[Stoves] The Akha TLUD - Biochar Project in Bangladesh.

[Julien Winter]

Hi Folks;

There is a natural draft TLUD project that has been developing in
Bangladesh over the past few years.  A locally adapted ND-TLUD has been
designed, called the Akha Chula.

You will find a two page summary of the project attached.  The PDF document
contains links to more information on the web.

The Akha is being well received because it is clean-cooking, but especially
because it makes biochar.  There is some excitement about biochar, and one
family had their compound broken into just to steal the biochar.  Biochar
will likely be the key facilitator for cookstove acceptance, and I expect
that the Akha will lead the way for creating a market for commercial pellet
fuels and more expensive TLUDs.   The char-making ability of TLUDs can have
wide-reaching effects, so we advocate a comprehensive "TLUD-Biochar
Ecology" approach to research, extension education, and deployment.   Other
cookstove interventions in Bangladesh have not been very successful.

There was a need to develop a locally-made stove, because imports goods are
expensive.  A lot of it has to do with the purchasing power of the local
currency in the international market.  That is captured in "price point
parity," and a $US in Bangladesh buys about three times more than it does
in the USA.  Another problem is the distribution of cash income within the
population, and the rural population don't have as much cash as urbanites,
and function to a larger degree in an informal economy.

When you look at the Akha you will see some areas for improvement.  It is a
work in progress.  It can take some local experience before suggested new
designs take hold.  Some new burners may be more efficient than the
existing one, but too complex to become popular in a particular country.
Even a little bit of complexity may be too much for local stove-builders to
accept.  It could be a challenge to replace an old design with a new one,
once the old design has taken root in the population.  "If the old burner
is 'good enough', why replace it?"

Ideally, I think it is important to get good burner introduced in the first
place, because once an idea is public, you can't recall it.  However, the
demand to introduce a new innovation can outrun the pace of research and
development.  (Biochar is a good example.  Everybody wanted to use it
before we adequately understood its environmental impact.)   There can also
be a bit of reversal of priorities: before there is funding for research
and development on a stove, it has first to be shown that the public wants
it.  And, there can be a race among NGOs and businesses to be first.  So
the first stove into homes is a Tier-3 stove.

About the Akha and things to improve:  (1) It is using an old-style
concentrator burner, so some flames get quenched on the bottom of the pot.
(2) The riser-pot support needs to be made more efficient at transferring
heat to the pot. (3) Primary air control is not as air-tight as it could be
--- however, there are 18 x 2 mm holes in the side walls of the reactor, so
we really can't shut the reaction down.  (The holes are a compromise to
prevent combustion in the reactor from going out, and creating a lot of
smoke.  That could cause major customer complaints).  They are working on
it.

There is a need to develop compressed fuels in Bangladesh, because half of
the biomass fuel currently being used in rural areas is low density plant
residues.  People tend to burn leaves in the dry season, and save up wood
for the rainy season.  We had hoped that the Akha would be twice as
efficient as a traditional stove, so wood supplies would last longer.
However, the difference in efficiency in not yet that great.  That means
that the Akha can only be used for half the year.  If compressed fuels are
developed, we could double the production of biochar.   I expect that there
has already been a lot of research on compressed fuels in Bangladesh (e.g.
rice hull briquettes), but TLUDs and biochar produce a new demand that was
not present in previous combustion stoves.  Biochar may provoke the
production of new cooking fuels.

The project has financial support for three years from a Dutch NGO.  That
gets the technologies out into a number of villages with 100-200 stoves as
a feasibility trial.  I think the Akha is already past the point of no
return, because news of TLUDs and biochar is spreading, and they are likely
now unstoppable.

All the best,
Julien.

-- 
Julien Winter
Cobourg, ON, CANADA
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20170305/94af1a0b/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Akha TLUD Biochar Project Summary 2017_02_05.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 92605 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20170305/94af1a0b/attachment.pdf>