[Stoves] 4 Charcoal production, improved

[CEDESOL Foundation]

Another point that must be taken into consideration is the user's
willingness to change fuel.  Although direct biomass conversion into heat
for cooking may be desirable, many users in Africa and India prefer to use
charcoal.  The sheer numbers of those users offsets the difference in energy
gains from using direct biomass instead of charcoal.

Having recently returned from the PCIA conference in India i must confess
that my position has been turned around to the point of considering user
wants over energy potentials. Taking into consideration that I am a "rocket
stove" biomass preferring person, this is a big position change for me.

Almost everyone from Africa and India reported the difficulty of changing
charcoal user's preference.

On 3/22/07, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Friends
>
> Robert emphasizes a good point: transport costs v.s. energy content.
>
> Having just done this calculation for a paper, I can report that in
> Mozambique at least, the cost in foreign exchange to buy fuel for
> trucks is equal to the local purchase cost of charcoal when the
> charcoal has to be transported 500 km or more.
>
> This means that to access $1000 worth of local biomass-sourced
> charcoal, they have to spend $1000 on imported fuel to move it from
> Inhambane province to Maputo.
>
> This is another way to look at energy costs.
>
> I would caution, Penn, that while charcoal is ordinarily though of as
> coming from trees, there are many useless (for most purposes) sources
> of biomass that can be easily turned into charcoal to make a high
> quality fuel from something people refuse to burn in a stove as a
> biomass fuel.  Bullrushes come to mind immediately.
>
> So your argument is valid for wood, but weaker for non-standard biomass.
>
> I feel there is an indefinite future for charcoal because it is a high
> quality, predictable fuel that can be packaged and marketed over a
> wide area from a single source.  These are the characteristics of a
> good product.
>
> Best regards
> Crispin in Matsapha
>
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-- 
David Whitfield V.
Executive Director
CEDESOL Foundation