[Stoves] [biochar] Methane from char-makers [1 Attachment]

[Nikhil Desai]

Crispin, Paul:

Incentives are one option, penalties another. If they can be enforced.

In Indian Punjab, this problem was unintentionally addressed by a feed-in
tariff for biomass power that was high enough to collect and deliver the
agro waste to the power plant.

That was around 2004, when I met one of the project developers. Two years
later, he found it uncompetitive because the farmers were demanding higher
price at the farmgate - they had another customer, namely, brick kilns for
the exploding construction market all around.

You can't solve an air basin quality problem by one cookstove at a time or
one farm at a time;  tinkering with emission rates and measuring them with
lab protocols amounts to nothing unless there is an area-wide
transformation of sources and/or fuels. This is where both the stovers as
well as the gassers - I am coining a new word - fail.

I have two economics phrases everybody should keep in mind - "elasticity"
(demand and supply, with respect to price, income, and substitutes) and
"discount rate".

Without economics, physics is useless.

Nikhil

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



On Tue, Feb 26, 2019 at 5:13 PM Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

> Dear Paul
>
>
>
> >Please confirm, but I am sure that those factories are quite large, and
> distance to transport the biomass can become a problem.
>
>
>
> I understand that transport is not the main cost – collecting it from the
> field is.
>
>
>
> >If you want to burn it without smoke (which is not difficult) no one
> cares.
>
>
>
> The issue is not the waste of biomass, it is air pollution. There are bans
> on burning, but usually it is burned at night by “persons unknown”.
>
>
>
> >Agreed.   But they are not burning it without smoke.
>
>
>
> All burning of it in the field is illegal.
>
>
>
> >So “not difficult” could also mean “not financially viable”.
>
>
>
> There is no incentive (at all) to burn it cleanly. It would first have to
> be collected. It is not worth it.
>
>
>
> >Please comment on the “not difficult” technology that you have in mind,
> and what are the costs associated with it.
>
>
>
> You know well that this material can be burned in a TLUD or downdraft
> fashion. Alex English has some ideas. Anything useful would be continuous,
> so a trench-like device might be viable. Flame caps are the way forward –
> if that is what you want to do. It doesn’t hvea to be done vertically.
>
>
>
> >Also, please comment on the degree to which mechanization (possibly
> smallish tractors??) is in use in  the areas where burning is causing the
> air pollution problems.  Raking straw manually is quite different from
> having a tractor-pulled rake to create  windrows of the agro-refuse (sort
> of like hay and straw operations in  North America like I remember for
> decades ago in  my youth.)
>
>
>
> At present no one is willing to pay farmers to remove and deliver
> agriwaste, (in most localities).  Why would they do that work and then burn
> it just to be “clean”? If you are willing to pay them to do it, rather
> don’t burn it – make pellets or fertiliser. But there is no subsidy for
> creating that, it has to float on its own income.
>
>
>
> Due to the scale of the need, it seems large scale processing is the long
> term solution. I warn that they said the seasonality of the supply is a big
> issue. No one can afford to buy stock and hold it for a year.
>
>
>
> Regard
>
> Crispin
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