[Stoves] farmed fuels
Ronal Larson
rongretlarson at comcast.net
Tue Jun 25 21:37:40 CDT 2019
Christa: cc Kirk and list
Thanks.
The main not yet understood by me items are the air flow paths/lengths. Not necessary to control primary air, but I’d like to see how hard or valuable it would be to control the power level.
The other big item for me relates to use of the produced char. Any indication they are getting improved crop productivity, better drought protection, lowered need for fertilizer/water, etc.?
Ron
> On Jun 25, 2019, at 12:27 AM, Stoves <stoves at foodandfuel.info> wrote:
>
> Ron,
> I can try to check with the company next time I am in Malawi. Just returned yesterday.
>
> I don’t think they consider themselves as ‘stove-makers’, their central workshop banged up the drums upon instruction of the director of agriculture and the devices seemed to serve the purpose of getting the food cooked with the biomass residues they have on-farm without other uses. The company is not too fond of strangers running around their farms though…. Always puts an extra stress on management. But can try to follow up myself, especially how many are still in operation and where, it is all in Malawi on the company farms scattered in the different areas of the country.
> Best regards
> Christa
>
>> On 24. Jun 2019, at 06:42, Ronal Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net <mailto:rongretlarson at comcast.net>> wrote:
>>
>> Christa:
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> If you could pass on my questions to the stove makers, those answers could motivate a lot of valuable advances globally on the use of corn cobs, TLUDs, biochar, and CDR = carbon dioxide removal.
>>
>> If not practicaL, then perhaps someone can recommend a local Malawi NGO to add a little testing/reporting. Maybe there is even enough variation between the 14 versions, that we might learn a lot more, with minimum expense. Are all 14 in Malawi?
>>
>> Ron
>>
>>
>>
>>> On Jun 23, 2019, at 4:16 PM, Stoves <stoves at foodandfuel.info <mailto:stoves at foodandfuel.info>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Ron, sorry I forgot to sign with my name, its Christa Roth, as you guessed.
>>> Let me answer your questions as far as I know:
>>>
>>>> 5. My questions on this particular stove:
>>>> a. What char yield is obtained? 25% possible?
>>> Never measured, because the main objective is to find a good use for the ca. 300 metric tons of farm residues (otherwise rotting away or eventually taken home by farm workers) to substitute firewood that the farm would need to purchase. The char is an added benefit, but not the driver of this intervention which trying to cut costs and at the same time reduce their carbon footprint. so we came up with this idea.
>>>
>>>> b. Can you supply the dimensions for the components. (Diameters and heights). A sketch would help (wanting to see both primary and secondary ari flows)
>>> Well, not really, would need to go back and measure, as I didn't make the final versions. It is their technology now. I just gave them the idea and documented it for their corporate social responsibility purposes. It was a bit trial and error until we got the diameter of the fuel container right for the firepower needed for the pot while still fitting into a common oil drum, that serves as outer cylinder of the gasifier to preheat the secondary air. The height of the fuel container is matched to provide the 20-30 minutes fire with the corncobs that is needed to cook that particular existing pot of maize porridge for about 100 people.
>>>
>>>> c. Of particular interest is your use of a skirt - which we don’t see enough of. How important for efficiency gain?
>>> The skirt is not so much for efficiency gain but for safety so that the open flames are sheltered so nobody gets burnt. The fuel is free, there are up to 300 mt tons of it after the maize harvest in May, so no need to aim at efficiency gains as the large-scale cooking is not done all year round but mostly from August-December in the time of field preparation and planting. So just when the fuel is available and dry.
>>>
>>>> d. Is there primary air control? Might the primary air receive preheating?
>>> No primary air control, it is not needed as this is only to boil one pot of maize porridge, so no heat control / turndown needed.
>>>
>>>> e. This looks like you must be cooking for better than free - zero cost fuel and a salable (biochar) product. Can you estimate the months of operation to pay off the cost of the steel parts? (Over a 3-stone fire competition).
>>> No idea, the company takes old drums from their operations which is not a real cost to them.
>>>
>>>> f. Has anyone done a simple water boiling test? Might you be at Tier five?
>>> Why would we make a water boiling test? The test is to cook the food and not water. And people cook outside in open shed, so nobody cares about any emissions. It is definitely less than the wood fire before. But what counts for the company is that they don’t need to buy firewood for cooking. How much, we never quantified as it varied greatly from farm to farm and how people would prepare and use the firewood. Those people are running a commercial farm and not scientific research.
>>>
>>>> g. Is anyone making these for sale and at what price? How many in use now?
>>> The company makes them for their own farms, they said they supplied them to all 14 of their farms but I did not follow up. That was 3 years ago.
>>>
>>>
>>>> On 23. Jun 2019, at 23:39, Ronal Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net <mailto:rongretlarson at comcast.net>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> List and “foodandfuel"
>>>>
>>>> 1. Apologies for an empty message a few minutes ago. No idea what I did wrong.
>>>>
>>>> 2. Thanks to Kirk Harris for starting this thread on fuels coming from farms. In this case, corn cobs, which we have seen a good bit of - but I recall no stove list message quite like this one Repeating the attachment:
>>>>
>>>> <amaizing cooking.pdf>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 3. Thanks to Teddy (cookswell) for describing his techniques for making char from cobs - but his char-making did not seem to involve cooking.
>>>>
>>>> 4. . “”foodandfuel” is almost certainly a creation of Christa Roth. (See http://foodandfuel.info/foodandfuel/ <http://foodandfuel.info/foodandfuel/Archive_files/HERA%202011%20micro-gasification%20manual%20V1.0.pdf>. And especially.
>>>> http://foodandfuel.info/foodandfuel/Archive_files/HERA%202011%20micro-gasification%20manual%20V1.0.pdf <http://foodandfuel.info/foodandfuel/Archive_files/HERA%202011%20micro-gasification%20manual%20V1.0.pdf>
>>>>
>>>> Maybe Christa wrote this specific list entry, but if not, could we hear more about “foodandfuel” in Malawi. Seems like some excellent stove work going on there.
>>>>
>>>> 5. My questions on this particular stove:
>>>> a. What char yield is obtained? 25% possible?
>>>> b. Can you supply the dimensions for the components. (Diameters and heights). A sketch would help (wanting to see both primary and secondary ari flows)
>>>> c. Of particular interest is your use of a skirt - which we don’t see enough of. How important for efficiency gain?
>>>> d. Is there primary air control? Might the primary air receive preheating?
>>>> e. This looks like you must be cooking for better than free - zero cost fuel and a salable (biochar) product. Can you estimate the months of operation to pay off the cost of the steel parts? (Over a 3-stone fire competition).
>>>> f. Has anyone done a simple water boiling test? Might you be at Tier five?
>>>> g. Is anyone making these for sale and at what price? How many in use now?
>>>>
>>>> Again congratulations for a nice product design.
>>>>
>>>> Ron
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> On Jun 23, 2019, at 9:23 AM, Stoves <stoves at foodandfuel.info <mailto:stoves at foodandfuel.info>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Teddy,
>>>>> we have similar experiences in Malawi with charcoal from shelled maize cobs produced while cooking with the aMaizing gasifiers on a commercial farm. The small biochar goes to the farms tree nursery and the larger pieces are sought after as fire-lighter by the women cooks to take home
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> <amaizing cooking.pdf>
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 23. Jun 2019, at 08:11, Cookswell Jikos <cookswelljikos at gmail.com <mailto:cookswelljikos at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>> <snip>
>>>>>> Van: Stoves [mailto:stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org <mailto:stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org>] Namens Kirk H.
>>>>>> Verzonden: woensdag 19 juni 2019 22:38
>>>>>> Aan: stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org <mailto:stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
>>>>>> Onderwerp: [Stoves] farmed fuels
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi All,
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Does anyone have any stories about using farmed fuels for cook stoves. I grew some Pigeon Pea plants last year and the stalks burn well in a TLUD-ND. They died from the frost during the winter, but we did get a small crop of peas.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Kirk H.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>
>>
>
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