[Stoves] Calculating cooking costs and char costs ----Re: [biochar] Where to discuss STOVES AND CARBON offsets and drawdown

[Nikhil Desai]

Crispin:

Crop waste - or urban garden/park waste - doesn't have to be burned in the
open. What you are complaining about in Beijing is what Kirk Smith suffered
in New Delhi last year and is gearing up for this year. However, there are
markets for waste biomasses.

These are fragmented markets. Matchmaking and logistics can be
unpredictable, which is why open burning of crops and grasses - I remember
seeing from the air vast fires in South Africa-Mozambique area - needs
promotion of markets other than household fuels.

Farm and rice/oil milling wastes have been sold to different customers in
my part of India as far back as I can remember. (Ceramic kilns I visited as
a child.)

In the 1990s, a biomass power plant was set up in Punjab, India using straw
or rice husks and with a 12-15 USc/kWh feed-in tariff. By 2007 or so, it
became unviable because the husk fetched higher price from brick kilns, so
the plant owner asked for a raise in tariff.

Brick kiln demands were driven by construction boom but also because the
government raised the prices for coal, lignite, and fuel oil. Fossil fuel
opponents might have cheered, just that brick kilns probably generated
higher local pollutant concentrations.

Around 2011/2012 I visited a brick kiln and confirmed crop waste use and
pollution in southern Maharashtra.

The BP/Castrol pellet cookstove project failed as feedstock prices went up.
Same issue - brick kilns.

I wonder if the rise in feedstock prices - from zero, that is - killed the
much-vaunted "Husk Power", played up by IFC and Ashden.

There are non-energy markets too. I saw truck loads of some farm waste
being transported on highways - cattlefeed from plant-rich to semi-desert
area.

Just came across a company for rice husk ash - http://www.ricehuskash.com/.
So even the ash is being put to use.

Biochar will have competition. IHME ought to compute GBD from brick kiln
PM2.5.

Nikhil

On Sep 18, 2017, at 4:17 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

Thanks Tom



The angle I was taking was that the wasteful burning of crop wastes is
entirely because it is not worth bringing it in from the field.



I figured that there were two saleable products: the gas and the char, and
as long as it broke even. As the fertiliser has a real value (meaningful as
a product) it is reasonable to establish a collection mechanism within a
radius of a gasification station and fertiliser plant. As you can imagine,
there are lots of them.



The amount of material available is large.



The direct consequence (stopping the burning) is an improvement in the air
quality as it drifts into Beijing which is harmed each year during ‘burning
week’. The burning is illegal but happens at night. It makes a brown cloud
of eye-stinging smoke that hangs around the region for about 4 days.  When
it happens it gives photographers a chance to get out the cameras and wail
about the air pollution ‘caused by burning coal’. The smoke has a
significant GHG cooling effect.



Regards

Crispin





In the last couple of years biochar has become a national priority in
China. We have seen substantial research and several production facilities
but it is difficult to get a clear picture of actual production and use.
IBI china provided us with a map and description earlier this year:



“Straw biomass biochar and biochar-based organo-mineral compound
fertilizers approved as one of the Top Ten viable systems for recycling
agricultural residues by China's Ministry of Agricuture”
http://www.biochar-international.org/node/8858



Tom
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