[Stoves] Off-topic: Biomass power and charmaking

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

I have long given up on the EPA taking AA scientific path to anything. I don't know what they are up to, but it is not what I thought.

Duff coal (under 6mm) is easily separated into +2mm and dust. The problem with the dust is not that it is unburnable but that it is wet and very expensive to dry. It holds the moisture rather efficiently.

So how to create a usable product? First Gerrie of the "rock" which is to say, powdered rock which is ash. Because it has been ground to a powdered state by handling and crushing, the ash, or a lot of it, can in theory be removed by flotation in a dense media, but that makes it wet. Big problem.

So by blasting air over it or under it, a fluoridation takes place AND water evaporates so it is possibly to get three fractions rather inexpensively: the light fraction (density 1.4) which would have floated on the dense media, then the ash which is rock at the bottom (density >2.5) and "middlings" which in a normal is wasted as well because few want it.

Neither do we.

So the light fraction is pretty clean coal. Being powder and if it is South Africa, it has enough bitumen to be pressed hard and it will stock together without any binder.

Thus we can get say 60m tons of high quality high energy coal pellets of just the right size and shape, while stopping the auto-ignition of the stockpiles (followed by a decade of terrible combustion).

The use of air to separate gold dust from dirt was extensively used in the gold rush days in southern Australia. Water was extremely expensive and had to be brought by ox cart some huge distance. So the gold was pre-concentrated by fan a couple of times and then the precious water did the final washing.

Philip Lloyd did a lot of work on trying to find viable ways to use this wasted resource. Before him Prof Horsfal at Wit's Univ worked on semi-coking on the basis that smoke could be removed from the coal, rather than that a good stove wouldn't make any.

Stay well
Crispin
From: pienergy2008 at gmail.com
Sent: March 5, 2019 8:02 PM
To: crispinpigott at outlook.com
Reply to: ndesai at alum.mit.edu
Cc: d.michael.shafer at gmail.com; schmidt at ithaka-institut.org; psanders at ilstu.edu; stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org
Subject: Re: Off-topic: Biomass power and charmaking


Crispin:

Density of demand makes the portability of densified fuel relevant. In and of itself, fuel density is no matter. "Marketable radius" implicitly refers to demand density; Washington, DC gets wood from within 30 miles if that, but charcoal briquettes from hundreds of miles, and much of northern and coastal part of US is in the same fortunate situation because it has the money  to go with its preferences. Biomass fuel logistics are relatively easy. Otherwise transport, storage and retailing costs do not necessarily favor denser fuels.

Think or uranium.

My favorite anecdote is from around 1980 when petroleum products were FLOWN to an African country. (Rwanda or Burundi or CAR.) Dense fuels, once adopted, should be stockpiled. (I once worked on storage tanks and railway or pipeline alternatives in central Africa. I don't think densified solid fuels other than charcoal or briquettes have a prayer in Africa yet.)

I wish I could go back 60 years and compute the economics of chunk charcoal, charcoal briquettes, kerosene, and stoves in my home and hometown.

I wonder how you would "wash" coal with air. (I spent close to a year on litigation involving water-washing of Pennsylvania bituminous coal to drive out sulfur to meet the EPA standard for SO2 emissions. That is when I went to see the washing plant to understand how elemental sulfur could be washed off but organic sulfur couldn't, and that coal seams are not of uniform quality to satisfy EPA fancies. That is also when I confirmed that EPA can be capricious and political, despite all its purported competence in science.)

Nikhil Desai
Skype: nikhildesai888

On Mar 3, 2019, at 7:59 AM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com<mailto:crispinpigott at outlook.com>> wrote:

Dear Michael

Your reply inspires the following:

Should we classify charcoal briquettes made from ag-wastes as "densified fuels?

The conversion of a low use, unused or useless byproduct into something saleable can be viewed from the perspective of economically viable portability, probably in terms of a "marketable radius" [km]. The radius for rice hull is X and the radius for charcoal briquettes is 5X, for example.

What makes packaged energy portable is densification. Normally this is referred to as mass density but for practical purposes, or energy discussion, being more energy dense is also valuable: consider LPG v.s. ethanol.

There is a discussion taking place off list between some of us here about the densification of coal fines (duff coal) which is piled in South Africa on an enormous scale, more than 200 m tons I suspect.  It is essentially free and is an environmental problem because it blows around, catches fire by itself and is ugly.

By itself it is not a great fuel, even if briquetted because it has so much ash in it. So the proposal is to wash it using air and take the top one third and use that as fuel material, sizing it appropriately for a cooking or heating device.

It would yield about 1,500 million GJ of energy. It becomes useful in terms of shipping it around if it could compete with run-of-mine sized and washed coal due to its "energy densification".

The same applies in principles to ag-wastes. Physical densification is helpful because it makes "pellets" of an appropriate size (or could - many compressed wood products are inappropriately large).

Looking at examples from China, there are two issues for the use of straws (ignoring mechanical issues which we presume will be resolved). They are 1) the transport radius to a "compression site" where the mass densification takes place (big electrical power required) and 2) the transport radius to a market - possibly the same farms or villages around the farms.

The current distribution radius is a 150 kilometres. That is the economic limit with a subsidy from government of about $7 a ton as a biofuel.

When the product is energy-densified the radius is enlarged considerably on the marketing side  because it is lighter per MJ and it is worth more to the end user (when storage volume is considered, for example).

So there are in this approach two radii: the collection radius and the distribution radius with an autocorrelation (to borrow a word from statistics) between them. A higher selling price means a higher purchase price is possible.

What is happening in Hebei Province,  which I described already, is the conversation by energy densification of field straw into char, and marketing it in other provinces. This is made economically possible by the energy densification. We note that it is in liquid form, but this doesn't undermine the analytical approach.

If you set down the range of options available in terms of materials, quantities, distances, potential products, implementation hardware, subsidies available, if any, you could generate a menu of options for Thailand, India or anywhere else. With a spreadsheet you can add cells for transport, fuel and other local variables. The output would be scenarios for viable enterprises.

At least one of the options would be the making of a bioenergy fuel for a well-suited stove.

Regards
Crispin

P.S.  It is probably best to avoid making claims about extending lives through the mechanism of reducing the open burning of ag-wastes. That whole fraught exercise of claiming to be staving off the death dates of populations has too many logical and medical discontinuities to be believed. aDALY's are a low-logic densified form of B.S.
From: d.michael.shafer at gmail.com<mailto:d.michael.shafer at gmail.com>
Sent: March 2, 2019 11:31 PM
To: ndesai at alum.mit.edu<mailto:ndesai at alum.mit.edu>
Cc: crispinpigott at outlook.com<mailto:crispinpigott at outlook.com>; schmidt at ithaka-institut.org<mailto:schmidt at ithaka-institut.org>; psanders at ilstu.edu<mailto:psanders at ilstu.edu>; stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org<mailto:stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Subject: Re: Off-topic: Biomass power and charmaking


Nikhil,

Thank you very much for this wide-ranging and, for all of your assertions to the contrary, extremely well informed answer to my rapidly knocked off comments.

In general, it is clear that we belong to the same camp. I, too, believe that biomass power has an absolutely central role to play in dealing with the issue of the complete, productive, efficient and sustainable use of crop wastes (broadly defined). That said, we still have differences.

First, the failure of the biomass projects in the Indian Punjab follow the same lines as the failure of biomass power in central Thailand: the initial dependence on rice husk. It is such great looking stuff. Looks cheap, easy to handle and abundant. Problem is that when you look closer, you see that it is already a marketed product (bricks, tiles, cheap pottery) and has a huge upside demand potential (especially in the cement industry). In Thailand, prices went from 200 b/tonne to 1,400 b/tonne and the power plants shut down.

The trick is to find a true waste feedstock. This is where I come to rice and wheat straw. Just gets burned. No large volume, higher value uses in sight.

By mobile, for power plants, I am thinking less that the power can get shipped around, than that the plants themselves are so small. A 1 MW gassifier plant that will eat 17,000 tonnes of straw a year has the foot print of a house. It not only produces enough power for thousands of households - cutting grid costs - but it provides masses of waste heat that can be used as such or converted into cold to support small industrial estates that provide new local labor.

As for the truly small, for all of India's rapid growth, hundreds of millions of people continue to live in deep, rural areas and to cook on charcoal or wood. This means that there exists a huge potential market for biochar briquettes. These can be made easily and efficiently from straw, maize stalk, etc. at the village level and are quite profitable when compared to the alternatives. (Were the government ever to give up on its tireless and both immensely costly and destructive policy of super-subsidizing synthetic fertilizers, biochar soil amendments could restore millions of ha of degraded agricultural land.

But all this said, thank you very much for the observations about the politics of air pollution in the Indian Punjab. I cannot imagine that it is much less a problem across the border. And whatever the mix of pollutants, there is no question that decreasing the ag fire generated amount of PM2.5 in the air will save lots of lives and improve labor productivity enough to affect the GDP.

M



Michael Shafer
www.warmheartworldwide.org<https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.warmheartworldwide.org&data=02%7C01%7C%7Caa7cd4a559704e8b455808d6a1cf613a%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636874309394442159&sdata=4Hvyx7dvmrDewVcym0e72%2FiJA5%2FPhnf6jyD9CHM4o%2B4%3D&reserved=0>
www.twitter.com/warmheartorg<https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.twitter.com%2Fwarmheartorg&data=02%7C01%7C%7Caa7cd4a559704e8b455808d6a1cf613a%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636874309394452164&sdata=Kd0kQZbJoMqpVlnfxIfImaeT3oDBRdC7iB7RqKNK1Nc%3D&reserved=0>
http://www.facebook.com/warmheartworldwide<https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwarmheartvideo&data=02%7C01%7C%7Caa7cd4a559704e8b455808d6a1cf613a%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636874309394462175&sdata=f56teOkuYlCcF658Zv3tuZ4gcseQ74BNulkhxKURQZE%3D&reserved=0>


On Sun, Mar 3, 2019 at 3:01 AM Nikhil Desai <ndesai at alum.mit.edu<mailto:ndesai at alum.mit.edu>> wrote:
Michael:

This is the second part of my reply from the earlier thread that started outside the Stoves list. Again, you gave me an opportunity to look up something and validate my suspicions.

2. l haven't looked at the brick kiln fuel markets in India in a systematic manner. The Punjab story I mentioned is from personal experience. Not only had I met the developer in a flight from Nairobi once, Liz Bates or someone else from Boiling Point sent me a paper - around 2006/7 - for peer review. The paper pointed out that compared to the earlier situation where biomass power projects could pick up rice husk (I believe) for free at the farm gate, now they had to pay, wherefore the feed-in tariff should be revised upwards from Rs 6/kWh (at the time around 15 USc/kWh). If I remember correctly, I found no problem with the paper's methods but disagreed with the policy conclusion.

It is not just that biomass power is mobile - transmittable; so is biomass waste, properly compacted and free from rain risk. What matters is the netback value at farm gate of the price this fuel or fodder can fetch.

What I think has happened in some parts of India is that there are better roads and that tractors are available cheaply for off-season rental. So a tractor can deliver crop waste where coal and wood are higher cost.

I visited one such brick kiln in a rural area on the road from Goa to Kolhapur once. around January 2011. No big city close by, but enough new construction in villages and towns. The brick kiln used a mixture of local agro wastes supplemented by local tree wastes and trucked in agro wastes. I took down the numbers but lost them.

Several times since then I have seen bales of hay being trucked on the highway to arid regions of north Gujarat where dairy cattle population has grown because of milk support prices but there isn't enough fodder.

I am happy to see you are planning something for Pakistan Punjab. I will try to gather information on feed-in tariffs and brick kiln fuel prices on the Indian side and pass on to you. My personal bias is in favor of biomass electricity generation and then use of electricity for induction cooking -- depending on the context, of course. I agree with you, " if there are, in fact, generous feed-in rates for biomass power, we ought to see multiple, biomass power plants outside of the radius of economically viable brick production where wheat straw is still largely burned. If we go not, then the barriers to biomass power lie elsewhere, not in the cost of feedstock. " In fact, I would push for penalties for direct burning.

There is a political and modeling issue here as well. I am not convinced that short-term smoke from biomass open burning has the same health damage as from the ozone and NMVOC pollution in India's National Capital Region, say. I know Kirk Smith would argue otherwise, based on this PM2.5 equitoxicity assumption and GBD models; frankly, I don't give a damn. Agro waste is but one of the sources, and its emissions are likely to be specific to the chemistry of the burnt material. Enough for now. I am somewhat familiar with urban air source apportionment studies in India.

There is probably also the politics of individual states and the central government. Delhi is almost a state but not fully. Like DC here, Delhi government is in the hands of a party in opposition to the party in the central government. Surrounding areas of Delhi have state governments in charge of three different parties. We have ignorant fools in Delhi High Court calling farm smoke as an act of "genocide", though air pollution and agro waste treatment are entirely state and city level subjects, and I don't think the central government Ministry of Environment and Forests or the Central Pollution Control Board have jurisdiction over farms.

"Free biomass" is the practical counterpart to the zealotry of "renewable biomass". There is no free salad, nor free carrot/onion peels.

I thought Husk Power faltered precisely for that reason -  loss of free crop waste - but it seems they made a comeback. See https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/entrepreneurship/generating-electricity-for-millions-husk-power-bolsters-modis-dream-of-power-to-all/articleshow/68213635.cms<https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Feconomictimes.indiatimes.com%2Fsmall-biz%2Fentrepreneurship%2Fgenerating-electricity-for-millions-husk-power-bolsters-modis-dream-of-power-to-all%2Farticleshow%2F68213635.cms&data=02%7C01%7C%7Caa7cd4a559704e8b455808d6a1cf613a%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636874309394472174&sdata=pS4rTXA0h3lqtnt2S0LBpNyUxCGBMKzg1gJHx44nyVY%3D&reserved=0> and https://www.thebetterindia.com/155140/husk-power-system-renewable-energy-investment/<https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thebetterindia.com%2F155140%2Fhusk-power-system-renewable-energy-investment%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7Caa7cd4a559704e8b455808d6a1cf613a%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636874309394492214&sdata=3NIvSpCGVdASqyPO1jxFCHvMWXbSYiooLfvo9eXbhGY%3D&reserved=0>.

>From the look of it, it seems they have combined solar PV with biomass power, which I think is a superb idea if they have some daytime power demand and the tariff is reasonably low. I did not at all like their earlier business model.

Important to note: " Another interesting thing that the company has been doing with the waste generated from the gasification is to use the charred rice husk to make incense sticks, also known as agarbatti. For every three to four power units, they have an incense stick-making unit set which employs local women. "

That is not much, but it's probably because the demand for charcoal as a fuel is much larger than can be served.

I don't have the fuel price data for brick kilns but I imagine they vary with those for coal and HFO. Here a couple of stories on a new "zig zag" technology and subsidies:

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ludhiana/punjab-to-harp-on-better-aqi-subsidised-straw-management-equipment-as-sc-hears-plea-on-stubble-burning/articleshow/67093703.cms<https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftimesofindia.indiatimes.com%2Fcity%2Fludhiana%2Fpunjab-to-harp-on-better-aqi-subsidised-straw-management-equipment-as-sc-hears-plea-on-stubble-burning%2Farticleshow%2F67093703.cms&data=02%7C01%7C%7Caa7cd4a559704e8b455808d6a1cf613a%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636874309394502207&sdata=b6ZoNjso5e6onnn%2FM7zNrb0eCAfcX5VdOFLo5vNHkO4%3D&reserved=0>

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/punjab/no-tech-upgrade-punjab-brick-kilns-operate-illegally/724466.html<https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tribuneindia.com%2Fnews%2Fpunjab%2Fno-tech-upgrade-punjab-brick-kilns-operate-illegally%2F724466.html&data=02%7C01%7C%7Caa7cd4a559704e8b455808d6a1cf613a%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636874309394512218&sdata=n6tfE0ywkUx%2FLoVEHNj8H8Y62%2BCp0DYUgYYlMr0aFnI%3D&reserved=0>

https://www.hindustantimes.com/punjab/work-at-brick-kilns-halted-for-four-months-in-punjab-prices-likely-to-shoot-up-3-lakh-workers-to-be-hit/story-5eChuYNj2H5Tw3CtLJkudP.html<https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hindustantimes.com%2Fpunjab%2Fwork-at-brick-kilns-halted-for-four-months-in-punjab-prices-likely-to-shoot-up-3-lakh-workers-to-be-hit%2Fstory-5eChuYNj2H5Tw3CtLJkudP.html&data=02%7C01%7C%7Caa7cd4a559704e8b455808d6a1cf613a%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636874309394522235&sdata=GIvwXMU2qyGqrH7sbJf7WyK8DhX9MK3QO8OuU4Y9o50%3D&reserved=0>

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ludhiana/punjab-to-harp-on-better-aqi-subsidised-straw-management-equipment-as-sc-hears-plea-on-stubble-burning/articleshow/67093703.cms<https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftimesofindia.indiatimes.com%2Fcity%2Fludhiana%2Fpunjab-to-harp-on-better-aqi-subsidised-straw-management-equipment-as-sc-hears-plea-on-stubble-burning%2Farticleshow%2F67093703.cms&data=02%7C01%7C%7Caa7cd4a559704e8b455808d6a1cf613a%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636874309394532234&sdata=k46lvV7T4rXKmwQg%2FcjLyGBI29OWXnwjMp0e10OwJyE%3D&reserved=0>

And I find it encouraging that India and Pakistan are emulating each other not only in nuclear weapons fut also in kiln pollution management:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pakistan-climatechange-bricks/with-smog-season-looming-pakistan-shuts-polluting-brick-kilns-idUSKCN1MT0CI<https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reuters.com%2Farticle%2Fus-pakistan-climatechange-bricks%2Fwith-smog-season-looming-pakistan-shuts-polluting-brick-kilns-idUSKCN1MT0CI&data=02%7C01%7C%7Caa7cd4a559704e8b455808d6a1cf613a%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636874309394542233&sdata=u5GnjjAyWkZnbeNoxLqZJvGx%2FRPXjqbOiyC02UZDbfQ%3D&reserved=0>

https://www.technologytimes.pk/zigzag-kiln-technology-emissions/<https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.technologytimes.pk%2Fzigzag-kiln-technology-emissions%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7Caa7cd4a559704e8b455808d6a1cf613a%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636874309394552250&sdata=P2SDyEXQqHDOGeXdYwWOfMNt4cJqQbKV3dfaBD6Tlkc%3D&reserved=0>

http://ccacoalition.org/en/news/pakistan-moves-toward-environmentally-friendly-and-cost-effective-brick-kilns<https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fccacoalition.org%2Fen%2Fnews%2Fpakistan-moves-toward-environmentally-friendly-and-cost-effective-brick-kilns&data=02%7C01%7C%7Caa7cd4a559704e8b455808d6a1cf613a%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636874309394572266&sdata=lP%2BpMMz%2FG8gPpYL6LWlTlFz4rURnnSaHvVyMuNxY1rg%3D&reserved=0>

I think the challenge is to find climate finance for both brick kilns as well as charcoal kilns, using avoided NMVOCs and black carbon.

Including from non-biomass solid fuels, but heck, no fighting with ignorant folks.

Nikhil

PS: I am skeptical about " The issue, however, is that most places even in India, biomass occurs in small, highly distributed amounts that defy cost-effective collection and scale processing. This being the case, millions of stoves or tens of thousands of trenches may be the only way to go. "  How you can save the poor people TIME is more important than saving the fuel. Individual household  cookstoves without regard to fuel will NOT make any more difference than they have for the last 50 years. Whether the minimum economic size is 10,000 stoves and can be multiplied 100 times, or whether a combination of charmaking plant with gases used for commercial cooking and heating and char for soil conditioning and household cooking at 50,000 stoves as a minimum economic size --- these are questions of contextual intelligence. We have wasted 50 years on technology, but we have learned along the way and I hope that some breakthroughs are required on the policy front to take the technology adaptation to the next step over the last ten years. It is good that GACC is dead; now we need to kill WHO and ISO nonsense. Or even bother with individual biomass cookstoves for the poor. Define an economic geography and a business model and market alternative policy and financing approaches to those who still care.

There is an emerging market for bulk biomass wastes. Was always there, but transport and skills didn't exist. Now there are roads and skills. I remember a timber mill along the road from my grandfather's village to its railway station - some 60 years ago. Timber waste was a ready fuel then and sometimes taken to small industries nearby. I don't understand why we always fuss with households as collectors and users of fuel. Perhaps we got brainwashed by Kirk Smith in his defining cookstove pollution as the household problem - I agree, but not his estimates of damage - and earlier by all the "save the trees" greens. Trees are grown, crops are grown; there is waste all around, solid and otherwise. I see no reason why charring cannot revolutionize distributed fuel and technology markets. At least, there is a technical potential if only we get away from household coookstoves smoke and open the window to see who and what else is out there.





------------------------
Nikhil Desai
(US +1) 202 568 5831<tel:+1)2025685831>
Skype: nikhildesai888


On Sat, Mar 2, 2019 at 2:07 AM d.michael.shafer at gmail.com<mailto:d.michael.shafer at gmail.com> <d.michael.shafer at gmail.com<mailto:d.michael.shafer at gmail.com>> wrote:
My apologies to Nikhil for failing to know the backstory on the 20 v. 100 year GWP choice. My observation was meant as an entirely innocent observation about the actual practice in the field, not as a moral judgement about its rightness.

On a more general basis, I am very interested by Nikhil's story about biomass and prices in the Indian Punjab. This is new information for me. Knowing the story of biomass power in Central Thailand as I do, I find this story compelling but also incomplete. It may be true that farm gate prices for straw have risen because of brick kilns, but approximately 20 million tonnes of wheat straw burn annually after the harvest. If this is the case, it is obvious that the brick kiln market is not clearing and price gouging by farmers cannot be the whole story.

Here is what I don't understand. Bricks are heavy and low value. This suggests that they must be made relatively close to their end market. Biomass power, on the other hand, is far more "mobile" and its demand is very widespread. Together, these suggest that if there are, in fact, generous feed-in rates for biomass power, we ought to see multiple, biomass power plants outside of the radius of economically viable brick production where wheat straw is still largely burned. If we go not, then the barriers to biomass power lie elsewhere, not in the cost of feedstock.

This is an important issue for me because I am about to begin work on an anti-smoke planning effort in the Pakistani Punjab. If there is a hidden factor that I completely do not see, I would like to be informed about it now. I can easily factor in the prospect of rising straw prices with new demand, but what else is lurking?

To Nikhil's criticism about scale, the problem, I think, is more complex. It is absolutely true, as Nikhil argues, that in areas of huge biomass production where centralized processing and production are possible, "macro" solutions are necessary. (The Indian Punjab near major cities where immense farms prevail, for example.) The issue, however, is that most places even in India, biomass occurs in small, highly distributed amounts that defy cost-effective collection and scale processing. This being the case, millions of stoves or tens of thousands of trenches may be the only way to go.

M

Michael

Michael Shafer
www.warmheartworldwide.org<https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.warmheartworldwide.org&data=02%7C01%7C%7Caa7cd4a559704e8b455808d6a1cf613a%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636874309394582272&sdata=o8ZLo7ybrXEUBA3jqIjNl5mH88MRhzYA%2FgwNHbA8kMA%3D&reserved=0>
www.twitter.com/warmheartorg<https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.twitter.com%2Fwarmheartorg&data=02%7C01%7C%7Caa7cd4a559704e8b455808d6a1cf613a%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636874309394592283&sdata=QPZL05OnufFKJCorB3YRegkwITrt4XtLnl%2F0IhXplKM%3D&reserved=0>
http://www.facebook.com/warmheartworldwide<https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwarmheartvideo&data=02%7C01%7C%7Caa7cd4a559704e8b455808d6a1cf613a%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636874309394602288&sdata=gY5KuUYYHEvsUkhjR3VOlXj2A0%2FpHw6CfgdmUzDX5Lw%3D&reserved=0>




-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20190306/5c76273b/attachment.html>