[Stoves] Clean fuel is contextual (Re: Frank, Crispin)

Sun Jan 8 18:34:31 CST 2017

Nikhil

I think India is on the right track looking at renewable electricity as the long term clean fuel source winner for cooking. I used to work on biomass power in North America. I threw in the towel on that a few years ago.  I have been following solar energy research as a means  to better understand how plants can more efficiently intercept sunlight for my biomass grass plant breeding program. The solar PV researchers are making most of their efficiency gains through texturing and coatings to improve sunlight utilization (In my biomass grasses I breed for striated leaves and glaucous bloom-the dusty blue texturing you see on cabbage leaves). The cheapest solar projects today are 2.5 cents a kwh today. In ten years it is projected to head to 1 cent kwh and that will destroy oil (and gas).  Solar PV modules are continuing to drop fast from an average selling price of 70 cents per watt in 2013 to 35 cents at the beginning of  2017
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-20/energy-tsunamis-threaten-to-drag-oil-down-to-10-engie-says

Look at the efficiency chart here on solar and then look at the amazing cost reduction chart.
http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Renewable_Infrastructure_Investment_Handbook.pdf

So urban cooking in my opinion will most likely go electric within 10 years and the Indian government is making a good call on that. I think it will be much longer for rural users to go electric and it will remain biomass likely for the next 25 years.

I think any agency deciding to get in bed with the hole digging extractives industry (ie LPG) this late in the game is making a bad call and are completely visionless. There is no future in the extractives industry. PV solar is about to do to the energy sector what agriculture did to the hunter gatherer food movement and those in the fossil fuel sector are going to get crushed (especially Canadian oilsands).  

regards
Roger 
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Roger_Samson2
(you can see my grass breeding work here)

--------------------------------------------
On Sun, 1/8/17, Traveller <miata98 at gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [Stoves] Clean fuel is contextual (Re: Frank, Crispin)
 To: "Frank Shields" <franke at cruzio.com>
 Cc: "Discussion of biomass cooking stoves" <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
 Received: Sunday, January 8, 2017, 1:53 PM

 Frank: 
 You have
 an excellent statement of a contextualized problem:
 "We have a situation
 where the 1) Combustion Chamber is fixed and 2) the
 available wild biomass to be used is fixed. WE DO THE BEST
 WE CAN with what we have."

 And you "we optimize them for the best
 using available wild biomass that we prepare from the pile
 of using the equipment they have."

 I wish this is how the problem of small-scale
 direct combustion (including small gasifiers for power) were
 defined for every district in India. 

 Sometimes the biomass is plenty and goes
 "waste", sometimes it is quite costly to obtain.
 It's a matter of land rights and access. 

 I also agree "They need
 competition" and "Quit complaining and get thinking
 of alternative uses for all the money. Its stupid to require the air be
 below a specified particle concentration when we are not
 willing to wire in electricity and handout microwave
 ovens."

 Well, UN Foundation, Inc. also has
 a parallel initiative to GACC, and the GACC CEO may also be
 the CEO of that -- SE4All (Sustainable Energy for All). It
 is about providing electricity to everybody. Again there is
 some Tier dogma about quality and quantity of electricity
 WITH OUT ANY IDEA OF THE CONTEXT of productive and income
 capacities. 

 But in some dream world,
 electricity will solve the household emissions problem.
 Whether that will make air cleaner, for whom, and save whose
 lives -- all that will take another boondoggle like ISO IWA
 for cookstoves. 

 India has a strategy - Electricity and Clean Cooking Strategy for
 India. In the interim period, "better solid fuel
 stoves" can and should be marketed, without any
 mumbo-jumbo of WHO IAQ Guidelines or standards, and the
 jiggery-pokery of "box models" for concentrations,
 HAPIT for aDALYs.

 Nikhil

 --------- (US
 +1) 202-568-5831

 On Sun, Jan 8, 2017 at
 12:08 AM, Frank Shields <franke at cruzio.com>
 wrote:
 Hi Nikhil,

 On
 Jan 7, 2017, at 10:19 AM, Traveller <miata98 at gmail.com>
 wrote:
 Frank: 

 Is WBT -
 or any such non-representative proxy for cooking and space
 heating - the only way to determine if some combination of
 fuel and device is “clean"? 

 FRANK: To determine if a stove does
 its job ‘clean’ must be determined at the end when the
 meal is served. We are going through the 6 Box system and
 starting with the fuel. We can determine if process is going
 as it should by testing downstream without going all the way
 to the end - eliminating many variables found along the
 way. Box 1) FuelBox 2 Fuel
 introductionBox 3 Combustion
 chamberBox 4 Cooking utensilsBox 5
 Cooking procedure Box 6 Task
 completion

 You do seem to agree that there is no
 [FRANK(rarely)] ”clean fuel” on its own, just a
 combination of particular type of fuel and combustion
 device, operated under some design basis - “biomass
 uniformly prepared, sized and with proper combustion
 characteristics known suitable for a specific stove.” 
 FRANK Correct

 But then you say, “We cannot
 complain about what other groups are doing with all the
 money allocated to them for improving biomass stoves and
 cleaner air until we give them a direction to go
 in."
 FRANK Correct

 I am
 afraid that is naive. 
 FRANK Wrong

 For one, if giving directions for
 "cleaner air" means not just emission rate testing
 for representative combinations of fuels, devices, cuisines
 in lab and in field but going through the theology of the
 "box paradigm" -- what Harold calls the
 "conflation" of effects, without going into the
 diversity of contexts - all you will get is more of the
 same. ISO TC 285 to TC 2850. 

 The other reason is that
 "cleaner air" is not simply cooked up in boxes by
 EPA and BAMG. It is the exposure profile for all air
 pollutants - not just "criteria pollutants" in the
 USEPA lingo - and indeed all health risks that determine the
 health consequences. 

 As Cecil and the ESMAP report I
 cited three months ago assert, "contextual" is
 everything. Until such a time that biomass stoves provide as
 much versatility and control, and fit in the ever-changing
 time demands on poor women, to speak of "clean
 air" from domestic stoves is paramount delusion. 

 If nothing else, you will also
 have to grant GACC/BAMG demands that any switchover from
 "dirty fuel" to "clean fuel" (with
 stoves) be "permanent, exclusive, and sustained".
 That is no stacking. That is the violation of a cook's
 privacy and preferences just so GACC and NIH can cook up
 "evidence base" of "health effects of clean
 cooking combinations"?? 

 I suppose many stovers - in universities and
 outside - did give direction at the ISO/IWA back a few years
 ago (my citation in the post in response to Harold
 earlier). 

 Air pollution
 control in developing countries is not a lab job. 

 FRANK: Nikhil - I don’t care about
 clean air. We have a situation where the 1) Combustion
 Chamber is fixed and 2) the available wild biomass to be
 used is fixed. WE DO THE BEST WE CAN with what we have. If
 five combustion chambers are tested (stoves) we optimize
 them for the best using available wild biomass that we
 prepare from the pile of using the equipment they have. They
 are now ‘clean’ as they can be. If one is cleaner than
 the others they get the bid for sale. (and fuel availability
 and quantity is considered). Passes some EPA, BANG, ISO,
 GACC, NIH, IWA or whatever  - WHO CARES when the choice is
 between Best we can do OR Dirty.  
 In case of stoves, it has been a hack job.

 They need competition. We
 researchers and scientist give them NONE. We need some
 creative ideas and risk takers at the University level. No
 guts: no glory. 
 Heres an idea:Helium
 Surrogate:Get the equipment and see if it can be
 made to work for what we want. Bleed out gases just before
 the secondary and determine the distribution and mass
 balance from the biomass being burned. Determine the best
 composition for gases to burn the hottest and cleanest.
 Could end up being a complete waste of a few 100K USD if it
 doesn’t. 
 Heres an
 idea:Make pellets starting at high quality in a
 stove proved to burn them cleanly and hot. Make a series of
 pellets with: a) increasing ash, b) increasing lipids (pine
 pitch), c) decreasing carbon density d) increasing moisture
 e) increasing size f) decreasing size g) increasing lignin
 etc. etc. Determine the concentration where they
 start to fail air quality and/or heat. Measure using Helium
 Surrogate (if it works) the change in gas composition going
 into the secondary. 
 Perhaps we can optimize the wild
 biomass used by measure of the composition going into the
 secondary once we know what to look for - or used to problem
 solve a poor running combustion chamber. 
 If lipids are found to be a problem
 develop a test procedure that works in the range we need to
 look at. We need test procedures for the components found to
 be important. 
 Then
 when this is finalized we work on Box 2 :)  Fuel
 Introduction into the combustion chamber. Pellets can be
 feed in many different ways. Sticks introduced at a rate
 determine (from the above) to be optimum. 
 Quit complaining and get thinking of
 alternative uses for all the money. 
 Its stupid to require the air be
 below a specified particle concentration when we are not
 willing to wire in electricity and handout microwave
 ovens. 
 Regards 
 Frank 
 An inside job. 

 Time to end the
 pretense.

 Nikhil

 On
 Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 11:31 AM, Frank Shields <franke at cruzio.com>
 wrote:

 On Jan 7, 2017, at 7:34 AM, Crispin
 Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com>
 wrote:
 Dear
 Stovers What
 on earth is a “clean
 fuel”? Thanks
 Crispin
 Its biomass uniformly prepared,
 sized and with proper combustion characteristics known
 suitable for a specific stove.  
 We cannot complain about what other
 groups are doing with all the money allocated to them for
 improving biomass stoves and cleaner air until we give them
 a direction to go in. Not having a direction and complaining
 just goes in circles - as we have been doing for YEARS! The
 only direction (for now) is “What Preparation is Required
 for a Biomass to work in Paul’s Champion TLUD Stove?  And
 How Best is That Done?”
 There is a big pile of biomass from
 a local community  - what do we need to know about it and
 how best to size it for the Champion? 
 We need (1) an equipped PRIVATE
  lab (no Universities) (2) creative personal (3) the stove
 (4) the biomass (5) money - and funders need to know this is
 research and not all research ends in grand success (as
 required by Universities). Ten steps backwards and one
 forward. The one’s forward add up over time.  

 Frank

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