Patrick Bringardner, Project Gaia, August, 2010

A recent assessment conducted by the Women’s Refugee Commission in Haiti found that the price of charcoal has risen by 40% (WRC and WFP 2010). Helping subject populations to develop the capacity to produce liquid biofuels may offer one important solution to energy poverty in Haiti’s displaced communities and contribute to its long term development of energy self-sufficiency.

Clean Cook Stove

Project Gaia has been working in Haiti to promote ethanol and the CleanCook Stove - an alcohol based stove - as an alternative to stoves that burn solid biomass (i.e. wood, charcoal, and briquettes.) Ethanol is as clean as LPG, cheaper than charcoal, safer than kerosene and has greater potential than trash briquettes. In Africa, Project Gaia has accumulated over 2 million days of cooking with the CleanCook Stove without a single accident of any significance.

The most common question which arises during our discussions with policy makers and social entrepreneurs is:** “Would the supply of ethanol be sustainable? And where would the supply come from after donations were at an end?” **

This is the key sustainability question and the reason why we are so interested in Haiti. Not only was Haiti once a leading sugar producer and a distiller of beverage ethanol for export as well as the local market, but also Haiti exists on trade routes over which billions of liters of ethanol flow each year on their way to a fuel market in the United States. This ethanol, mostly from Brazil, generally the most competitively priced in the commodity market, will provide a source of fuel for Haiti—cheaper than kerosene—as Haiti builds up its own local production (Ethiopian Petroleum Enterprise Data). In fact, the Brazilian Government has pledged to donate over 100,000 liters and an additional 400,000 liters over the next two years.

Haiti was once a powerful agricultural economy, producing for its own needs. In 1983 Haiti harvested 70,000 hectares of sugarcane. Today it harvests less than 17,000 hectares (Figure 1: Decline in Sugar Cane Production (UN Data World Statistics Pocketbook)). Haiti’s dependence on export markets has increased its vulnerability through its reliance on basic sustenance items it once produced locally. Today it supplements most of its own food staples with imports – a precarious equilibrium. Other than charcoal, most other fuels are imported.

In regards to domestic ethanol production, Haitians are no strangers to the distillation of alcohol. Thousands of small mills and distilleries make beverage-grade ethanol in Haiti. In Léogâne alone, over 200 small distilleries were in operation before the earthquake (ESMAP 2007). Many of the existing distilleries in Haiti, those shut down or still in operation, could be repaired and refurbished to produce fuel grade ethanol. Project Gaia has been in contact with an operating distillery in the vicinity of Léogâne that could upgrade to produce hydrous ethanol fuel and put this fuel into the market in a matter of months.

Many opportunities exist for small scale distilleries. In Haiti, some small ethanol enterprises are already active thus presenting the perfect opportunity for value chain development through the support of SMEs (small and medium enterprises). The number of sugarcane transformation workshops throughout the country is an estimated 5,612 (ESMAP 2007)

Haitians rightly believe that Haiti’s way back from dependency is through agriculture and a renewed attention to domestic needs and markets. Therefore, by developing ethanol as a household fuel, it will profoundly benefit Haiti because Haitians can produce biofuels from their own agricultural crops. Moreover, Haitian families will finally have access to cooking fuel that is safe, clean, affordable and sustainable. A way back to economic - and human - health for Haiti is to produce ethanol for its domestic energy market.

Rochester Institute of Technology: Develop Thermoeletric Stove Test Methods and Capability
Robert Stevens, Brain Thorn

Project Summary

According to the World Heath Organization more than three billion people depend on biomass fuels (wood, dung, or agricultural residues) primarily for cooking. The practice of cooking with biomass has decimated many ecosystems and requires an enormous amount of human effort to gather. In addition, there is considerable evidence that exposure to biomass smoke increases the risk of common and serious diseases in both children and adults. According to the WHO studies, indoor smoke from solid fuels causes an estimated 1.6 million deaths annually.

To minimize these harmful effects associated with cooking more efficient cook stoves have been proposed. These new stoves are significantly more biomass fuel efficient and thus reduce deforestation rates. These enhanced stoves also reduce indoor air pollution, thereby reducing deaths and illnesses due to biomass cooking.

RIT is working with an NGO partner in Haiti, H.O.P.E., and funded by an EPA Energy Research Grant to develop an enhanced stove. Concurrent with this team's work, a separate group will develop stove concept, design it, and create prototypes. This project is to develop a series of stove measurement and characterization methods and reduce them to practice. The mission of this project team is to define test methods relevant to the Haitian customer needs and, in addition, that quantifies the stove's fuel efficiency, cooking performance, and hazardous emissions in engineering terms.

Link:
Thermo-Electric Cook Stove

EPA Grant
Improved Cookstoves for Haiti

Nat Mulcahy, World Stoves, March, 2010

Clearly pellets are the single best fuel option for Haiti right now.

Background

Ethanol stills use coal or wood, coal is not sustainable, and wood is vanishing fast. As for coal it is now being imported because local production and availability of wood is not able to keep up with demand and because much of Haiti is deforested. All fuel options underwent a 50% price hike following the earthquake. In ascending order of use the most common fuels are propane, kerosene, wood and coal.

Common Fuel Options in Quake Affected Regions

Haitian fire starters

Port au Prince uses 80% of all the coal consumed by Haiti. Wood, prior to the earthquake, was used mostly in rural areas but in many of the camps that we are working in we’ve noted more and more people using wood in their charcoal stoves. Kerosene is very expensive and used not for meals but for quick things like eggs or reheating precooked food. Following the fuel cost hike, however, I have seen more and more of the kerosene stoves gutted and transformed into small charcoal stoves by removing the tank and burner, pounding holes in some sheet metal for form a sieve to hold the charcoal and placing either a pot on the coals or using the rack or radiator from a refrigerator as a grill. As for propane it is used but the families in top 3% of the economic ranking.

Haitian Kerosene StoveKerosene Stove Converted to Charcoal

Regarding cost it is important to note that the drop in earning options and the spike in fuel costs now means that most of the displaced families now must spend 40% to 60% of the daily family income just to purchase fuel to cook with. In many cases this has meant that families have gone from eating two or three times a day to once a day even in the areas where WFP/PAM is sending distributing food.

What Other Options do we Have?

We could use fuels directly in the stoves which is one of the reasons I like gasifying stoves (fuel too small to use in a standard stove can be used in gasifying stoves); unfortunately the ability of gasifying stoves to use almost any biomass often creates misconception that all biomasses are the same. Users become disappointed when rice husks are used up faster than oak chunks. To avoid this I see briquettes and pellets as the best options. They are more consistent, clean to handle, low-cost, and perceived as a more modern fuel. This last is particularly important because many people are well invested in the “fuel ladder” and if they have already made the perceived social economic move forward (from wood to coal) they will not like to switch again unless it is to move up another rung. Marketing will be key to show that pellets and briquettes are a newer more modern fuel, it is important that pellets and briquettes not be viewed as taking a step back since they are made with “poor” materials.

Clearly pellets are the single best fuel option for Haiti right now.

1. What is the fuel offset by using the pellets? Is it 50% savings compared with wood?

wood fires here are either three rock stoves or charcoal stoves now being used with wood because many can no longer afford charcoal. efficiency is between 7 and 12 %maybe 20 % with some practice. pellet stoves require some training but then run themselves well and may be as much as four times more efficient. if you consider that 1kgofcharcoal produces here is really 7kg of trees the savings both economically and environmentally could be staggering

2. How much imported charcoal does it offset?

right now just one NGO's food program requires the use of 600,000 kg of charcoal a day, that's 1,800,000kg of CO2 per day give or take, right?and that is only one NGO hot meal program, put all the AID groups together and the numbers get big mighty fast

3. What are the relative costs of imported charcoal compared with pellets?

for now, thanks to Green Circle BioEnergy in FL we are providing free pellets to the people using our stoves. in general charcoal costs between 40% and 60% of a family's daily income. Daily income is about $5 US.

4. What is the benefit in number of meals from donated pellets? How may families could cook more than one meal per day by using donated or subsidized pellets as a transition fuel?

Green Circle Bio Energy's generous donation of 60 tons will provide 145,000 to 148,000 family meals, or feed about 740,000 people each once.
I strongly encourage other pellets producers to follow Green Circle's lead and in the mean time am working with the UN to see about funding regular shipments either weekly or biweekly to Port au Prince for the foreseeable future.
As a happy plus we have teamed up with three local ag and aforestation groups who will use the biochar produced by the stoves to restore soil carbon and help areas at risk of becoming desertified.

What Feed Stock Options are there in Haiti?

Feed stocks vary widely through Haiti but in the interest of simplifying logistics and keeping transport costs to a minimum I recommend that local pellets/briquette production be made using local materials. Clearly this means each small pellet mill or briquette press will have a specific optimal mix. UNDP and the Clinton Foundation have done a fine job with this concept and their briquette plant is now in its third year of operation. The use the Work for Pay model developed by UNDP for the collection of paper and cardboard throughout the city.

Paper cardboardUNDP Pellets

These are then soaked in large drums and pounded in enormous wooden mortars to archive a consistent slurry prior to pressing. I would recommend the additional purchase of a hammer mill or two to accelerate production. We have measured a wide difference in hardness of the briquettes which makes the use of them harder to learn. This could easily be fixed with a grading protocol prior to the sale of the briquettes or controlling the pressing and packing procedure of the press.

Pellets would have the advantages of ease of use, faster production rates, no drying period (during the dry season the briquettes require three days to dry but during the rainy season drying can take as much as a week) and a wider variety of feed stock options to provide a more energy intensive fuel.

Around the quake affected region the feedstocks we have tested over the past five weeks have included, bagass, rice hulls, coffee hulls, bamboo, sawdust (many mills are working overtime to provide wood for shelters), chadek rinds, coconut shells and husks, mango cores, palm fronds, sugar cane, sugar cane shavings, paper, cardboard (personal thought, much waste has been generated during food and aid distribution, it would be nice to be able to use all of it so as not to leave a littered city in our efforts to help). All larger wood was used following the quake either for building shelters or to cook with.

wood chipsstrawpalm frondMangococonut shellcorn cobschadek rindsfood aid packaging

My favorite has to be chadek rinds, which by themselves produce a spectacular blue flame in the Luica Stoves. Chadek are large pear-shaped citrus fruits. And the rinds are saved as fire-starters.
Bagass poses some challenges in that the gas it produces often has sugars in it that do not always burn. This was not the case with the denser sugar cane shavings or the full cane chunks. Which leads me to believe that bagass, once pelleted would also function well. This, if verified would be a fantastic feedstock in that it is by far the most abundant in this area with mountains of it just sitting throughout the region.

Out side the quake affected areas there are a great many other feedstocks and the energy balance must be carefully made to see if any of these would make sense. From what I have seen vetiver grasses are clearly the most promising feed stock option followed closely by banana plantain plantation and processing waste.

Where to go from here?

For the short term and immediate future the best solution would be to import pellets. While the thought of importing fuel may cause some reservation it must be noted that current aid programs are importing charcoal to cook the food that is being distributed. Current food distribution of rice alone requires a daily supply of 600,000 kg of charcoal. Larger camps are importing propane. If the aid effort is already importing fuel would it not make sense to import more environmentally compatible fuels which at the same time would help sensitize Haitian stove users about a new fuel which could be sustainably 100% Haitian produced? We have enough pellets for the school feeding programs and some camps for the near future but a steady donor supply would be key as we work with WFP to establish up to 30 local pellet mills throughout the Port au Prince area.
Other askes could be small mills for schools, shipping and logistics help with donor pellets (getting the first shipment was a nightmare)and experts or pellet producers willing to consider production in Haiti, the market here is ready and the need for jobs here is great.

Our Stoves,

As for our stoves we are currently producing three types of stoves:

• Large institutional stoves for the school feeding programs, orphanages, and hot meals programs in the camps,
• Precut Flat packed Lucia Stoves with incorporated pot stand (1000 fit in a four foot cube and only bending is required to assemble them)
• and a 100% local version of the Falt Packed LuciaStove made from oil drums. (there was a great feeling of pride when the local one out performed the lazer cut version)

Photos of all three are attached (please note on the large version that the local artisans we are working with insisted on decorating it with trees and birds saying they had to because if people use these stoves the trees will come back to Haiti and then so too the birds.

Street CookingTwo Haitian Pellet Stoves
Two Stoves and One Fan
Lucia in Haiti
Haitian Lucia Stove in Use, note no smoke.

Nat of WorldStove

Green Circle BioEnergy http://www.greencirclebio.com/
2500 Green Circle Parkway
Cottondale, Florida 32431
who would like to thank the following for their help:

• Port of Panama City
• Shelton Trucking, Alpha, Florida
• Arizona Chemical, Panama City. Florida
• Aggregate Trucking, Panama City, Florida
• E B Pipe Coating, Panama City, Florida

Nat Mulcahy, January 2010

Spent the day yesterday working with the state department to get more clearance for our shipments. 64 tons of pellets will provide food and clean water for 145000 families.

with 3,000,000 people displaced it will not last long. we are handing our the pellets and peanut shells in paper bags we have measured out to cook one meal or boil three pots of water. the paper bags are about the size one a lunch bag and the bag itself is the tinder to start the stove.

Spend the past two days working with NIH, EPA, The State Department, Haiti, USAID, and the World Bank. LuciaStove production is now set at 3000 per month but we keep being asked to ramp up to 5 to10 times that number.
Today we started casting the larger parts for the Biucci (the institutional version of the LucieStove), see attached. The more we make in haiti the more jobs we create here and the less we have to depend on the very sporadic shipping options.