[Stoves] The goals of my TLUD work

[Nikhil Desai]

Jock:

What? "The cook matters""?? What blasphemy.

I am wondering, though, if First World schools need to teach cooking before
teaching pyrolysis. Cooking is the only activity I can think of where they
would have any opportunity of being involved with fire and that too if they
have gas stove or gas/charcoal grill.

Last year I asked someone in northeast US public high school system about
"home economics". His answer was, "Not much interest, but whatever there is
comes from the upper-income White folks, not the lower-income non-Whites,
who want their girls to focus on employment skills and whose boys are
culturally turned off from cooking."

I again remember Anil Rajvanshi's "The poor are not rich enough to afford
the luxury of cooking three meals a day."

The theologians of "clean woodstoves for the world's poor" have a mythical
image - put in front of their publications and on their websites - of
"dirty cooking". They do not care about rest of the cooking tasks, or the
kitchen except for "stacking" and "ventilation".

This cruel reductionism is plainly racist, though unlikely to be
deliberate. EPA is known to be arrogant, that's all. Real stovers deal with
real people, not lab protocols and standardization that is fuel-free,
cook-free, context-free. A kitchen is an intimate part of family and social
life. Converted into a sandbox for the accidental imperialists (re: Brita
Victor).
------------------

Neil:

For "Third World" markets, a half-container is a minimum load that is
attractive port-to-port. Import duties and local taxes are difficult to get
exemption from but that is a policy variable worth working on if the market
is sizable. (Customs and revenue authorities have their targets and can't
go around exempting every tooth paste brand or a stove gadget.) Internal
warehousing and transport are more of a problem, but a minimum 100% mark-up
over cif cost is reasonable to launch a new retail product or brand or
model.

Then comes the question of whether the product is seen as "aspirational"
from the consumer viewpoint. GACC has been sold on an EPA theology of
"aspirational" - setting standards so high that engineers are pushed to the
limits of thermodynamics, damn the cook's preferences. But seeing
"aspirational" in terms of "keeping up with the Joneses", there is a catch
-- it should not be seen as a luxury item even for the upper-income.

This is in part what happened to the "solar lantern" market (an easier way
to charge phone battery, if there is a battery-to-battery transfer).  In
India, some brands were introduced in supermarkets and electronics stores
as "camping" equipment. Then there was a "Chinese" market in common streets
and the literally on the streets -- vendors on the ground. Guess who won.

Until a biomass cookstove comes down from the airy skies of TC-285 and the
Rose Garden, to the street sellers of Indian peri-urban markets, there will
be no mass uptake. All this talk of business models and financing
mechanisms would make some headway but if the story of solar lanterns and
micro-grids is any indication, a quantum ten-fold increase would still be a
drop in the pot of water to be boiled. (Pardon my mixing of metaphors.)


Nikhil



On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 11:14 AM, <neiltm at uwclub.net> wrote:

> On 29 Sep 2017 at 9:26, Jock Gill wrote:
>
> > As for stoves for areas that need better cooking tools, I am all for
> that.
> > It is just not my primary area of focus at this time.  Further, my view
> is
> > that if it is not good enough for the wealthy, why is it good enough for
> > anyone else? I expect adoption of new cooking tools would be a good deal
> > faster if we could point to their use in the wealthy world
>
> I couldn't agree more, and in the UK at least it is certainly easy to see
> the beginnings of this.  A few years ago a wood fired oven was fairly
> unheard of until the TV chef Jamie Oliver popularised it. Now they are
> rapidly becoming a commonplace installed in vans, or under canvas at
> fayres, cooking pizza for eg.  We will see at least one tonight at a street
> food event which is now a regular weekly event in Milton Keynes where we
> live.  I have also seen open flame wood stoves used for stove top cooking
> at fayres, and advertising 'cooked over a wood fire' as a draw, and it
> proves popular.  The charcoal BBQ has of course been popular for some time,
> whereas I never saw one as a child.
>
> Looking online for companies in the UK advertising 'outdoor kitchens',
> there is certainly a rich persons market for this, and wood fired ovens can
> be part of that, but mostly it's expensive lumps of LPG kit.  This could so
> easily change though I'm sure, and TLUDs and rocket stoves become an
> accepted part of the mix.  Biolite seem to have the slickest marketing of
> the idea of cooking over wood successfully, although how much of that is
> down to the gimmic of the smartphone charging (eventually) TEG is a Q.
> Their new smokeless fan assisted open fire with its cooking options could
> also open up this further outdoor cooking dimension, but I think there
> ought to be room for more stove options, and as I suggested to Dr Nurhuda,
> his new 'toroidal vortex' fan driven TLUD 'Prime' stove if he/they do
> decide to make it in a wood version ought to be a winner I feel - the
> possibility to cook over a wood fire with no soot on the pans to clean up
> afterwards - what's not to like?  Then you would have an identifiable
> 'third world' stove as a desired object in the first world.  Currently I
> see no such possibility of getting hold of any of these stoves in the UK,
> although I did see one of Paul's Champion TLUDs I could have bought at an
> eye watering price to match the eye watering postage.  I'm personally not
> going to pay silly money for something, but I would be prepared to buy two
> or three and donate one or two if I could pay the local price, which would
> neatly avoid customs charging 20% tax on importing as they would come in
> under the cut off for imposing the tax, but how prohibitive postage
> charges, way exceeding the cost of the stove might be avoided is a Q I
> don't have answers to, but the Chinese seem to have uniquely abolished the
> problem!
>
> Otherwise, without direct marketing, batches of imports might prove more
> practicable.
>
> An approach to Jamie Oliver to try one or two could easily start a whole
> new trend as he already did with the wood ovens.  It has to be doable, even
> in damp, grey skies UK.
>
> Neil Taylor
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 9:26 AM, Jock Gill <jock at jockgill.com> wrote:
>
>> Crispin,
>>
>> I absolutely concur that the cook matters.  My middle daughter is the
>> director of education at Christopher Kimball's Milk Street Kitchen.  The
>> design of her new kitchen was driven by the needs of the cook and her
>> husband.
>>
>> Please remember I am principally promoting understanding just what
>> pyrolysis and Biochar are.  Neither word is even in any of the tests
>> administered in US schools.  No teacher gets rewarded for teaching about
>> carbon negative energy.  If we do not understand the creativity of
>> pyrolysis, how on earth do we expect to accomplish Drawdown?  I wonder if
>> Drawdown and long term carbon sequestration, which benefits 100% of the
>> global population, is perhaps of more importance than  other applications
>> of pyrolysis and Biochar?
>>
>> As for stoves for areas that need better cooking tools, I am all for
>> that. It is just not my primary area of focus at this time.  Further, my
>> view is that if it is not good enough for the wealthy, why is it good
>> enough for anyone else? I expect adoption of new cooking tools would be a
>> good deal faster if we could point to their use in the wealthy world.  This
>> is one reason I have demonstrated how to modify charcoal grills such that
>> they make charcoal when you grill.  Carbon negative grilling creates
>> Biochar for your gardens etc.  Carbon negative grilling contributes to
>> drawdown while it creates better tasting grilling results.  I know.  The
>> proof is in the eating!
>>
>> Thoughts?  I know you will have some ;-)
>>
>> Many thanks,
>>
>> Jock
>>
>> Jock Gill
>> P. O. Box 3
>> Peacham, VT 05862
>>
>
>
>
>
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