[Stoves] China and cookstoves [Was Re: A user-centered, iterative engineering approach for advanced biomass cookstove design and development]

[Nikhil Desai]

Gordon:

Sounds promising. "Disruptive" is music to my ears.

Aggregation of demands or of use benefits - monetized or not - is the
central problem of small-scale retail technologies in the developing
countries - be it in energy (including electricity), water, transport, and
until recently telecom. Anything that has economies of scale at
organizational level -- even the simple issue of disbursing public money,
if planning projects - even if not at technology level suffers from this
problem.

I wonder what you are thinking in terms of the owners and operators of the
community scale biochar+heat systems or "regional biochar cooperative". I
take it you are thinking of US-based enterprises and cooperatives, but if
the unit investment size is around $0.5 million to serve a community
(households plus others) of roughly 10-20 kt per year of feedstock, there
may be markets in some developing countries as well. (Using waste biomass,
if usable.)

Are you planning a survey of cooks in the developing world where you could
add in the questionnaire "“How important is making (more than saving) money
when you cook?”

Nikhil

On Dec 4, 2017, at 12:28 PM, Gordon West <gordon.west at rtnewmexico.com>
wrote:

I want to support Ron in his point and to provide a scenario to help to
explain it. We are a relatively new ‘stoves’ R&D company and manufacturer
operating in the U.S. Our business plan is not directly relevant to the
markets that are the major focus of this list, but there are some
significant developments in our world carrying what should be a disruptive
lesson for biomass cooking strategies.

The basic lesson, which we are creating a business model for, is this: the
biochar that is produced from our TLUD appliances is worth many times more
that the biomass feedstock going in. This is true on a triple-bottom-line
basis, looking at direct economics, social benefits, and environmental
benefits - note that global economic systems generally acknowledge only
only transactions involving sale for currency as “making money” even though
the other non-monetized benefits result in greater lifecycle economic good
than the direct sales do.

First let me make the distinction between fuel and feedstock - this is a
very important point. Fuel is burned for energy; feedstock is used to make
other products. In our TLUD process, biomass is always feedstock, from
which is produced char and a flammable gas (a fuel).

One problem with micro-production of biochar (cookstoves and heaters in
households) is that the char does not have enough value to cover the cost
of aggregation and sale to existing markets - and existing markets are
poorly developed, partly because of a lack of supply. Our solution is to
establish community scale biochar+heat systems that acquire local biomass
for feedstock, process it into char and heat, use the heat to dry more
incoming biomass, and densify it into pellet or briquet feedstock. The
densified and bagged feedstock can then be distributed to micro-producers
to make heat for cooking or other uses while making more char. We plan to
give the micro-producers *free dried and densified feedstock* in trade for
their char. “We”, in this case, will be a regional biochar cooperative that
will handle technology distribution and operation, biomass processing and
feedstock distribution, and biochar aggregation and marketing.

This approach solves many problems - the households get free feedstock,
saving significant amounts of time and money; the feedstock is of a much
higher quality - it is dry and consistent and dense, making stove operation
safer and better; the char is aggregated into a marketable form; carbon is
sequestered; adding CO2 to the atmosphere is avoided; soils and biomass
productivity is enhanced; and water is saved. There are many more benefits,
but those are some top examples.

In the U.S. we have the numbers to show that we can make a business out of
this approach. In more distressed areas, governments and NGOs, who have
more of an interest in the non-monetized triple-bottom-line benefits, could
set up the core biochar+heat facilities to produce free feedstock for
micro-producers and manage the char collection. The subsidies to do this
would actually be long-term investments, and not bandaids like so many
‘help for the poor’ efforts are.

Burning local biomass to ash in cookstoves for heat does not really solve
any fundamental lifecycle problems, no matter how cleanly it is done.

Gordon West
The Trollworks
503 N. “E” Street
Silver City, NM 88061
575-537-3689 <(575)%20537-3689>

*An entrepreneur sees problems as the seeds of opportunity.*







On Sun, Dec 3, 2017 at 3:39 PM, Ronal W. Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net>
wrote:

> Paul:
>
> I have yet to see on ANY stove questionnaire:  “How important is making
> (more than saving) money when you cook?”
>
> Ron
>
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