[Stoves] Why bother with technical efficiencies? (Re: Anand Karve)

Wed Sep 14 17:14:32 CDT 2016

Dear Dr Karve:

I don't think technical energy efficiency of fuel conversion (output/input
calories) - or combustion (useful/primary calories) - is of any concern
unless all other economic and technological variables are more or less
constant (say, in coal washing or power plant steam generator, once in
place). And even then, only if the fuel costs are constant or rising.

Why bother with conversion efficiency if there is enough feedstock to meet
the required biogas demand?

If "saved" dung more valuable as feedstock for dungcakes to be sold. I can
understand.

But "saved" calories are not marketable or bankable (except to some
"voluntary carbon" devotees?)

Let me take an extreme position - the obsession over fuel technical
efficiencies has been the biggest obstacle to developing a marketable
cooking technology.

"Fuel consumption" is a useless, irrelevant metric in general terms; its
importance is context-specific and even customer-specific (relative to
other criteria the customer may use, the relative weights of which are
unknowable and changing.)

What's wrong with us? Why has this EPA/WHO/ISO misadventure enshrined "fuel
consumption" as an indicator of technical efficiency and blown up its
importance way out of proportion (while ignoring time taken to cook,
convenience, cooks' preferences, emissions from foods, or - this was so
utterly laughable in yesterday's Webinar - fuel quality such as moisture
content)?

It is also so incongruous with the other scientistic ideology of
"renewability of biomass." Why bother with fuel combustion efficiencies if
the fuel is "free" - waste biomass, collected and prepared by people whom
we consider waste biomass as well (assigning zero value to their time)?

----
Obsessions have consequences.

Under the pretext and pretense of science, the energy political ideology of
"efficient biomass" has now led us to the whole "fundamental foolishness"
of EPA/ISO lab testing and standard-setting with WBT.

This intellectual wastage - technical inefficiencies of expert brains - and
smoke - GBD from PM2.5 - will support and be supported by papers in
"scientific journals".

Based on the assumption that poor people are stupid. Publishing cooked up
science feels so moral, especially when serving the presumed heathen,
ignorant, undegreed.

First world science fancies for Third World problems could lead to Second
rate policy making, (Example: Nuclear power in small and/or incompetent
countries.)

Don't get me wrong; efficiencies and emissions matter to cooking, just as
much as salt, sugar, milk (or equivalents). But as a cook, I think about a
meal at a time, and my preferences in taste and time.

Yes, cooks can be led to stating that they prefer more efficient stoves;
asking leading questions and avoiding the mention of alternative cooking
options.

We have such smart surveyors and such expert survey users. See A Profile of
Biomass Stove Use in Sri Lanka
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3366602/>, (2012
doi:10.3390/ijerph9041097.
A shining display of ignorance to market "further analytical studies and
new innovative initiatives". Neros want new fiddles.)

Setting "performance standards" in terms of emission rates and fuel
combustion efficiencies will amount to Insane Stove Ordinance (ISO).

Give me exposure profiles per home. Without a standardized meal,
standardized room, standardized lung, standardized life. Even EPA would
admit that the NSPS rule for coal-fired plants did not clean up the outdoor
air on its own and by itself.

Why is everybody silent on this deception by science, without defining the
market, the service standard, and the public policy objective? Why not
leave biomass stove testing to GE and Reliance, Philips and BP?

----------------

Now back to Kirk Smith and superiority of biogas. Conversion efficiency in
calories is irrelevant; what matters is methane implications.

Not all calories are the same. (To borrow from nutrition theory.)

What Kirk Smith (AREE 2000) said about biogas was only that counting all
emissions, biogas cooking had the lowest GWP of GHGs per unit cooking
energy delivery. I may quibble with the assumptions, model parameters,
economics (incl. opportunity costs) but I accept his conclusions without
reservation.

I don't like carbon counting any more than calorie counting, but I also do
agree with Kirk Smith that if one is going to put carbon in the atmosphere
anyway, CO2 is the least harmful species from health or climate points of
view.

That burst the bubble of "carbon-neutral renewable biomass", but studied
ignorance is a religious necessity of the carbon charlatans.

I may be a Jesuit in this Church of Dung, Straw, Husk, and Twigs.

Nikhil

On Sep 3, 2016, at 8:59 AM, Anand Karve <adkarve at gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Nikhil,
producing biogas from dung is a very wasteful process. 1 kg (dry weight) of
dung, which would yield 4000 kcal energy if burned,  yields only about 200
kcal energy, if converted into biogas. In the city where I live, cowdung
cakes are used in certain religious rites. They are sold at a lucrative
price of about 9 USCents per piece. That would be a very attractive
business for a Dutch dairy farmer, but drying the dung would be problematic
in a country like holland.
Yours
A.D.Karve

***
Dr. A.D. Karve

Chairman, Samuchit Enviro Tech Pvt Ltd (www.samuchit.com)

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

On Thu, Sep 1, 2016 at 10:27 PM, Traveller <miata98 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Anil:
>
> Are you suggesting the USEPA folks should set emission targets for manure
> management?
>
> I think they already do in the US. Now all we need is for GACC to claim
> biogas as such superior clean cooking technology - Kirk Smith argued that
> in 2000 and I fully agree, just that there is too much open defecation by
> man and animal -  that ISO must have lab testing at various scales.
>
> Heck, I will even write the testing protocol and specify a standardized
> bull, a standardized meal, standardized poop, ... They have the rest -
> standardized water, standardized meals, standardized cooks. Just
> unstandardized dose-response claptrap.
>
> Cow poop is ok, it is the Anthropocene bull manure that only a select few
> can digest, anaerobically of course.
>
> "a small clay pisspot is a cutting-edge technology"?
>
> Yeah, for the New Age nuevau riche of the New york times.
>
> I once worked on a GHG offset project to both change cattle diet and to
> reduce methane emissions. If I remember correctly, open cow manure in hot
> areas dries up quickly and does not emit that much methane.
>
> But those who want to cook up numbers and careers, research papers and
> propaganda, will stop at no BS.
>
> Seriously, the main point here is that biomass is not a climate-friendly
> technology at all. Taken all the emissions from the production to
> consumption of foods - including those due to cutting forests, open burning
> of grass and leaves, forest fires - and valued in 20-year GWP terms, the
> contribution to atmospheric concentrations is much greater than that, say,
> from power generation.
>
> Go read Nadine Unger.
>
> Or Nick Stern, who I believe has gone veg. (I also hope he gave up sugar.)
>
> Then again, there was some paper a few years ago claiming beef is a
> superior food because its carbon footprint can be quite low.
>
> I prefer to be a horse. But I am fond of BS; academia and media give me
> such earthy fragrances all the time.
>
> Nikhil
>
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2016 10:41:04 +0530
> From: nari phaltan <nariphaltan at gmail.com>
> To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
>         <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
> Subject: [Stoves] Hi tech cow dung technology
> Message-ID:
>         <CAGeG2tDBzt_RDONrSmo+u-WTpcS9DsFSXUiDOa28cj1npWO5Jw at mail.gm
> ail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> Hello stovers,
>
> You might enjoy reading this article in NY Times.
> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/t-magazine/cow-poop-design
> -museum-castelbosco-farm.html?emc=eta1&_r=0
>
> Cheers.
>
> Anil K rajvanshi
>
> --
> Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI)
> Tambmal, Phaltan-Lonand Road
> P.O.Box 44
> Phaltan-415523, Maharashtra, India
> Ph:91-2166-220945/222842
> e-mail:nariphaltan at gmail.com
>            nariphaltan at nariphaltan.org
>
> http://www.nariphaltan.org
>
>
>
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