[Stoves] Yet another review paper (2014): Perspectives in Household Air Pollution Research: Who Will Benefit from Interventions

[Gordon West]

Ron- Again,  My query to this list is - how can we best use the fact that char-making stoves can make money for their users?  Nikhil has failed to address that issue.  Is mine a non-serious question?  One has to believe that climate change is real to get into this topic in a serious way.

I have presented the following concept before to the list, but not in a direct response to anything like Ron’s current question. Bill Knauss has developed a stove that was conceived to address micro-scale biochar making within a certain economic system. The stoves are not cheap, however, especially not in the context of selling them to people in a poor subsistence context. Because that seems to be a foundational condition for the stoves list, we haven’t tried to pitch it here to any extent.

But here’s the concept, which was tailored to serve Palomas, a small town just across the border in Mexico:

The stoves are a version of TLUD with a 24” tall steel cylinder in a range of diameters - 4", 6”, 8”. They are forced draft, but of a very small fan (.5A computer fan, can run off of a small PV panel or battery). They can be turned down about 2:1 to control heat output, and will run 2-3 hours depending upon feedstock density. I have cooked turkeys in mine using one batch in a 4” cylinder. The 8” is more for space heating.  Immediately above the cylinder the syngas enters an air mixing and combustion chamber, and just above that is a nice, clean flame over which a variety of cooking devices can be used (pot, oven (kettle barbecue), cooktop, pressure cooker), or space heating. We are making some effort to get a fabricator in Palomas to make them because they will be much cheaper than if we do it, and it will be good for the poverty stricken economy of the village of Palomas. They aren’t especially difficult to make for a moderately skilled welder (like me…).

The distribution part of the approach is to have some entity with money build/buy the stoves and give them to residents with a contract that says they will get the stove and free feedstock in exchange for the produced biochar, which will be aggregated for marketing and sale. Calculations indicate that a family will produce around a ton of biochar annually, so they can pay off the stove in a year or so. After that, they can either keep the char for their own purposes, or continue to exchange it for free feedstock plus payment. There isn’t any biomass to speak of near Palomas, so it must be imported from a little ways off, the primary source being pecan shells, which are a disposal problem for the many pecan processors within 100 miles of there - we’re talking maybe 400 tons per day. We are buying semi-truck loads for the price of shipping - $400 for 40,000 pounds. 

I have never worked in Africa or India, so I can’t claim to understand how things work there (other than what I learn here). But it seems that an NGO (however evil and stupid they might be) could be persuaded to try out the Palomas model of giving people more productive (even if more expensive) stoves that can be paid for simply by using them for free and returning the char to the NGO for use in its many beneficial forms. The feedstock could be produced in areas of plentiful biomass - used directly if in the right form (pecan shells) or pelletized if in a less dense or uniform condition - and distributed to communities instead of propane in bottles, or other carbon contributing fuel that only costs, and does not pay.
 
Gordon West
The Trollworks
503 N. “E” Street
Silver City, NM 88061
575-537-3689

An entrepreneur sees problems as the seeds of opportunity.





> On Jan 2, 2020, at 9:20 AM, Ronal Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> Again,  My query to this list is - how can we best use the fact that char-making stoves can make money for their users?  Nikhil has failed to address that issue.  Is mine a non-serious question?  One has to believe that climate change is real to get into this topic in a serious way.
> 

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