricultural refuse (maize cobs,
> briquettes of stems,) and even appropriate dung cubes are "the fuels that
> could save millions of lives every year. • By definition!"
>
>  I have written my agreement with what Kirk Smith has written, I hope he
> will write his agreement with what I have written.
>
> I also add:  Perhaps the medical / health evidence is strong for gasifers,
> but not as strong as for LPG.  I can accept that.   BUT, for every
> household that can be supplied with LPG SUSTAINABLY,  there are thousands
> (or tens of thousands?) of households that can be SUSTAINABLY  fueled with
> dry biomass fuel and gasifier stoves.
>
> Therefore, for actual "body counts" of how many millions of lives will be
> saved, my bet is that gasifiers (when adequately supported for use in
> impoverished homes) will out-perform the LPG / fossil fuel by 100 to 1.
>
> Nikhil wrote (and I agree) that Nikhil has a problem
>
> just with the assumption that solid fuel use is by definition "dirty".
> Fuels don't have "dirtiness" embedded in them; processed solid fuels can
> achieve better combustion and of course highly controlled combustion and
> proper ash management can also achieve far cleaner combustion that what is
> assumed to be the case.
>
>
> Summary:  Except that LPG is a carbon positive fossil fuel, I have no
> complaints about the promotion of LPG cookstoves.
>
> Well, there is actually one additional issue.  The amounts of  financial
> and in-kind assistance that are given to LPG should ALSO be given to the
> gasifier stoves.  How much?   Equal amount in total?   Or equal amount per
> household served?   Or maybe one-quarter of the amount of each household
> served by LPG?   On a dollar for dollar basis (or even 1 :4 ratio),
> gasifier stoves can easily reach and benefit more poor people in developing
> societies than can LPG.
>
> Let me repeat that, this time as a challenge:
> On a dollar for dollar basis (or even 1 :4 ratio), gasifier stoves can
> easily reach and benefit more poor people in developing societies than can
> LPG.
>
> Such a research question would bring more funding for gasifier stoves that
> has ever been available!!   But that is not my purpose. I am not against
> LPG.
>
> My purpose is to simply say that it is about time for some serious funding
> for gasifier stoves into the households that can utilize them.   A great
> example is the Case Study of TLUD stoves in Deganga, India (on the Internet
> since 30 September this year, and featured at my website    www.drtlud.com
> ).
>
> 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
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20161106/1ce0e166/attachment.html>