[Stoves] Radical ideas from Paul and Philip {re: stoves and credits again}

Mon Oct 2 14:43:21 CDT 2017

Nikhil, loved the pic.?

It would be interesting to compare the delivered cost of LPG energy per MJ in the pot with charcoal. In both cases production inefficiencies would be ignored as they are large and only really matter if it affects the price.

A really good charcoal stove can compete in the same realm as a cheap propane stove in terms of thermal efficiency, and that is before any large investment is made in processed char fuels like pelletization.

‎I think that truck can carry a heck of a lot of energy in one load. A twenty ton load would be about 600 gigaJoules. That is about the same energy as is contained in 13.3 tons of propane, but the propane needs metal cylinders greatly increasing the total transported mass.

Anyone have a metal mass per kg fuel mass number?

So in terms of transport alone, charcoal is far more efficient than LPG. Remember the LPG empties have to be transported back. The charcoal truck can take goods to the rural areas on the return trip.

As a renewable product, charcoal might get an extra nod as well. ‎If a rational system-wide examination of the potential for charcoal as a domestic fuel were to be conducted, it might bring surprising ideas to the table. A charcoal fueled fan stove would be small, powerful, controllable and very clean burning.

Who represents 'Big Charcoal'?

Regards
Crispin

Crispin:

Char-making stoves - household or commercial - can rapidly meet the cooking market where LPG and electricity are not accessible in volumes.

Except where population densities are very high and multi-story buildings and heavy traffic the rule rather than the exception, high-quality wood stoves combined with expansion of charcoal is probably a "good enough" interim solution.

I mean, for several decades, for roughly 250+ million new households (couples, with or without new children) over the next 15-20 years.

Those latte-sipping poverty pundits who want to bring all the poor from 19th Century to 21st Century in 15 years still need to keep in mind that from the 1920s to the 1990s or later, some 250+ million households a year (average) in the developing world used charcoal.

I ought to write an energy history of the poor. For a million dollar advance. The Library of Congress is just a few miles away.

Since you wrote of Kenya possibly exporting charcoal to Rwanda or South Sudan, I suspect the Somali-Yemen charcoal trade is disrupted these days. A picture of charcoal  truck below attached. See a piece from the Economist three  years ago - Charcoal and terrorism in Somalia - A charred harvest: The unlikely link between Gulf lounges and Somalia’s jihadists<https://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21623793-unlikely-link-between-gulf-lounges-and-somalias-jihadists-charred-harvest> and another around that time UN Orders Ship Searches Off Somalia to Find Weapons, Charcoal<http://gcaptain.com/un-orders-ship-searches-off-somalia-to-find-weapons-charcoal/>.

What does WHO know?

Nikhil

[Inline image 1]

On Mon, Oct 2, 2017 at 11:58 AM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com<mailto:crispinpigott at outlook.com>> wrote:
Dear All

“Kenya loses 7,000 acres of woodland to cooking;”
I presume the author means annual net loss of tree cover.

So, Kenya is covered in pretty good growing land, What is the government doing to ensure the security of supply of energy to the biomass burning sector? Any national energy policy document has a section in it called “Security of Supply” and is usually filled with text about stores of gasoline and oil products. I believe (without good documentation) that Swaziland was the first country to include biomass for domestic consumption in the Green Paper and White Paper version of their national energy strategy.

7000 acres of woodland is nothing for a country the size and wealth of Kenya. What are they doing about it? Rwanda, a tiny and heavily populated country, manages to grow all their biomass fuel requirements, what’s up with Kenya? It is 22 times the size and has only 3.8 times the population.

Clearly the loss of forest cover for the energy needs of domestic consumers is caused by a policy failure, not a lack of resources or opportunity.

The selling point for the Swaziland policy was that 77% of the population relied on biomass for their energy needs. The original draft had not a single mention of this in terms of ‘doing something’ to ensure that biomass will continue to be available indefinitely.

In British Columbia there is a long standing rule that if you cut a tree for some commercial use you have to plant three more. Thus, while it may look as if they are ‘clear cutting the forest’ in fact they are farming vast areas on a 70 year cycle. The fact that is it longer than a human working cycle is immaterial.

Trees grow very well in Kenya. In the very dry areas Dr St Barbe Baker recommended the planting of peach trees which are not only useful for food, they provide very good quality firewood. It was his opinion that the desert in the NW could be continuously pushed back by planting peach trees on the margin. They are extremely heat resistance and drought resistant too (there is a drought cycle in that region tied to the Hadley Cells and how they evolve cyclically).

As Nikhil points out, if there is no shortage of free fuel, fuel efficiency is not necessarily an issue. They could even make charcoal and ship it to Rwanda or South Sudan.

Regards
Crispin

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