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

Sun Dec 23 09:03:03 CST 2018

Crispin. We developed this stove based on fond hope of helping rural women.
The idea came sometime in early 1990s after discussing with one of my
engineers who came from Himalayan region of Uttarakhand. There is a major
crisis in these areas of people distilling illicit alcohol. They drink this
hooch and beat up their wives. The wives had to walk long distances in
hills to get fuel for cooking. So we thought that this low concentration
ethanol will solve the twin problem of men drinking and women will have
better fuel.

Sad part is neither these problems were solved though, we feel it did start
a program of ethanol cooking!

Cheers.

Anil

Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI)
Tambmal, Phaltan-Lonand Road
P.O.Box 44
Phaltan-415523, Maharashtra, India
Ph:+91-9168937964
e-mail:nariphaltan at gmail.com
           nariphaltan at nariphaltan.org

http://www.nariphaltan.org

http://nariphaltan.org/narisouvenir.pdf (Fifty Years of NARI)

On Sun, Dec 23, 2018 at 8:16 PM Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

> 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 44
> Phaltan-415523, Maharashtra, India
> Ph:+91-9168937964 <+919168937964>
> e-mail:nariphaltan at gmail.com
>            nariphaltan at nariphaltan.org
>
> http://www.nariphaltan.org
> <https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nariphaltan.org&data=02%7C01%7C%7C182f652d235e4bb90ddd08d6687b4ccc%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636811276103368575&sdata=YQBKXwYOXEjqbVXO3uU1F8DpApaRanQXq88wmJzf1Wg%3D&reserved=0>
>
> http://nariphaltan.org/narisouvenir.pdf
> <https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnariphaltan.org%2Fnarisouvenir.pdf&data=02%7C01%7C%7C182f652d235e4bb90ddd08d6687b4ccc%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636811276103368575&sdata=YEh7K6GCXEwEAzrINducQVPcqflgUUefwXXMN44HEiU%3D&reserved=0>
> (Fifty Years of NARI)
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