Densified Biomass

ETHOS Stoves Conference 2015

5 February 2015 - 3:59pm

CREEC, Aprovecho Sam and others at ETHOS 2015

StoveTec TLUD with a toasting marshmallow

Christa Roth sitting near the StoveTec stoves

ETHOS Cooking Stoves Conference in Kirkland, Washington January, 2015.
for more about the next ETHOS Conference see http://www.ethoscon.com/

The ETHOS conference brings together people involved in stove design, dissemination, and testing from Universities, Government, and Non Government organizations, and has themes around the topics of improving cook stove design and performance, reducing emissions, and improving stove adoption, but listening to the needs of the people using the stoves. It ends with the 'lighting of the stoves' which is a demonstration of some of the cooking stoves that people have talked about in the conference.

In addition to capturing photos of the stoves, this year I captured a few pictures of the crowd of attendees comparing stove designs, toasting marshmallows, etc.

The big green stove is the InStove institutional rocket stove http://instove.org/

The lovely people taking pictures were from CREEC ( Energy and Energy Conservation ) which presented a great analysis of current cooking stove tests and some insights to improve them. They also noted that fans typically fail in Uganda, and there are no fans available to replace them.
For more about CREEC see http://creec.or.ug

StoveTec and Aprovecho presented some interesting innovations in stove design that they hope to field test in the coming year. The light green stove has an insulated top door for adding fuel to their TLUD style stove. The purple stove is their rocket stove that has been optimized for improved particulate emissions, with an improved set of colors.
For more about StoveTec stoves see http://stovetecstore.net/
for more about Aprovecho and stove testing see http://www.aprovecho.org/lab/index.php

I was happy to get a good picture of Christa Roth of GiZ her handbook of MicroGasification is outstanding, to download a copy go to https://energypedia.info/wiki/File:Micro_Gasification_2.0_Cooking_with_g...

File attachments:

ethos-2015-draft-schedule.pdf

Coconut Husk, COCO Peat

18 June 2013 - 11:23am

Robert Fairchild

For those interested in using coconut husk (not shell)
Unprocessed coconut hulls make lousy fuel.
Coconut hull fiber are generally know as coir.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coir
It is a big business in India.
http://msme.gov.in/Chapter%206-Eng_200708.pdf
The fibers are processed into mats, carpet backing, potting material, and geotextiles (for erosion control).
On a small scale, the hulls can be soaked in water for at least a month and beaten to break the pith and used as mulch.
The pith leftover from fiber production is known as cocopeat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coco_peat
It is generally a coarse powder. It can apparently be made into fuel pellets for gasifier stoves. See attachments.
Bob
Air Max

File attachments:

Cocopeat Pellet Gasifier Stove

Cocopeat Manually Operated Pelletizer

Gasifier (microgasification)

coconut husks etc.

Pellets

Densified Biomass

Ecoworxx Pellet Makers

25 September 2012 - 1:48pm

Rolf Uhle

EcoWorxx in Germany is selling a line of pellet makers that take materials from dry, chopped fuel to complete pellets that are suitable for use in stoves and other applications.

PCIA Bulletin 29 - Charcoal and Fuel Briquettes

10 December 2011 - 11:45am

the Partnership for Clean Indoor Air (PCIA) December, 2011

PCIA Bulletin Issue 29
http://www.pciaonline.org/bulletin/pcia-bulletin-issue-29

This Bulletin focuses fuels for clean burning stoves. As they note, a lot of effort has been focused on wood burning stoves, but in urban areas, stick wood is hard to come by, and charcoal is a much more popular fuel. There's a good reason for this, studies have shown that charcoal stoves have up to 90% less indoor air pollution than similar wood stoves. In urban areas, there is a noticeable improvement in indoor air quality simply by shifting to charcoal burning. Additionally, biomass fuel briquettes, pellets, and other densified paper burning stoves are showing a lot of promise in urban areas so this bulletin profiles projects that use urban waste to create fuel briquettes that can be sold to stove owners.

http://www.pciaonline.org/bulletin/pcia-bulletin-issue-29

Gasifier stove and related work at the Asian institute of Technology

25 October 2011 - 1:12pm

Bhattacharya

Quoting "Prof. S.C. Bhattacharya" :

Dear all,

I would be happy to share some publications arising from the following
activities at the Asian Institute of Technology:
1. Sida funded Regional project: An information package (including
construction details) on biomass briquetting machines developed in a
number of Asian countries and design of natural- cross-draft gasifier stoves that can operate continuously is available. The briquetting machines developed
were improvements on standard screw-press heated die design. Cross-flow
gasifier stoves were designed for different sizes; these do not need any
blower and can operate continuously without any smoke.

The briquetting and gasifier stove work I mentioned was carried out under a
Sida-sponsored project at the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT). The
project involved researchers from 12 national research institutes of six
Asian countries, e.g., Bangladesh, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Nepal, Philippines and
Vietnam. The findings of the project were disseminated through national
dissemination seminars in these countries; published "Technology packages"
were distributed widely in the region and are still available for
downloading from the project website. We organized technology transfer
workshops, in which a number of NGOs form the region were invited, on most
of the technologies developed.

(There is no restriction on distribution of the technology packages.)

Unfortunately, the link of the project is not working due to heavy flood in
Thailand; AIT appears to be still under 2 m of water.

2. GTZ funded project on Biocoal: We used the term "Biocoal" (rather than
"Biochar") for charcoal produced from solid organic residues such as
agricultural residues and waste wood. The findings of the project were
reported in a book titled "Biocoal Technology and Economics" by "Regional
Energy Resources Information Center (RERIC)" (email:enreric@ait.ac.th).

The chapters of the 495-page book were:

1. State of the art of biocoal technology,
2. Biocoal technology: A comparison of options and recommendations,
3. Carbonisation of sawdust briquettes,
4. Laboratory-scale batch carbonisation selected residues,
5. Cost and availability of selected residues in Thailand,
6. Characterisation of selected residues,
7.Biocoal: Market requirements and Opportunities in Thailand, and 8. Economics of biocoal production in Thailand.

A few copies of the book are still available with RERIC. A number of
chapters of the book were summarised as journal articles; I will be happy
to
share some of these with interested persons for their personal use and
research purpose.

Other technology packages and published papers of the Sida project can be downloaded from www.retsasia.ait.ac.th. The biomass/stove group may be interested the package on drying, which includes a hybrid drier using solar energy and bioenergy from a gasifier stove, heat output of which could be automatically controlled by using a thermostat.

I also coordinated another regional project (Asian Regional Research Programme in Energy, Environment and Climate, ARRPEEC) funded by Sida in three phases during 1995-2005. One of the 4 projects of ARRPEEC was on biomass. Dissemination booklets of ARRPEEC and some of the papers published can be downloaded from http://www.arrpeec.ait.ac.th

Gasifier (microgasification)

Metal

Densified Biomass

Briquette

General Purpose iCan updated

28 May 2011 - 6:14pm

Gill

Jock Gill, May, 2011

Jock has updated his iCan instructions on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jockgill/sets/72157626640937954/

from Jock's email:

The triplets of triplets in the secondary air supply is a significant improvement.

The 18-12-6 iCan now has much greater total time with a very well behaved flame and an air fuel mixture that is lean to good for most of the run.
There are still several minutes of a too rich mixture that does emit some soot.

Run time on 350 grams was 27:45, most of the smoke was gone within 2 minutes, just two floaters, and the biochar had a good clean nose. This is about as good as I have gotten so far.

Small (Micro) Biomass Fuel Briquette Presses made from Wood

15 June 2010 - 1:31pm

Hite

Lee Hite, June, 2010

Measured Drawings are on his site: http://home.fuse.net/engineering/ewb_project.htm

As an alternative to the large compound lever briquette press, here is a small version (Micro Compound Lever Press) that will generate the same or more pressure to make a high quality briquette, is made from wood with hand tools and can produce briquettes at a rate of about 12 in 10 minutes. This would work well in a single family setting, as a classroom demonstration tool, or for any application requiring simplicity and a small footprint.

See demonstration for this press and two others at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt0QQe6Eetw

See measured drawing at http://home.fuse.net/engineering/ewb_project.htm

Densified Biomass

Briquette

Holey Roket: A Biomass Briquette Stove

8 March 2010 - 1:08pm

Oblak

Holey Roket: A Biomass Briquette Stove
Rok Oblak, Slovenia, June 2009

See Rok Stoves
and Fuel Briquette Burning at Stoves Camp 2008

The Holey Roket technology promotes using biomass briquettes and their hole as the key feature of an efficient cooking system. The flames coming in the combustion chamber are condensed within a small space (scheme) providing higher heat output and therefore better combustion of toxic gasses like Carbon Monoxide (CO).

Haiti Paper Fuel Pellets

30 January 2010 - 2:44pm

refering to the crizes on Haiti and the aftermath of the earthquake, we hereby like inform you about the You Tube video of former president and now UN Spescial envoy to Haiti, mr. Clinton and his speach about the possibilities to change focus from charcoal to briquettes or pellets produced out of any type of dry biomass as household energy in Haiti or elsewhere in the world:
See links: