[Stoves] About LPG and India and biomass stoves

Crispin Pemberton-Pigott crispinpigott at outlook.com
Wed Oct 4 05:21:09 CDT 2017


Dear Paul

Sensible comments as usual. Thanks. I don’t have a monopoly on how the big questions should be approached so I note your idea about separating stove by group, with lots of quibbles for another time. The fact is there are so many misconceptions allowed to run riot about stoves we have to take practical steps in the arenas we can affect.

The risk for the TLUD as a ‘technology’ is that I see it being tied, inextricably, to the biochar-soil-amendment-climate-controlling narrative. There is nothing inherent about a TLUD that requires this diversion. If the concept of the biochar-soil-amendment-climate-controlling narrative is widely accepted, actions taken at scale, a systems approach will be used as the little contributions from individual stoves – useful in certain cases – will either be considered a cute also-ran or marginalized in the interests of scale. Cooks will be fighting with the char makers for access to the raw material.  The char makers will win because they can control the quality and have a higher yield.

The path you are choosing looks good now because you have been beating your head against a wall for years. Now a few cracks are appearing. It might be much easier to walk around the wall to get to the other side. TLUD’s as an operating behaviour, are systematically cleaner burning than common use. To restrict your options to only particular fuels, preparations, co-benefits (char) and loading methods is hardly a great idea. Why do that?

What could and should be a major sector of a large and diverse market is being trimmed to a narrow description because it looks as if there is support from some quarters. Don’t hitch your wagon to one horse.

TLUD gasifiers are a perfectly acceptable technology and the multiple mentions of the chambers getting too hot for tincanium is a distraction. If you have a materials problem, solve it. That is what I am doing in UB. It is an essential part of professionalising the sector. People want products, not experiments. At least use the opportunity to promote TLUD’s, not only those which are tuned to producing char. The enthusiasts are getting to grips with micro-gasification and it can be applied to a variety of tasks at least one of which is simply burning all the fuel for a useful purpose.

I am not asking you to slacken, but broaden.

Best regards
Crispin



Crispin,

There is much truth in what you have written about so many different topics.  That number of topics raises the question about separation of topics or unification of topics.     My feeling are influenced by my years working on TLUD stoves.

1.  The decisions should be in relation to assisting the impoverished people, and not focused n "setting riight" all the wrongs associated  with some toipic, which in this this case is LPG big business.

2.  The issues about the unfair labling of "dirty solid fuels" cannot be resolved by placing ALL of the solid fuels together, and keeping ALL of the biomass stove types together.  There are some biomass stoves that do not deserve to be protected and justified.   Let them drop out.        That is essentially saying that the gasifier stoves (which have a good chance to be finally recognized as being worthy of consideration) should be disassociated from the other biomass stoves.   I have been saying that in the "Classification...." document.

3.  Similar rationale about the other solid fuel, meaning coal.   I am not against coal.   I believe that there can be (and are) some stoves / heaters that can burn coal cleanly.   But they will need to be presented separately from the biomass stoves, meaning separate from the poor-combustion biomass stoves and also from the very good combustion gasifier stoves.

4.  I consider it a great advancement that Kirk Smith has openned the door for consideration of the TLUD gasifier stoves (and any other biomass stoves that can present the data and success stories that he is seeking).   I  will not be trying to make a general case that would include rocket stoves or charcoal stoves or even gasifiers stoves of coal, and not even the non-TLUD gasifier stoves  ("fan-jet" etc.).

5.  The above comments might seem "selfish" or "seff-centered on TLUDs", but the approach is realistic about getting at least one type of biomass stove into the "acceptable" category and to disprove the "dirty solid fuels" statements.  Please re-read comment #1 about the purpose being to help the poor families, not some idealistic objective.    The global need for much improved cookstoves is so great that there is plenty of room for LPG and the gasifiers of biomass.    I have no desire to tear down the LPG efforts;  improve them, yes.   And I certainly would like to show that the target families are appreciate and desire the TLUD stoves with local biomass fuels even more than they do the LPG stovers with imported fossil fuels.   But that can only happen when the TLUD stoves are into the communities in significant numbers.

Paul




-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20171004/77a5024f/attachment.html>


More information about the Stoves mailing list