[Stoves] Biomass briquetting tangents

Sun Aug 13 19:37:49 CDT 2017

Mark’s students did a lot of work in Mali. They did some very interesting village energy studies. 

I was there in 1989 reviewing a series of renewable energy projects, including improved cooking stoves, PV water pumping, PV refrigeration, solar water heating, on behalf of the International Division of the US Forest Service. Sponsors were looking for help deciding on the most appropriate allocation of limited funds. 

Tom    

From: Stoves [mailto:stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Crispin Pemberton-Pigott
Sent: Sunday, August 13, 2017 5:03 PM
To: Tom Miles <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>; 'Discussion of biomass cooking stoves' <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Biomass briquetting tangents

Thanks Tom for correcting the country name. 

It was 'that hot country with four letters' which is Mali not Chad‎. (That's how I organise information.)

Yeah....I know.

Crispin 

When the solar energy laboratory in Mali was developing a metal jiko in the mid-late 1980s it became apparent that production would be limited by the availability of scrap steel and the logistics of sheet steel, especially to remote areas. 

We should accept a multi-tiered strategy of production at small, medium, and large scales. 

If your target is small scale there are examples of stove works that produce tens, hundreds, and thousands of stoves that are suited to local fuels, tastes, and demand. Successful producers are often supported by independent non-profits that have organized supply chains, and continuity in personnel and support. Their products sometime have not been tested, or they score in the middle of the field in lab tests, but they sell locally and are adapted to their markets. These products don’t need to be blessed or funded by international organizations. If they don’t sell, they fail. You may not get to millions with this strategy but these stoves have improved countless lives by improving health and providing a means for cooks to earn income. Many thanks to the generous and dedicated people who are supporting this market.

Tom         

From: Stoves [mailto:stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Crispin Pemberton-Pigott
Sent: Sunday, August 13, 2017 6:20 AM
To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org <mailto:stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org> >
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Biomass briquetting tangents

Dear Nikhil the persistent

My analysis and actions are rooted in some fundamental concepts that underlie the approach to project design. 

It is often a desire to 'make a stove locally'. As Mark Bryden's students have shown, there isn't enough scrap metal in Chad to replace all the traditional stoves with much better ones. Even if it were all making it to the bazaar and not being exported ‎to China, it is not nearly enough. Generally the better stoves all have more material in them. 

So what does 'produced locally' mean? They produce their own steel sheets? ‎Nope. Rivets? Sort of, made from chopped off nails. Screws? No. Welding rods? No. Bolts? No. 

The point is that nearly no stove made from metal is entirely produce in-country. So, who decided that ‎cutting up an imported sheet is 'local'? Why not import the blanked parts, accurately made and mass produced? Why ship scrap to Chad and start cutting with a hammer and cold chisel? Makes no sense, as soon as one admits that the material is going to be imported if the 'problem' is to be addressed 'at scale'. 

The idea we explored with George was to try to get a finished combustion chamber, material and processing, to Gambia for the same cost as buying the raw material locally. Given the rapacious nature of the local importers, invariably expats from the Middle East and South Asia, this was not such a challenge. 

As to its being 'affordable' that is a question of the value proposition, not only the cost. As the stove lasts five years, it has additional value as a purchase proposition. As a fuel saver, it is also more valuable. For lighting speed it is probably unrivaled. Big plus. Less smoke? More benefit. Fuel flexible? Yup. So it is a 'good value' because the value proposition exceeds the cost. 

Accessibility is a separate issue. If the amount is too big to pay all at once, it needs a finance mechanism and there are lots to invoke. 

So I agree that the definition of 'local' is a political decision. ‎If you are going to send anything to a developing country, don't include any embedded low skilled labour. Do that on site. 

We had a discussion here some years ago on how to create the most stoves with the best performance at the least cost at the greatest speed.  ‎One proposal was to send Vesto combustion chambers with an additional  ring to hold it, and ti build a mud enclosure that created the preheating chambers and cooking platform. 

This is what happened with George except instead of mud he used locally available plain steel sheets which are common enough. 

GIZ was not involved in the project, it was a WB pilot with Concern International. Cecil did the stove anthropology, as usual. 

Local production was done with the mech tech teaching institute which had the necessary metal working tools. It was not artisanal. ‎It was the first time we tried to make Vestos outside the SA region. Sujatha at Servals in Chennai has made some from scratch and confirmed the high-end performance. It still hasn't appeared in any stove performance report from Aprovecho or EPA through they have each had one for years. Obviously it didn't get a mention by D-Lab either. 

NIH??

Regards 

Crispin 

Crispin: (to George below)

What you describe of Gadgil's - and your - work is yesteryear's. And probably for very unorthodox situations (Darfur) or small markets (Vesto in the Gambia). 

Conditions change. Electricity, skills, manufacturing capacity, restriction on imports (or preference for domestic production), availability of tools, Mrs. Clinton's enthusiasm and ISO globalism. As do the demographics (urbanization), resource availability (waste biomass)

My point is that "appropriate technology" of yesteryears need not be the same today. The key idea you and Gadgil had was that "the ‘industrial’ production was done as close to the bulk material source where the tooling could be produced and maintained." 

This remains valid, and is a very useful parameter for defining "context", the term I am obsessed with (at least in reaction to service standard and objective). Your recommendation also remain valid for such contexts: 

" *   Designed outside the region
  *   Introduced after local testing
  *   Main components needing high precision produced outside the country
  *   All metal construction
  *   Performance much better than local baseline products in common use
  *   Production process adjusted/evolved as local capacity improved
  *   Field performance evaluations confirm acceptance and long term use (displacement)

It would be good if the project can be picked up again and expanded to include all the city neighbourhoods."

In other contexts, "Design outside the region" and "all metal construction" need not apply, and "country" is simply a political term. 

These are the "data shortages" in the facts-free universe of "clean cookstoves" - data are contextual and there is not a single database I can find about the local, real facts of alleged global problems - deforestation, climate change, women's power, or health damage. (Conversely, not a single "stove rollout" has been done on the basis of actual local data on "before and after" efficiency, emissions, women's power, or long-term health.) 

The question is, why did GIZ effort limited in time and geography? How much damage has been done by the madness of pushing WBT and ISO Tiers? (Maybe not much; GACC increasingly looks like a sideshow.) 

I will now read the D-Lab report in light of your observations. 

George: 

Some questions: 

1. Who is leading the external charge on SE4All when it comes to cooking energy? Is the emphasis only on households? This is important because if SE4All is aligned with UN SDGs, the goal is to reduce the "% of households using solid fuels for cooking". 

In other words, SDGs are as pernicious to use of biomass for cooking as WHO/ISO Tier 4 Emission Reduction Targets for PM2.5 (hourly average). I do not understand why this List has not reacted to this blatant betrayal of the "better biomass stoves" agenda. 

2. Is there an evaluation of the Gambia stoves work in the past? And to the SE4All Investment Prospectus (likely to be heavily weighed to electricity)? 

------

Thanks, both. A breath of fresh air. 

Nikhil

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

On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 10:32 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com <mailto:crispinpigott at outlook.com> > wrote:

Dear George of the J

Thanks. The follow-up point I want to make is stimulated by the fact that your project was discussed previously and it has some aspects which interesting to those planning stove roll-outs in locations where the are manufacturing capacity or skill shortages.

Quick review: at about the same time, Ashok Gadgil and I concluded that the way forward in places with limited manufacturing capacity was to send partially manufactured stoves to the site, absent only what could be made using the available skills and manpower. By ‘concluded’ I mean we both started ‘doing it’, Ashok in Darfur and you with me in the Gambia. At the time Ashok and I have not met or communicated – we only found each other later and got on like a house on fire.

While it has probably been done before, we didn’t have examples. The plan was to make the combustion chambers for Vesto stoves and send them to you, with all the rest of the stove made locally from available sheet metal. The result was a locally fabricated Vesto Junior that has the same performance as a product made in Swaziland.

Ashok for his part, produced ‘blanked’ parts in India and sent them to Darfur for assemble in a workshop that had no electricity – just hand tools, initially. Later they added some welding to further improve the product.

The common elements were that the ‘industrial’ production was done as close to the bulk material source where the tooling could be produced and maintained. In the case of the Darfur stove it was blanking tools. For those who don’t know the term, it is punching tools that typically have a very small vertical movement, used to create a shape out of a flat sheet. It can also be done by laser or plasma cutter, but when volume is involved, press tools are made that punch the whole part at once at very low cost. There was no way that could be run and maintained in Darfur.

With Banjul, the challenge was similar. There is a mechanical training centre with limited cutting and welding facility but no laser cutting or CNC punching capability. The grate on the Vesto needs three press tools to make, including a complicated blanking tool. So the combustion chamber with scores of holes and the grate were produced in Johannesburg – at the contractor that does the CNC work and the SeTAR Centre’s stove development workshop at the University of Johannesburg. That facility was equipped by ProBEC/GIZ in its last days.

At the time the goal in the Gambia was to produce locally a high performance stove that could burn briquettes made for available waste materials, which is a fuel a Vesto is able deal with quite well. The initial target was to make it to last five years, and it is heartening to hear that indeed these stoves have endured that long. Given that there is no ceramic component in them, perhaps designers can learn from the experiment. It is an all-metal stove like the Darfur Stove.  They two products have little else in common as to how they work, but they do share these:

  *   Designed outside the region
  *   Introduced after local testing
  *   Main components needing high precision produced outside the country
  *   All metal construction
  *   Performance much better than local baseline products in common use
  *   Production process adjusted/evolved as local capacity improved
  *   Field performance evaluations confirm acceptance and long term use (displacement)

It would be good if the project can be picked up again and expanded to include all the city neighbourhoods.

Many thanks
Crispin

Crispin.

Sorry my mistake. Maybe of interest to a wider audience. Even way back I always thought that your stove designs never got enough mention. Feedback from the grassroots. After the rains hopefully our economic situation has improved enough so we can go back to the 23 families and do a quick survey.

George

From: Crispin Pemberton-Pigott [mailto:crispinpigott at outlook.com <mailto:crispinpigott at outlook.com> ]
Sent: 12 August 2017 17:57
To: icecool; George Riegg Gambia
Subject: RE: [Stoves] Biomass briquetting tangents

Did you want this to go to the Discussion list?

I’d be happy to respond there.
Crispin

Nikhil and Crispin,

Ebola only affected us here economically. Total collapse of tourism, still trying to recover now. At the time restricted movements of goods as borders were almost closed for some months – high prices for scarce products. We laid in boxes of tinned sardines and other tinned stuff and went into lock down mode for about 3 month – only fresh daily bread. In the end I think they traced the virus back to some monkeys in Niger or there abouts – yes bush meet played a big part and the eradication of forests…

Crispin. Our 23 Furno Ees are still working great for the “test” families – nearly 5 years on. 2 ½ years ago we had a SE4ALL validation workshop here and both the Furno and the Briquetting were included in the Governments priority initiatives and the Investment Prospectus. Now with the new people in Government hopefully more positive actions will happen in time. We also had some serious funding problems with getting messed around by some implementing partners in charge of purse strings – we never made it away from the 1 tin of sardines per day. Amazing what you can do with that!

Watch this space ☺ There is still spank in this old geezer!

George 

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