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

[Nikhil Desai]

Jock:

You are describing two separate issues here - one is "make the cook happy".
The other is "save the planet".

1. On the first point, I couldn't agree more. I am a veteran of kitchen
battles. What cookstove designers and promoters seem to have forgotten that
not everybody who is classified by WHO/Kirk Smith a "solid fuel user" uses
"three stone fire" or some primitive fixed (built in situ) equivalent, and
all customers and their wants are not alike, their residences and kitchens
fit in some standard box. What they need for modeling, they assume; facts
are irrelevant.

This is not a small oversight, and modeling convenience does not justify
building ignorance in models by consensual assumption. From whatever I have
seen around India, Africa and a couple of islands in the Pacific, people
who are lucky enough to have a "permanent" home - with bricks and mortar,
say - have had "kitchen design" by masons for centuries. It is not just the
better off people who have kitchen designers and preferences and not
everybody who uses solid fuels is poor.

Kirk Smith is fond of saying nobody has rejected or returned a gas stove,
but he also insists that nobody should want to - or be permitted to - keep
a second stove of kerosene or biomass, whatever the stove performance
(nobody knows the efficiencies of actual stoves used).

To me that's like Paul Ehrlich and Henry Kendall's call for involuntary
contraception or termination of pregnancy.

Who knows, happier cooks may choose to have fewer children. Call in family
planners of the world and commission another five million dollars of
research to create a happiness metric before TC-xxx (after this one).

2. I like to treat one problem with one choice at a time when it comes to
public expenditures, usually for jurisdictional problems. You might have
seen that any piece of legislation in US Congress, when it becomes a law,
gets parceled out to different departments, agencies,  under different
sections of Code of Federal Regulations. The same is needed for
multi-objective policy decision in developing countries. When the
absorptive and implementation capacities are limited, as is the case with
solid fuel stove programs, it's best to keep initial focus on pleasing the
cook. Everything else - including quantified "health benefits" to
individuals - is a red herring.
.
What that means is even when there are multiple co-benefits of
technological change, deliver on one - in this case, usability. (Like what
Crispin seems to have done in Kyrgyzstan and Robert and he in Mongolia.) If
the stove isn't used, there is no saving of forests, climate, lives,
chastity and honor. Just as people stopped arguing whether K-12 education
earns a high enough return on investment, or whether electrical grids
should be extended or how many first responders are adequate for a disaster
emergency, there ought to be no ex-ante fuss about expanding access to
"modernized" or "modern" cooking. Clean enough, safe enough, efficient
enough; whatever pleases the cook, even to get her out of the kitchen more
and rest or attend to other responsibilities. (I am indebted to Liz Bates
for this advice many years ago.)

I kinda walked away from climate change mitigation (GHG emission avoidance)
work some years ago but theoretically, the CDR ideas appeal to me. Not in
and of themselves - I couldn't care less about Nick Stern's models for 2200
or even 2100 - but that a transformation of the land-agriculture economy
would enhance resilience of local communities against climate risks. I like
to say, "The poor suffer the climate whether or not it is changing, whether
or not the change is anthropogenic, and whether or not fossil fuel
consumption is driven down to zero."

For now, instead of ""if carbon is too valuable to waste", I remember the
advice from a UIUC student roughly a century ago - "Wood is too valuable to
use as a fuel."

Nikhil

On Mon, Oct 2, 2017 at 2:09 PM, Jock Gill <jock at jockgill.com> wrote:

> Nikhil,
>
> I would agree that stoves are part of a much larger system.  Key parts of
> the system are emotional qualities:  Does the stove make the cook happier
> with his or  her kitchen?  Does it reflect well on him or her?  Does the
> stove give the cook a sense that they are able to cook better because of
> the new stove, a better tool?  Consider, if you will, how much time and
> money is spent on kitchen designers to give the the cook the best possible
> kitchen experience - to also add the greatest amount of value to the home.
> If this is good enough for the goose, it better be good enough for the
> gander, no matter where they are or their economic status.
>
> Another  metric for certainly any charcoal producing stove is its ability
> to support drawdown efficiently.  This leads to the suggestions below.  I
> rarely see mention of this essential function of a polytechnic device.
>
> A metric I rarely see is how efficient is the system at capturing the
> carbon present in the biomass.  I suggest that this target should be 50%
>  of the carbon, or 25% of the weight of the initial feedstock.  This has to
> be very high quality Biochar that is clean and not full of residues.  If we
> do not measure this, it more or less puts the lie to any claims that the
> biochar is worth making because it has so many direct and indirect benefits
> - not limited to drawdown and regenerative agriculture. I note that this
> 25% is only for natural draft TLUDS. Fan assisted TLUDS, such as several in
> Asia, should have a higher goal, perhaps 30% of the weight of the
> feedstock, or 60% of the carbon in the feed stock.  I have seen reports
> from Viet Nam of 30% as a reality. Again,  if  carbon is too valuable to
> waste, it is too valuable to burn up in a poorly design TLUD.
>
> Note:  For many years of making tin can TLUDs with more or less central
> apertures, I thought the upper limit of clean carbon capture was about
> 20%.  I now find that by covering 85% of the pyrolysis surface with a steel
> disk, insulating the reactor chamber, and tightly controlling the primary
> air, I can get 25% of the weight of the feedstock (50% of the carbon).
> Starting with 450 grams of wood pellets, this is an increase of 28% - from
> 90 grams of charcoal to 115 grams.  This is a significant gain of 25
> grams.  Why waste 25 grams of carbon by burning it up in a poorly designed
> unit?  See attached photos.
>
> All of which is to say that a proper and inclusive  set of metrics will
> result in a well balanced device.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jock
>
> Jock Gill
> P. O. Box 3
> Peacham, VT 05862
>
> Cell: (617) 449-8111
>
> Extract CO2 from the atmosphere!
>
> [image: image1.JPG]
> 36 holes made with a 3/32 inch bit (2.2 - 2.4 mm bit).
>
> [image: image2.JPG]
>
> The gap for the gases is about 5mm.
>
>
>
>
>
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