[Stoves] Which technologies will best reduce CO and blackcarbon, improve health and safety and lower household energy costs?

[AJH]

On Sat, 9 Sep 2006 11:29:54 -0700, Tom Miles wrote:

>AJH>I was a bit flustered by the introduction of the category improved
>charcoal and brick kilns
>
>TRM>The issue of how much wood is used in kilns to make bricks for stoves
>has been raised on the Spanish discussion list(estufas at bioenergylists.org).
>Charcoal making is recognized as a significant source of pollution. Improved
>kilns are considered by the UNFCCC as Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM).
>Projects in Asia have been awarded funds for these improvements. See
>www.bioenergylists.org for CDM, Charcoal and Charcoal Production.
>
>Improved charcoal combustion has received considerably more interest from
>web visitors than it has discussion on this list. It is considered by some
>to be a significant area for improvement. 


I have always thought this, it was through playing with charcoal
making that brought me to the list in the first place. Oddly enough I
always considered charcoal making as being in dire need of a partner
technology to make use of the high grade wasted heat, the pyrolysis
offgas from a retort type system has no associated nitrogen so from
mass flow considerations it should yield a high temperature. In my
early [stoves] discussions with Ronal we plumped on
pottery/tile/brickmaking as being worthwhile users of this hot fuel.
Couple this with simple heat recovery between the kiln and retort and
overall high thermal efficiencies should be possible.

The thing is this requires capital input and the nature of charcoal
making is that it is high labour and low capital.

My colleagues took it a step further and used the high enthalpy gases
to run a gas turbine, this still seems to be a good route to follow
but it increased the capital investment by another order of magnitude.

>AJH>I assume the vote tracking is by IP rather than cookies?
>TRM>IP. Are you planning on stuffing the ballot box?

No but it's a public vote and there's always someone out there that
can take a perverse pleasure in steering opinion by manipulating a
vote.

>At 12 votes "improved biomass combustion/gasification" and "processing
>alternate fuels" are gainers. As noted above I think there is a perception
>that charcoal has less potential impact. This was true among those who
>attended Stoves Camp.    

Well discussion on [stoves] has probably influenced my vote and this
is because I think improved raw biomass combustion can displace
charcoal and forming a fuel from agri waste and even plastic waste can
displace wood. So I think the need for charcoal can be reduced, yet I
still think it can have a place if made more efficiently.
>
>Harry Stokes prompted me to add alcohol as an alternate fuel which is an
>important addition. See Harry's new Project Gaia reports at
>www.bioenergylists.org 
>LPG should also be considered an alternate cooking fuel.See Kirk Smith:
>http://bioenergylists.org/en/smithlpg05

I can see the benefits of these fuels also, in fact with modern
electricity generating plant and a well developed grid you can make
good cases for the overall efficiency and lower pollution for electric
cooking (Alexis Belonio estimates that only 10% of the heat output of
his stove was cooking the food) but there's no way the infrastructure
can be afforded for most of the world.

> Project field offices and local
>organizations are active and easily identifiable web visitors.

As am I from a quick reverse dns lookup from the ip in my e-mail
headers and matching the result from the voting on the page.

Andrew Heggie