Biochar

Joshua B. Guinto in the Phillippines used the Oblak Holey Roket stove as inspiration and created a stove with an extra compartment to store char until cooking is done and the char is sufficiently cooled. He has done a wonderful job of writing up the results in the attached pdf.
From his conclusion:
The Charmaking Stove is Born!

  • The Char Making Holey Roket Stove is born!!
  • It allows harvesting bio char safely and conveniently and without having to tip the stove over. It eliminates the risk of heat fatigue, burns and open fires.
  • It allows clean cooking with the similar performance as a gasifier stove.
  • It allows continuous cooking.
  • The stove will last for four years or more.
  • It can be used with many other kinds of fuels.
  • The stove is much cheaper and can be fabricated in village workshops thus promotes social inclusion much better.
  • With clay, the stove has very small ecological footprint.

Air Force 1 Sage Low

From GEO BIOCHAR STOVE
From GEO BIOCHAR STOVE

* About 30% biochar production
* 3 to 4 days for a batch of charcoal production
* Continuous hot water access (pot 1)
* Highly suitable for institutional cooking and as well making biochar
* Additional heat generated by flaring the pyrolysis gases, used for cooking
* Mitigation of the emissions during the pyrolysis by flaring
* Costs about Rs. 3000 for a 2’ width x 5’ depth x 6’ hight (in feet) “GEO Biochar pit stove”. (cost including, tin sheet for cover, digging the pit, three pot stove and chimney.)

*_"GEO BIOCHAR STOVE" is designed by Dr. N. Sai Bhaskar Reddy, CEO, GEO. Demonstrated to farmers under the project Good Stoves and Biochar Communities Project, being supported by GoodPlanet.org, France

Paal Wendelobo, October, 2011

The Peko Pe TLUD project in Zambia is going well.

Paal describes it best:

" The main principals for our projects I will call it community based participation both for fuel and for stove productions. Utilization of local resources with other words.. The Peko Pe is designed for production by local tinsmith with the tools they might have. They only need a template and a model; they have the knowledge how to make it.

" First of all we discuss the need of changes, and then on the fuel side we start up with registration of alternative biomass for fuel for briquetting, energy forestry for fuel production. We always start with the fuel .to be sure there is sufficient quantities and to an affordable price.

"The charcoal business, which represents about 15 % of the adult population, has to be involved from an early stage of the project. All kind of activities on the household energy sector will in one or another way have an influence of their business, and with biochar we don’t know what will happen, but that is one of the ting we will try to find out. Any how for the charcoal business it is just to change from charcoal to alternative biomass for household energy.

"The energy loss by production of biochar for soil improvement is almost equivalent to the energy needed for the farmer to cook if you include the African way of thinking time is coming not like by us time is running That is a big difference. A household need about 2,7 kg charcoal a day for cooking. Form about 10 kg of dry wood you will get 2,7 kg of charcoal for one day cooking and no biochar. From .10 kg of dry wood you will get 10 kg of woodchips and that will be for 2 ½ day of cooking into a TLUD-ND. and about 2.7 kg of biochar. The pilot project will tell us if this is right or wrong."

" A common Miombo forest in Africa will give about 3 ton wood per ha a year. 3 ton of dry wood will give 800 kg of charcoal. A household of 5 consume 2-3 kg charcoal a day or about 800 kg a year. To produce 3 kg of charcoal you need 10-12 kg of dry fire wood in a common kiln. That will give one day cooking on a charcoal stove, and almost no biochar. 10-12kg dry chopped wood will give 3 days of cooking on a TLUD-ND or another FES and 2.5 kg of biochar
Energy forestry using just the sprouting every year can give up to 10 ton wood per ha a year, easy to cut to appropriate fuel for TLUD-ND’s or other types of FES. By adding some biochar to soil of bad quality 20-30 % increased yields can be obtained, which will give more food, more household energy, more jobs, better economy, better health for women and children and saving the forest. It can probably be as simple as this and is that not some of what we are looking for and need?
We know some changes have to take place on the household energy sector and we have to start somewhere. Why not start with small scale farmers on sandy soil, and from there develop the new household bio-energy strategy for developing countries. Probably also with the charcoal business, they have the whole infrastructure intact and can easy change from charcoal to alternative biomass like chopped wood or pellets from agriculture and forestry related waste. "

Hi Stovers,

This was a great opportunity for me to break out of my two year "lurker"
role and contribute. I have quite a bit of first hand experience with goat droppings as both a TLUD fuel input and a biochar soil amendment. In late
2009 I was asked by researchers at PATH to evaluate it as a potential fuel in a possible stove project, which they were planning in northern Senegal.
Although the project did not get funded, I had very good results with this type of dung.

It, of course, has a lower density than man-made pellets. However, if you could get those goats to squeeze a bit harder (a stand in one place), it would be perfect. It burns very cleanly and smells great. I had the resulting Goat poop charcoal tested for ph, adsorption and adsorption, by Dr Hugh McLaughlin. As a soil amendment it's high ash content would give it a significant liming effect, but this was largely neutralized by rinsing.

It worked well in pot tests and I have attached Hugh's data sheets.

We have not had much of a chance to work with this in the field, not a lot of goats in Central America. However this has become a staple fuel in my High School stove building workshops. What 15 year old doesn't like to light poop on fire?

Art Donnelly

--
"SeaChar.Org...positive tools for carbon negative living"

Biochar Industries part of Biochar Project in Kunghur Australia is now selling Biochar TLUD cook stoves as part of our plan to make more people aware of the benefits of biochar.

TLUD is an acronym for Top Lit Up Draught meaning you lite it at the top and the air is sucked up through the fire. Fantastic device that is light to carry and will work with all woods great survival tool . The best feature of this Tlud is when the flames go out you then have biochar. All you have to do is drop the embers on the ground and spray some water on them so they don’t continue to burn.

This particular model was imported from India and has a very nice finish and somehow I ended up with some to sell so I wanted to let my readers know first before I start selling them at stores and markets.

More on TLUD stoves http://www.drtlud.com/
FASHION NEWS

Ray Menke

My wife and I made a short video showing how we make Pita Bread using a version of this stove design. Here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOuoE2KAbQI

Jock Gill, April 2011
Peacham, Vermont, usa


My little iCan made from a 3 lbs Costco coffee can boiled 1.75 liters of water in 42 minutes this afternoon. Ambient temp was 47 [8.33C]. This was done in 5 batches averaging 350 ml each. A very clean burn. Some soot at the start of each batch when the water was cold. Just a soon as the water in the cup warmed up a bit, the soot stopped.

Of course I also made some biochar as well.

Fuel was a good quality wood pellet. Cost of fuel: about 17 cents assuming pellets at $230 per ton. They can be bought for a good deal less, but I am using a higher number to be safe.

Cost per liter boiled: ~ 7.4 cents, allowing 4 cents as the value of the biochar captured at the rate of 17.5% of the dry weight of the fuel.

From Art's Preface:
Buenas,
Just a quick note from Costa Rica. Our Estufa Finca (a large TLUD) team is two weeks into preparing for a 10 week pilot project. Working with SALTRA and a program at the Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica, we will be installing 50 , locally produced stoves with migrant coffee bean pickers.

I want to side with Paal on this very important point. Our stoves can have the best looking numbers in the lab. But if people won't use them it doesn't make much difference does it. The stove design we are using has been jointly developed by myself, my Central American partners (esp. the women who are building them APORTES), but most esp. by listening very carefully to the people who we hope to benefit. Much of the feed back has been in regard to the fuels issue. These people do not have access to chips or pellets, we are not going to get them to make briquttes, etc... so instead we have given them a fuel chamber easy to load with sticks, sugar cane bagasse, etc. and powerful enough to cook for the typically large extended families. This process stared in August 2009, there are currently 20 of our stoves being used in CR and Nicaragua, the feedback has been very positive. The pilot project is simply a continuation of that process. We are going to be using the KPT version 3.0 protocol, with some customization to monitor 30 stoves. All of us on the team are looking forward to adding more TLUD based stoves to our line. But this approach is showing us what will get used in the real world.

File attachments: 

The aim of this test was to finalise the design of the Anila stove, which had been produced in India ready for distribution to households to gather feedback from them about usability.
This is for the project:

Without wanting to change the design too much from the original plans, the following changes were deemed necessary –

**I am looking to get some Anila stove units in India for some small-scale trials http://biocharinnovation.wordpress.com/ - if you can help please get in touch asap with sarah.carter [at] ed.ac.uk**

Testing of the Sampanda stove in Cambodia 12.07.2010
Sarah Carter, UK Biochar Research Centre

See http://www.bioenergylists.org/content/testing-andersons-tl for a similar test on Anderson's TLUD, and http://www.bioenergylists.org/content/testing-everythingni for testing of EverythingNice stove, and Anila stove http://www.bioenergylists.org/content/testing-anila-stove.

Stove: Sampanda stove. Produced by the [Samuchit Enviro Tech Pvt Ltd](http://www.samuchit.com/) in India.
Test: A water boiling test (time to boil 2.5 litres of water, in a pan without a lid)
Location: The Iron Workshop, Siem Reap. A well ventilated building – 2 surrounding walls, and a roof. Wind conditions were low, but blustery at times.

Pages

Subscribe to Biochar