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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-CA link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Dear Richard<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>All points noted. I think you will have to accept that the heat content of the fuel is limited by the chemical composition. Grasses are a bit high in ash so they are not as energetic as wood. But that is a quibble.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>The wood substitution is a great achievement on any scale. Sweeping up the otherwise wasted charcoal dust and chips is a Good Start, as they say. What usually ruins a host of small businesses processing a resource found in a concentrated area is the entry of a moneyed businessperson into the market with his own transport and vending outlets. It is only a matter of time in Dar if putting a price on the raw material will kill it. As you know I spend decades trying to work out how to protect the tiny business from such moves. In the bread baking industry (small local wood fired bakeries) in the Eastern Cape this played out to a very bad end.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>The small bakeries will doing so well and the profits so secure that it began to affect the sales of large bakeries in East London who sold over a huge area including eGcuwa (Butterworth) in the Transkei. Seeing the writing on the wall, and wanting to prevent the local industry becoming so important that it would receive political/legal protection, the bakeries dropped the wholesale price of bread below the cost of the raw materials <i>for a year</i> until all the local bakeries were out of business. Having killed them, and all the equipment being repossessed from them, they raised the price again higher than before and made all the money back. To them it was just an investment. The population went back to eating ‘square bread’ from several hours away.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>I provoked a similar reaction with the sales of diamond mesh fence making machines. The wire industry realised we had a winning combination of technologies and they had no future in shipping fence from a centralised point. They could not get past the transport inefficiency (compared with bulk plain wire).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>The response was to raise the price of plain wire and cut the price of fencing. The total income for them was the same, the viability of the diamond mesh makers was run to the wall. One can make fence and make money, but the profit that would have been made by the central producers selling finished fence was earned from the plain wire. They are big and omnipresent enough to destroy the entire small producer market, even though production technology was demonstrably viable under normal circumstances.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>The fuels businesses are in the same boat, potentially. Someone working out where the real market is (say, Europe) for the torrefied or charcoaled or briquetted fuels made from ‘waste’ will step in and pay enough to get it. End of short story. Raw material producers will benefit, no one else.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>The same thing is happening with scrap sheet metal. It is harder and harder to get enough because it is being shipped to China for reprocessing, even from central Zambia and Liberia. Even the DRC though I suspect there is cobalt and diamonds mixed in there with it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>In order to make a large number of metal stoves – enough to satisfy the whole market, it is not possible to do this without using new material. That has to be addressed sooner or later. One option is clay which is why I spent so much time working on clay material theory and processing in Maputo. It can compete with metal on a local producer scale if the materials are right. It is easier to make high tech ceramics than metal from ore, that’s for sure.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>There is yet much to be done and plenty of room for everyone.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Regards<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Crispin<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>++++<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal>Your points taken Crispin, <o:p></o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>On the 50% values Insitu --of course: You have a solid point. No lo contestare ! In the form of a hollow core briquette its another story. The heat values we are getting run more in the low 20mjs. The reason has to do with infra red reflectance within the core durign the burn. Look at the burn again in the holey briquette rocket stove of rok Oblak It is very near to a gassifier flame. <o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>On charcoal drying up…that would be worse than beer produciton halting out here. (have seen the latter in the 70's with near riots nationwide..) Thats why Paal and Otto Formo's solution of burning biomass and making char out of it is such a good idea.<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>Whomever pays for paper or charcoal dust, will almost assuredly kill their briquette business (at least the wet process hand production, microenterprise-based type): It's all very contingent upon getting / adapting blending FREE resources. <o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>I am yet to be convinced that much more than 20% (by dry weight) of waste charcoal is needed in a biomass briquette, though. <o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>One can be otherwise pyrolising, charring and gassifying a biomass briquette all in one go-- during its actual point of application, especially if the mentioned pre drying pre heating technique is followed. Nor is paper necessary where you have chopped and well retted field grasses and straws to do the work of binding..<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>Based on reports from the producers and trainer teams whom we know of here in Tanzania, the direct consequence of briquette production is replacing demand for about 2000 tons of wood fuel this year--in the going local combination of wood or charcoal. last year it was 298 tons. <o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>We started training producers in 2007 and from them, trainers in 2009. <o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>Kind regards,<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal> Richard Stanley<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>Dar<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></div></body></html>