[Stoves] Drying of wood

[adkarve]

This topic reminded me of a discussion that I participated in last year in
Germany. I had suggested  that dung should be burned directly instead of
converting it into methane, because one loses more than 75 percent of the
total energy in the dung during the process of producing methane. Drying
dung is not a problem in India, one just spreads out the dung cakes on the
ground and the sun dries them. I was therefore quite surprised when my
counterparts in Germany pointed out to me that they would have to spend a
lot of energy just to get the dung sufficiently dry for direct combustion,
and that they therefore prefered to convert the dung into methane. However,
I found out later, that even the biogas fermenters have to be heated in
Northern Europe, because the methanogenic bacteria do not work well if the
temperature is lower than about 30 degrees Celsius. It seems that our hot
climate, though uncomfortable to humans who have to work in such weather, is
not always a disadvantage.
Yours
A.D.Karve
----- Original Message -----
From: Steve Redmond <skiprock at earthlink.net>
To: <stoves at listserv.repp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 8:52 PM
Subject: [Stoves] Emissions from Residential Wood


> I'm of course interested in emissions from burning 50% moisture content
> organic matter, since I'm, basically surrounded by it.
>
> I have a feeling that holds true for a lot of the world.
>
> There isn't much plant life growing outside my window at 10 to 20%
moisture
> content.
>
> To get it to that state of dryness takes a lot of energy, even if only
> stacking it in the sun and wind. Keeping it at that level does as well.
>
> Applying that energy, we also add emissions.
>
> It would be interesting if stoves and furnaces were required to list on a
> label their energy output after subtracting the average energy used to dry
> transport and store the fuel it uses.
> Of course local emissions may be worth reducing at the cost of embodied
> energy because of its health impact. But I have a feeling that if we
> re-think how we burn things, we can not only reduce embodied energy, the
> physical labor to prepare a fuel, and its storage requirements, but
improve
> both local and embodied pollution.
>
> We should have a term like embodied pollution, by the way -- if we do
> already, sorry to sound foolish.
>
> Steve Redmond
> Vermont Heat Research
>
>
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