[Stoves] Off-topic no longer, re: News from Colorado: 'Rolling Coal"

Tue Sep 27 10:47:54 CDT 2016

Dear Paul

I think Nikhil's complaint is that the concepts of 'clean fuels' or 'clean
stoves' are oxymorons. There is no such thing on either score.

As you are well aware, and have demonstrated in person, if a 'clean TLUD
gasifier' goes wrong, there is a huge amount of smoke coming out until it is
re-lit. So it is only clean under certain circumstances and with certain
fuels, perhaps even only a certain size of fuel. 

Nikhil seems to be calling 'BS' on the alarmist thing when that alarmist
thing is supported by vapourware and numerical puffery. 

Unlike most of us here, he has been in the trenches in Washington at a high
level for decades and knows how the system is manipulated to generate
funding by popularising the latest fad. I guess there is some merit is
saying 'that is how it works' at least these days, but it does not
compensate for the deliberate misrepresentation of facts in order to scare
people into handing over the piggy bank.

It seems everyone but everyone in this field is aware that only a
combination of operator, fuel and product has an assessable 'emission' or
'fuel' metric. So let's not beat around that bush. The forecasts (of which
there are very few) of future impact on the public, especially public health
or the destruction of forests which are the two major topics in regulations
and project documents, have not been very accurate. The prediction to the
Ulaanbaatar government that their air quality would continue to get worse if
they didn't 'ban the burning of raw coal completely' was a major forecast of
doom. The population of the city grew faster than expected, the expansion of
burning raw coal expanded, the stoves were replaced with 'middling'
technical features and the air quality improved more than the scenario that
required they 'ban coal completely and replace everything with 'clean
fuels'.'

The emergence of Rwanda as a charcoal-sustainable country while continuing
not to ban charcoal as the primary cooking fuel - even in the absence of any
substantive stove replacement programme - is another example of failed
calamitous prediction. Everyone knows we are supposed to decry charcoal as a
cause of blah-blah-blah. Now we have in Laos a wide scape roll out of the
lighting cone (SNV) that reduces emissions dramatically, saves fuel and is
cheap. No change in the stove at all. Nor the fuel. Next they can follow in
the footsteps in Rwanda and produce enough fuel on private farms to feed the
need.

We have not talked about Chad (I think) and how they turned their charcoal
industry into a profitable, sustainable enterprise owned by the communities.
That is another amazing example of how changing the administration of fuel
can create wealth and jobs and sustainable biofuel. It didn't require the
change of stove or fuel or people. Just how they worked together.

There is a lot of room for self- examination here. Nikhil is on the right
track with this modelling of health impacts. He, unlike most of us,
understands the health modeling field very well. 

Caution is advised

Crispin

Nikhil,

Your message is based on playing with words, trying to make "Clean
Cookstoves" into a silly term because there can be fuel issues.  Of course
there are fuel issues and stove issues.  That does not make the topic silly.

If this was just silly stuff, I would not have spent 15 years of my life
helping to bring TLUD stoves to the top of the solid biomass stoves.  

If you  think that clean cookstoves are silly and not important, then you
are writing to the wrong group of people.  

Paul

Doc  /  Dr TLUD  /  Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD
Email:  psanders at ilstu.edu <mailto:psanders at ilstu.edu> 
Skype:   paultlud    Phone: +1-309-452-7072
Website:  www.drtlud.com <http://www.drtlud.com> 

On 9/27/2016 9:13 AM, Traveller wrote:

Teddy:

Thank you. That news item has great relevance to this list. 

There are no "clean car engines" per se; their alleged cleanness or
"emission rates" depend on fuel quality. 

Which is why "Clean Cookstoves" - global alliances or blogal dalliances - is
a silly term. 

There are no "clean cookstoves" per se; only in combination with fuels, and
in the context of operating practices and local environment (ventilation,
wind, ambient air quality, other sources of emissions ranging from food and
smoking to open waste.) 

The scientist collective at the ISO 2012 IWA on cookstoves (
<https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:iwa:11:ed-1:v1:en> Guidelines for
evaluating cookstove performance) 

""recognizes that the quality and type of fuel used by a testing centre may
impact the emissions of a cookstove. Because of that, the International
Workshop on Cookstoves recommends that testing centres document the key
physical and operational characteristics (e.g. fuel, moisture content, pot
size and shape) of the system."

Whatever little I know suggests that temperatures and air flows determine
the ratio and composition of PICs and that at relatively low temperatures
and irregular air flows, fuel chemistry plays a critical role. But there's
nothing here about chemical composition.

Is it any wonder folks go mumbling about "solid fuels", "dirty fuels"? (More
on that later.)

WHO/GBD claims on the "global dataset for cooking fuel use" are bubbly
champagne - or dope - served up to minors. (Remember the song "Goodnight,
farewell" in Sound of Music where Liesel asks for her first taste of
champagne?)

Let me put it bluntly - WHO has manufactured a "global emergency" based on
non-existent data and questionable intelligence. (Burning Opportunity
<http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/204717/1/9789241565233_eng.pdf> ,
marketing the GBD adventure of killing by assumption as a global health
emergency
<http://www.ccacoalition.org/en/news/new-who-report-household-air-pollution-
driving-global-health-emergency> ) 

Clean Cookstoves are dirty business. 

I for one do not believe one needs convincing evidence to act on reducing
pollution exposures of vulnerable populations. The challenge is not
compiling reams and reams of dubious data and faulty forecasts - of YLD and
YLL - but to please the cooks. 

Ron here thinks I have soured on science. Living in Washington, I am
familiar with the politics of science and the science of politics. What is
going on is corrupting intelligence. There is an emergency in "global
health", namely, it has little to do with individual health. 

Nikhil

---------

(India +91) 909 995 2080

On Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 8:16 AM, Cookswell Jikos <cookswelljikos at gmail.com
<mailto:cookswelljikos at gmail.com> > wrote:

What a story....similar to this gem is a story in todays newspaper regarding
air pollution from bad fuel rejected by the EU and dumped in the African
market -  

''The high-sulphur fuels also have a knock-on effect, rapidly destroying
emission-reducing technologies in vehicles, according to Rob de Jong, the
head of the UNEP transport programme. "So if you buy a vehicle that's a
couple of years old and import it into some of the African countries, the
technology in there - sensors and filters - all gets spoilt, and these cars,
which are potentially very clean, are destroyed in a couple of tanks, and
for the next 20 years will be belching smoke. It's important to understand
the tragedy of this," he said. This in turn increases emissions of fine
particulate matter, which can lodge deep in the lungs, causing cancers and
other health problems.

Read more at:
<http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/business/article/2000217548/dirty-diesel-rej
ected-in-europe-exported-to-africa>
http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/business/article/2000217548/dirty-diesel-reje
cted-in-europe-exported-to-africa''  

I certainly hope something like this cannot happen with LPG cooking gas or
that all those generators in Lagos and Accra are not pumping smoke into the
kitchens with induction stoves :(

Teddy 

Cookswell Jikos
www.cookswell.co.ke <http://www.cookswell.co.ke> 

www.facebook.com/CookswellJikos <http://www.facebook.com/CookswellJikos> 

www.kenyacharcoal.blogspot.com <http://www.kenyacharcoal.blogspot.com> 

Mobile: +254 700 380 009 

Mobile: +254 700 905 913

P.O. Box 1433, Nairobi 00606, Kenya

<https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-mFnK50B4oS8/UUrgJle8z9I/AAAAAAAAB_o/OUjL
d7wrKPg/s133/Cookswell+Logo.PNG> 

Save trees - think twice before printing.

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