[Stoves] Fwd: "The effects of fuel type and stove design on ..." - new citations

Thu Dec 26 20:35:31 CST 2019

Ron:

I believe I did read and comment on Paul's 2016 report soon after it came
out. I think I reacted favorably and asked Paul something about marketing
the charcoal.

I just did a quick review of Paul's paper and am cc'ing Sujoy and Sujatha
to see if they have something to add to the price of $0.12/kg under the
"charcoal buyback" scheme.

My question to them all and you is whether using the stoves for cooking
saleable food products has greater profit potential than selling mere
charcoal. Might obviate the need for silly "carbon market" earnings that go
to feeding consultants.

Yes, earning a profit from cooking, not just from cookstoves.

Cookstoves are not cooking. A simple fact that has been ignored in 50 years
of engineer tinkering with unreliable test protocols for standard fuels,
standard task (boiling water), standard use pattern for standard humanoids.

Yes, as Robert van der Plas pointed out about five years ago, "If we drop
WBT, what is saved? Are we not junking all received knowledge?" (My
paraphrasing of his words; I am writing from memory, and he was only
raising a question which I answered in the affirmative.)

Yes, too, in saving trees and climate, we have forgotten that food is
cooked to please the eater and that cooked food is profitable, though the
profit rates are as contextual as foods and ancillary technologies
(delivery of animal products, say) and preferences for timing, temperature
of service, and taste.

I hope someone else on this list narrates observations from real life, not
laboratories, about changes in the food economies of Third World (or for
that matter the First and Second Worlds) in the last 50 years. In my
traveling years, the only systematic trend I saw around the world, apart
from loss of forests (which may or may not have had anything to do with
cookstoves), was outsourcing the kitchen, preparation and sale of foods
outside the home.

Of course charcoal can be sold profitably. So can foods. Did you see Queen
of Katwe? Or notice Teddy's posts about charcoal sales to eateries in
Kenya? (I collected many such stories but just lost my hard drive and two
years of data not backed up, but I could start again.)

So here is a proposal to Paul and anybody else who has sold stoves that
have expanded income earning opportunities -- CAN WE PLEASE look at the
economy of cooking and foods, not just of fuels? In real life for real
people in real geographies?

I think this paper you cited - Samal, et al. (2019) - is a delightful
overview. (Samal cc'd here.) It is from a " 1st International Conference on
Manufacturing, Material Science and Engineering", which raises hopes that
material scientists and product designers may take the field of stove
design forward, past (I hope) the dead wood of what they have reviewed. (By
"dead wood" I mean the obsession with lab tests for irrelevant and
unreliable "performance metrics" like fuel efficiency, and instead focus on
pleasing the cooks for the real job of stoves - COOKING. (And hearing space
or water, for personal consumption or, again, for commercial
opportunities.)

As the authors conclude, " Finally, during cookstove design attention
should be focussed on simplicity, reliability, accessibility, economy and
social culture. "

I raise a toast to wisdom.

N

------------------------
Nikhil Desai
(US +1) 202 568 5831
*Skype: nikhildesai888*

On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 2:40 PM Ronal Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net>
wrote:

> List:    cc  Nikhil,  Dan, Paul,  Kevin
>
> The direct link that Dan refers to is:
> http://www.drtlud.com/2016/09/30/deganga-tlud-project-2016/
>
> I have just re-read it, and find areas that both support Dan’s positives
> and some of my concerns (such as needing a subsidized price - and little
> char getting into the ground).
>
> Kevin’s name is here again (my only cc for my 24 Dec. message - still
> below) because he has been emphasizing zero cost modifications for
> cooking.  I know he can accept low cost if the units can make money.  How
> low does low have to be?
>
> Dan’s remarks help me to respond to Nikhil’s comments to me (see below) -
> who I am afraid didn’t discuss anything (at all) about TLUD interventions.
>   Dan is too modest to say so - but he is producing a lot of char while
> heating his (self-designed and self-built) home in Southern Colorado.  Char
> used as biochar.  Those going to ETHOS would be well advised to seek out
> Dan.
>
>  Nikhil - would you be good enough to speak (as an Economist) to a few of
> the many parts of Paul’s 2016 report.
>
> Paul:  any (third-year) update that would help this particular thread?  I
> am particularly impressed at the large potential annual income that can be
> earned.  It looks like one can claim a payback time of only a few months.
> Anything new on produced char becoming biochar?
>
> Ron
>
>
>
> On Dec 25, 2019, at 5:41 PM, dan weinshenker <danweinshenker at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> I'm wondering about your evaluation of the project "Case Study of the
> Acceptance of Champion  TLUD Gasifier Stoves in the Deganga Area, Ganges
> Delta, India"  ?  Report available on Paul Anderson's DrTLUD website.
> Project has expanded significantly even since this report.
>
> Seems like this is a high adoption program, thousands of stoves, numbers
> increasing year by year, with year after year sustained success.  It also
> has many related business components, from cooks earning money; charcoal
> collectors; charcoal purchases; management and coordination services; stove
> manufacturer; subsidized purchase finance, etc.
>
> All and everybody helping the whole; everybody making money.  Nobody
> getting rich, but enough incentives all around.
>
> To me, seems like a great total business plan.  Works because it's
> comprehensive.
>
> On Wed, Dec 25, 2019 at 9:06 AM Nikhil Desai <pienergy2008 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Ron:
>>
>> You asked for thoughts, so I will offer mine. As an economist, I ought to
>> know how money is made. (Raising grants. Administering grants. By
>> publishing papers and holding fourth at conferences, performing "show and
>> tell" before poor women, a form of poverty and climate tourism. Or taking a
>> cut of the CDM or VER markets to ensure that the poor are properly
>> penalized if their biomass is sourced renewably.)
>>
>> Stoves don't make money. People make money. That is a likely clue to why
>> charcoal-making stoves don't sell themselves as much as you believe they
>> should; there are too many cooks making sure that the broth is spoiled.
>>
>> And people "make money" when they do something financially profitable -
>> earning a return on their investment in the stove, their feedstock, and
>> their labor.
>>
>> It may well be that your favorite charcoal-making stoves are not
>> profitable enough in all contexts.  Or that non-cooks are busy baking their
>> own cake in the name of the poor. (EPA and Gates Foundation consultants, to
>> be precise.)
>>
>> Nikhil
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Nikhil Desai
>> (US +1) 202 568 5831
>> *Skype: nikhildesai888*
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 24, 2019 at 12:52 PM Ronal Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> List:  cc Kevin
>>>
>>> I recommend this (non-fee) overview article shown below.  The free pdf
>>> version is at:
>>> https://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.5141191?class=pdf.
>>>
>>> This is a nice stove-breakdown list - that they mostly cover:
>>>
>>> (a) According to technology used: Traditional and Improved cookstove
>>> (b) According to draft or air supply: Natural draft and Forced draft
>>> (c) According to combustion mechanism: Direct combustion and Gasifier
>>> (d) According to fuel used: wood, Dung cake, charcoal, residue crops,
>>> Multi-fuels
>>> (e) According to material: Mud, Brick, Ceramic, Metal and Hybrid
>>> (f) According to fuel feeding: Batch feeding or continuous feeding
>>> (g) According to utility: Domestic size or Community size
>>> (h) According to chimney used: Cookstove with chimney or cookstove
>>> without chimney
>>> (i) According to portability: Portable or fixed type
>>> (j) According to pot used: Single pot or multiple pots
>>>
>>> I would add one more:
>>> k). According to money flow:  Make money or spend money while cooking
>>>
>>> Obviously there should be some stove-user interest in money-making.  The
>>> only way I am aware of is making charcoal.   Others?
>>>
>>> So this k) option is already possible as a part of c) Gasifier (meaning
>>> only TLUD in this paper).  But (unfortunately) not much of k) is now
>>> happening as part of c).  Nor is marketing of char discussed in this
>>> article.
>>>
>>> But there are many ways to make charcoal and some of the other ways are
>>> potentially applicable to cooking tasks.   I’m working on a message on
>>> these other non-TLUD ways - and would welcome on-list or off-list dialog if
>>> anyone else is doing that.
>>>
>>> If we discuss k) seriously, it seems that k) can involve EVERY one of
>>> the breakdowns a) through j).  I am concentrating now on modifications of
>>> both the “Traditional” and “improved" parts of a).  This category can also
>>> expand what is covered in a) through j).  For instance,  b) can include “no
>>> draft”.   e) may have other options than those shown.  f) might have “and”
>>> as well as “or”.
>>>
>>> This paper is a nice summary of much past work, but is essentially
>>> silent on k) - the making of char/money while cooking.  No discussion of
>>> how char influences efficiency computation.
>>>
>>> Thoughts?
>>>
>>> Ron
>>>
>>>
>>> Begin forwarded message:
>>>
>>> *From: *Google Scholar Alerts <scholaralerts-noreply at google.com>
>>> *Subject: **"The effects of fuel type and stove design on ..." - new
>>> citations*
>>> *Date: *December 24, 2019 at 6:47:33 AM MST
>>> *To: *rongretlarson at comcast.net
>>>
>>> Evolution of high performance and low emission biomass cookstoves-an
>>> overview
>>> <http://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=https://aip.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1063/1.5141191&hl=en&sa=X&d=17213963389128872961&scisig=AAGBfm0-waMeF4PChI8-x6xowjhFKrv5zg&nossl=1&oi=scholaralrt>
>>> C Samal, PC Mishra, S Mukherjee, D Das - AIP Conference Proceedings, 2019
>>> As a huge rural population worldwide is depending on open-fired or
>>> traditional
>>> cookstoves to meet daily domestic energy needs, improvement of thermal
>>> efficiency
>>> and reduction of harmful emissions are essential. Accordingly, many
>>> researchers are …
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>>>
>>> *"The effects of fuel type and stove design on emissions and efficiency
>>> of natural-draft semi-gasifier biomass cookstoves" - new citations*
>>>
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