[Stoves] Charcoal markets and prices (Re: Anand Karve, Ken, Teddy, Crispin)

Fri Oct 7 01:10:47 CDT 2016

Dear Nikhil

>Can you please explain why EU should dictate yield to >35% on dry mass basis 

The idea is that it is an achievable yield for well-baked wood and it is not wasteful. There was a hue and cry about how charcoal is wasteful by definition as you will have witnessed here.  So the target is a sort of ‘commercial’ basis for production – achievable with anything modern. 

Rwanda has a whole lot of modernising projects going on to increase the yield from a ton of wood. I think it is great idea. Cecil looked at the whole value chain in Mozambique and it was really inefficient. I think Rwanda has done the most to improve the % yield. There is a high pressure process patented in Hawaii that can yield 45% but it has rather high volatiles, I think. It is extremely fast – like 90 minutes for a log 1 foot in diameter. They were very secretive about the pressure but it is in an early paper they wrote which I found on line. One day that technology will probably dominate the market.

>…and what definition it uses for "the source" and for it to be "sustainable"? 

It would use the CDM definition I am sure.

When the built a large dam across the Senegal river, it created a problem downstream. The flood waters no longer wiped away everything in a Nile-like flood each year. Bullrushes invaded and covered the whole flat space below the dam. They harvest that, compress it into logs, charcoal it and sell it to Europe. It is in fact a new biomass resource that was not there before.

As the yield is above 35% and it comes from waste material that literally no one has any use for, it is sustainable. Another resource in Africa that would do even better is the thornveld encroachment in the whole Highveld running well into SW Botswana. That stuff needs to be chopped out and turning it into charcoal is a very good way to pay for it. The invasion by thorn trees was caused by improper cattle grazing management.  What to do about it was figured out in Namibia by a farmer. He called it holistic veld management. 

>Is this a part of some international wood products industry agreement or yet another restrictive trade practice against developing countries - like CAP - so that EU internal suppliers of charcoal from wastes and/or EU importers of charcoal blessed by "Voluntary Carbon" experts (a cartel?) can maintain higher prices? 

No it is aimed at reducing waste, even if the product is itself otherwise wasted. 

Ken Boak and I would both run Stirling engines on it if we could. 

Ken: If I can give you 10 kW of very clean gas at >650 degrees, what engine can I use where the gas is inhaled instead of applied to the outside of the hot end? I would like to try it. There are some fearsomely hot and clean fires coming up in these new series of stoves. 

We have water cooling available all the time, and a continuous fire. If we could get 1 or 2 kW electrical output there would be a stampede to own one. 

Thanks

Crispin

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