[Stoves] Spherical Cow Dung Balls for ND-TLUDs in Bangladesh : Dung is very do-able

Julien Winter winter.julien at gmail.com
Sun Nov 4 12:29:18 CST 2018


Hi Nikhiil;

You raise some good points about academic debates on manure for fertilizer
vs. fuel, and that many technology interventions didn't succeed.

You are right that context is very important.  People don't burn cow dung
out of choice.  They would prefer wood.  Burning low density biomass and
dung for fuel is a very good indicator of a population that is under energy
stress.   Wood supplies about half the biomass energy supply in rural
Bangladesh.   The traditional stoves are smoky, but they are appropriate to
the situation, because they will burn anything, and cost nothing to build;
households are self-sustainable in cooking.   The TLUD is an odd fish.

Myself and colleagues in Bangladesh, are looking for ideas that could work
for rural homes in the context of biochar.  The cow dung washing could be a
winner, if they don't have to give up cooking time, and if washed dung is
capable of binding biomass into balls that burns more cleanly and
efficiently than pure dung.   They will start to test the idea any day now.

Making biochar in the Akha TLUD looks like it could be a winner (although
it will take about five year to say for certainty).  The cleanliness and
35% wood fuel savings of the TLUD is really appreciated.  The effect of
biochar fertilizers on their fertile, but low organic matter soils is quit
promising (still being quantified).

If we can leach fertility out of cow dung to make a biochar fertilizer, yet
not sacrifice compressed fuel for the TLUD, then I think we have got
another winning idea.

The judges of the idea are, of course, the rural people.  If an idea is
credible, they will jump on it, and innovate.

On a landscape scale, saving all cow dung to return to the soil will not be
sufficient to re-build their soil organic matter.  There just isn't enough
manure, and decomposition rates of soil organic matter in the humid tropics
is fast.  Saving dung would be important to increase the yield of
high-value vegetable crops grown in a limited area.   Adding biochar with
dung leachate will build soil organic matter and improve soil quality
better than dung alone.

It is a myth that bright ideas just fall into people's minds by mere
thinking.  Inspirations are hard to come by.  Inspirations don't arrive in
a vacuum.  We are born with 'blank slates' and what we can imagine has a
causal connection to our past and present experience (not the least of
which is the culture we are born into).   Thus, someone in the World has to
has to have the prepared mind, context, motivation and creative nouse to
think, "I should wash this manure".   In Kenya, Francis and Mary Kavita had
an idea, transmitted it to Richard Stanley, who put it on the Stoves list,
and the 'the shit hit the fan'.   One hundred and forty million people
living in rural Bangladesh had not thought of that.

Biochar is another example an idea not born in the minds of those in need
of the it.  The idea of biochar didn't arrive in the minds of soil
scientists studying soil organic matter conservation for fifty or more
years (I was one of them).  It arrived to Western scientists via the
Amazon.  When someone told soil organic matter scientists that char was
stable in soil, they knew the implications immediately.   "Why the heck
didn't WE see that?!!!!," they said.  It was a case of great
epistemological startlement, better known in the Anglophone world as an '
Oh Shit !!! moment '.

Wash the minerals and nitrogen out of cow manure before you burn it?  "Oh
dung !!"

Lets see how it works.

Cheers,
Julien


-- 
Julien Winter
Cobourg, ON, CANADA
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