[Stoves] News: Methanol cooking fuel for india...

Sun Dec 23 08:44:27 CST 2018

Dear Anil

I found two things odd about the low concentration ethanol story and perhaps you can comment. Why low concentration? Was it easy to make? Or make without a distillation process? Or a good distillation process?

Ethanol is being tried in Madagascar maybe for the past five years. Kenya is in their sights. The local producers have no problem getting 85% concentration which is above the SANS requirement of 80%.

The energy content at 20% water is not great to begin with and when there is more of it the stove's cooking power becomes ever-more hopeless.  So the first question is why sell water as fuel in the first place?

There was a suspicious program in Malawi trying to sell water as a bonus in ethanol looking at the energy from reformation of H2O without mentioning the energy it subtracted to break it down. It got lots of subsidies.

Next is the expectation that ethanol is "a clean fuel". This silly talk has been going on for longer than most stove makers might realise. Some of the worst stoves are those thrown together in a garage burning ethanol or ethanol gel with attendant claims that because " the fuel is clean" the emissions are "safe".

Your story about the CO is not unusual at all. It is easy to create CO with ethanol. So my question is why the GOI doesn't have a performance requirement for combustion efficiency. It ethanol is that magical category of "clean fuels" that are acceptable no matter what the emissions are from the stove?

Thanks
Crispin
From: nariphaltan at gmail.com
Sent: December 22, 2018 9:06 PM
To: ndesai at alum.mit.edu; stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org
Reply to: stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org
Subject: Re: [Stoves] News: Methanol cooking fuel for india...

Stovers,

We pioneered in early 2000 the development of low concentration ethanol stove<https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnariphaltan.org%2Fethstove.pdf&data=02%7C01%7C%7C182f652d235e4bb90ddd08d6687b4ccc%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636811276103212334&sdata=szrBG39BkSR0%2F1JGJ6%2BdTr%2Ff%2F6wLi7SfD5ML9tJq1hw%3D&reserved=0>. However testing them in rural huts we found high amounts of CO emitted. This gave headaches to few hut dwellers. There is a propensity of higher CO emissions in ethanol/methanol fuels. They should be taken care of properly. Thus the combustion systems have to be better designed.

GOI in its stupidity is pushing all these things irrespective of their consequences. They are also pushing for ethanol production for cars from different biomass fuels. Stovers might like to read about a small essay that I wrote about it recently.
https://www.thebetterindia.com/167321/sugar-replacement-eco-friendly-ethanol-production-india/<https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thebetterindia.com%2F167321%2Fsugar-replacement-eco-friendly-ethanol-production-india%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7C182f652d235e4bb90ddd08d6687b4ccc%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636811276103368575&sdata=T8G6JENXMlLsmpXNSPQ5ozLDLw4TG22JiIqKsakzcjA%3D&reserved=0>

Cheers.

Anil

Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI)
Tambmal, Phaltan-Lonand Road
P.O.Box<http://P.O.Box> 44
Phaltan-415523, Maharashtra, India
Ph:+91-9168937964<tel:+919168937964>
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