[Stoves] Charcoal from waste - home cooking or other markets? (Re: Crispin, Anand Karve)

Rebecca A. Vermeer ravermeer at telus.net
Wed Oct 12 10:37:41 CDT 2016


Dear Chris, Crispin, 
Do you know of a successful project where wood sawdust is converted to charcoal and the charcoal processed into briquettes? 
Regards, 
  
Rebecca Vermeer 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Crispin Pemberton-Pigott" <crispinpigott at outlook.com> 
To: "stoves lists.bioenergylists.org" <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2016 4:12:52 AM 
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Charcoal from waste - home cooking or other markets? (Re: Crispin, Anand Karve) 


Dear Chris 

Always good to hear from you. The bamboo waste things sounds highly replicable in many areas. 

I will report separately on the experiments with biochar being made at the CAU lab in Beijing, which is on an experimental farm. They have many sources for the char and are looking into how it affects plant growth.  

One of the source materials is sewage which contains plenty of carbon.  

Regards  
Crispin 



  

"Charcoal from waste", 
i can report from 3 interesting projects in East Africa and Southern Africa  transforming waste to charcoal: 


1) A project in the East of Kenya near Lake Victoria is transforming bagasse from sugarcane can into charcoal. They are using an "adam-retort" kiln for the carbonization of the bio-waste. About 100kg  to120kg (dry weight) of bagasse fit into the wood chamber of about 2,5 (?)m³. 

About 30kg of charcoal are harvested. Efficiency is about 30% (burnt waste fuel in fire box not counted). The charcoal is shaped into briquettes, but I have not details about it. 


mark.lung at eco2librium.com , http://www.eco2librium.net/ 


  

  

2) Another interesting project is done in Kenya near Naivsha. 
I cite from their homepage: "In urbanizing communities we install modern container-based toilets in people's homes for free and charge a small monthly fee to service them. Then, instead of dumping the waste, we transform it into a clean burning alternative to charcoal. Our dependable, user-focused, and vertically integrated sanitation services address the full sanitation value chain and allow families living in urbanizing communities throughout East Africa to live a modern and healthy life. 

  

As far as i understood the "pupe" is used as a binder to make charcoal briquettes. The charcoal comes from twigs, roots and leaves which is a left over from nearby flower farms. The twigs and leaves are carbonized in an "adam-retort" kiln. Unfortunately i don't have any further details. 

  Catherine Berner | Technical Lead   catherine at sanivation.com 
www.sanivation.com  | 


  

  

3) In Malawi / Zimbabwe a project is using bamboo left overs for carbonization. I am not sure if the bamboo-char is used itself or it is compacted into briquettes. What's interesting is that they made essays with an industrial steel retort and a brick built "adam-retort" kiln. The industrial steel retort has less volume and its costs including transport 300% more that the brick built kiln 
and they prefer the brick built kiln. 

(citation. "... The metal retort  stores approx. 330kg of bamboo (adam: dry or wet ??) and yields about 80kg – 100kg charcoal but uses almost as much firewood as the brick retort so efficiency conversion rate is low. .." 

  

On the brick kiln i got the following information, i assume the wood chamber has a volume of about 3m³ : 
" .. It is very successful.  The community group built it entirely themselves on provision of the materials.  The recovery rate is very high – approx. 800kg bamboo (adam: dry or wet ??) giving 250kg charcoal and using around 100kg firewood or less.   (adam: 800kg --> 250kg, folllows 100kg --> 31kg) ..". 

louise.bleach at googlemail.com,    

http://bio-innovation.org 

  

Cheers 

Dr. Chris ADAM 
biocoal.org 

  

  

  

  

  

-----Original-Nachricht----- 

Betreff: [Stoves] Charcoal from waste - home cooking or other markets? (Re: Crispin, Anand Karve) 

Datum: 2016-10-04T16:43:48+0200 

Von: "Nikhil Desai" <pienergy2008 at gmail.com> 

An: "Discussion of biomass cooking stoves" <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org> 

  

  

  
Moderator: I changed the subject line. This is in response to Crispin's comment about Anand Karve's work.  
--------------- 
  
Crispin: " That is what is so inspiring about AD Karve?s work on charring waste  biomass to produce a high quality fuel. He even produced the extruder and  the Sarai stove to go with it. That is a museum quality piece of work - to  be studied... " 

I take your word for it, but I also had this suspicion a few years ago that what Anand Karve was proposing in terms of converting waste biomass for charcoal was worth more attention, not primarily as a fuel choice issue but as a waste management issue. In dry regions such as much of India, leaf and tree waste along with other open biomass waste is a major problem in municipal waste management. Why, just driving by Gandhinagar - the capital of Gujarat state where I lived - a few months ago I saw huge piles of leaf waste in numerous parks that have been created by the state government to make the city "green". All those leaves will be burned in the open, contributing to air pollution (not reported in peer-reviewed literature so it must not exist) that damages biota health here and now. On the other hand, such burning will release organic aerosols that supposedly cool the atmosphere, so it is most definitely "green" for the "global environment" advocates.  

Open organic waste - including leaves, tree debris, food waste - is a huge headache for local governments. On the other hand, urban trees have multiple benefits including air filtering , favorable changes in ambient temperatures (thus impacting building energy demand; I did some work for Cinncinnati Gas and Electric climate options 20+ years ago), and I also happen to like urban forestry, gardening, food production (if land, water, and air quality so permit).  

A new paradigm of urban/peri-urban biomass production, utilization, and waste management needs to emerge, and energy analysts have much to offer.  
  
Unless they leave the field to WHO and EPA.  

The question is, do Indian customers care to advance to cleaner charcoal or convenient LPG? 

As I mentioned in the previous post, the commercial potential may not lie in household cooking but in water heating (peri-urban, rural) and commercial/institutional cooking and heating (water/space).  
  
**** 

Crispin: "But he is promoting charcoal consumption -  very offensive to some. Shall  we forgive him too? :)" 

Asking forgiveness from sinners of cooked science? You must be joking, Mr. Pemberton-Pigott.  
  
I note your emoticon, but this is no laughing matter. I think it's time to stop blaming direct use of solid fuels for presumed envionmental ills. 

It's the process that matters. Converting primary solid fuels into an energy service can be "dirty process" or "clean (or cleaner) process." 

Extending Kirk Smith et al (AREE 2000 on India) to all processes of solid fuel transformation, not just final combustion, and counting all emissions, could well show that investments at all steps of the fuel cycle can deliver small-scale direct use of solid fuels at a lower emission rates than the "traditional" processes (unprocessed solid fuels with relatively uncontrolled combustion and no emissions capture or ventilation).  

I will send you and Ron an e-mail about solid fuels and "dirty fuels"; you decide if it would add rancor or value to this List. I too prefer gas, electricity, and solar (thermal or soon enough, induction cooking via PV). There are markets for those. But until the 3 billion people we bleed our hearts and research funds on get to that nirvana, reducing the PICs and the drudgery of cooking should be the prime goals of research on solid fuels use. Banning solid fuels should be limited to some areas and some users.  

Nikhil 
 

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