permaculture

["Sharon Gordon" <gordonse@one.net>]

Forwarded with permission from the STOVES list.

Sharon
gordonse@one.net

*************************
From: Dr. Ray Wijewardene raywije@EUREKA.LK
To: STOVES@LISTSERV.REPP.ORG
Subject: Re: [STOVES] Availability of Fuel for smokeless (gasifier-type)
domestic cookers.

Dear Tom.. ADK. et-al...

You may have observed that the trend we are trying to encourage and develop
in (SL)Sri Lanka is towards 'Re-Greening-Sri-Lanka' ... which is perhaps
much deeper than the development only of
improved stoves. Our earlier endeavours towards this objectives were
tremendously re-inforced when I saw the eroded and tree-less rural
countryside around Pune... a countryside which I recalled as tree-covered
and verdant when I used to visit Pune (often, - I had relations there) in my
much younger days, - some 65 years ago!... My subsequent travels around
other regions of (our nearest neighbour) India, now as a 'retired'
gentleman, greatly re-inforced my impression that unless we ACTIVELY try to
do something about it, we in Sri-Lanka too would soon be losing our own
verdant hillsides.... Once very much more verdant than they are now!!

It struck me that our verbal and sentimental endeavours to 'save the
forests'... 'save our trees'...'tree-hugging' etc. would lead us nowhere...
The sheer commercialism of CUTTING down trees for sale would have to be
addressed... and bettered! The trees used for domestic-fuel-wood by
willagers was, to my mind, (and also well substantiated in literature) a
tiny fraction of the trees being cut down by commercial interests ... not
only for timber, but far more for the (thermal) fuel-wood market in
industries.

And this was when we reverted to the ancient and time-proven (world-wide)
practise of 'coppicing'... Of only 'pruning' the branches in such a manner
as to permit the trees to grow lush and green again... to produce more
prunings or loppings or coppices. I learned a lot more about this during my
period as a principal scientist in West-Africa with IITA, the International
Institute of Tropical Agriculture, where the 'Alley-Cropping' or SALT
(Sloping-Agriculural Land Technology) system was developed to achieve a
state of sustainable fertility on the rain-fed sloping lands of the tropical
regions.

We soon discovered that this was a very sustainable process... and specially
in our tropical countries with year-round sunshine to promote year-round
growth....Plantation crops (tea, rubber, cocoa, bananas, coconuts, oil-palm
etc) have long proven the most sustainable of industries in the tropics...
and far healthier for our people than herded together in the western pattern
of factories and industries... where such enclosed premises are perhaps very
necessary in the winter months....

But we would have to make it commercially attractive (repeat COMMERCIALLY
ATTRACTIVE) for people to GROW the trees on a plantation scale, rather than
just 'fell and sell' them...Look around for woody areas to fell/cut and
convey to the various industries being established to exploit the wood.
Hence our earlier program was termed GROWING OUR OWN ENERGY... a
power-point-presentation of which those who joined us at Pune will have
seen. This endeavour was to promote the commercial GROWING of fuel-wood as
itself a profitable venture, both for industrial (thermal) use as well as
for the generation of electricity (and for which there is a substantial
market in SL and in all developing countries). We (my colleagues, Josph,
Nalin, Para et-al. and I) initially directed our attention towards
gasifiers.. an area in which Tom Reed is undoubtedly a world-authority, and
his publications thereon invaluable. We searched the world for suitable
gasifiers to meet OUR needs in what is very much still a developing
country.... And India seemed to have the most appropriate... homing in on
ANKUR in Baroda. An initial order (through our Ministry of Power & Energy
and Ministry of Science & Technology) for a 35 kW gasifier generator has
proven eminently satisfactory and been viewed (with some surprise!) in
steady operation by literally thousands of visitors. ... A further gasifier
ordered for the generation of industrial thermal heat was installed at a
very well reputed factory making activated charcoal... there to replace the
fuel-oil supplied to their boilers for the generatiion of steam. A further
gasifier from ANKUR is being installed to demonstrate the role of coppiced
fuel-wood in CHP (Combined-Heat-and-Power) where the gas generated in the
gasifier is used both for thermal (process-heat) as well as
electricity-generation. The fact that there is no smoke seen now from the
chimneys of the factories which replaced the burning of fuel-oil with
gasifiers, has made many kin the region  wonder whether the factory still
operates!

This enabled local entreprenurs to develop systems for the growing and
supply to the gasifiers of coppiced fuel wood (in this case, primarily of
the NF trees Gliricidia and Accacia) from up to 50 miles away.. to receive
cash payment ($15 per tone) therefor. Soon there were queues of trailers and
trucks lining up to supply the wood, and the sustainability of the market
therefor has encouraged the growing of gliricidia trees on the surrounding
coconut plantations. This practise had long been urged by the scientists of
our Coconut Research Instiute, which had urged the growing of gliricida as a
high 'N-content' green-manure to meet the increasing fertility needs of the
coconut growing industry... and to replace tonnes and tones of imported
urea... the cost of which (with that of oil) has increased dramatically. On
my own little coconut plantation, we also installed a 'baby' (3.5 kW)
gasifier-generator (imported from ANKUR) which supplies all the domestic
electricity needs of the plantation-cottage labour and office... while also
supplying the electricity for the  irrigation pumps supplying water to the
drip-irrigation system now being installed to each and every coconut-palm of
this plantation, and proving invaluable to combat the increasingly long
periods of drought which we have faced during the past several decades.

Surprisingly... it is not only the saving in energy costs but MORE the
savings in fertiliser costs through substition of the gliricida leaf (50 kgs
having the 'N' equivalent of 800 gms of urea earlier used per palm) The
increased 'greening' of the plantation by the rows and rows of gliricidia
planted in the avenues between the coconut palm has been remarked on and
commended by the many hundreds who come to 'look-see'... and hopefully adopt
themselves.

I say 'hopefully'... for if you think that they have all gone right ahead
and promptly emulated these - clearly very profitable and successful
demonstrations of the financial advantages of 'Growing our own Energy AND
FERTILITY'... then we all need another 'think'! It just doesn't happen
overnight. .. The 'Inevitabilty of Gradualness' as Bernard Shaw (I believe)
once wrote. But we have every expectatation that these practises will soon
become more widely used... and then perhaps 'snow-ball'!!

My special thanks in this endeavour (although not directly to 'Stoves') have
been to Tom Reed and ADKarve whose guidance throughout has been
invaluable.... The REAL 'spin-off' being in the area of 'Green-Manuring' and
the experience we are hereby acquiring to revert to the ancient, proven
sustainability, and clear financial benefits of 'scientifically' growing our
own green-manures to replace the now-prohibitively-expensive costs for
imported fertilisers.... an endeavour in which  Growing of Our Own Energy
now appears to be a very profitable 'spin-off' from our efforts to Grow Our
Own Fertility. However, like Tom Reed I question the need for the energy
losses in the making of charcaol, if we could devote more attention to
utilising all the heat of the wood in a really appropriate wood-stove,
direct... as his team at BEF, ADK at Pune, and our Punchibanda at NERDC in
SL, are now endeavouring to achieve.

Tom Reed mentions the tremendous green and foul emissions usually
encountered in charcoal making. This was also experienced in the rural
making of charcoal from coconut shells in Sri Lanka. In recent years the
experience of gasification has encouraged our major producer (and
world-renowned exporter) of activated charcoal, to develop massive (6-8 MW)
plant to pyrolise coconut shells directly into charcoal AND use all the
effluent gasses in a totally enclosed system to produce not only the
charcoal and its activation but also the turbine-driven electricity they -
and their associated factories - need.... no smoke... no pollution... and
GREATLY reduced production costs.

My apologies for the length of this email...

Ray

RAY WIJEWARDENE.. Colombo, Sri Lanka.


-----Original Message-----
From: TBReed [mailto:tombreed@comcast.net]
Sent: Friday, April 30, 2004 6:13 AM
To: adkarve; STOVES@LISTSERV.REPP.ORG; raywije@eureka.lk
Subject: Re: [STOVES] Availability of Fuel for smokeless (gasifier-type)
domestic cookers.


Dear ADKarve, Ray and All:

ADK said..
There is a ban in Maharashtra state on
> making charcoal from wood. There is ample prosopis juliflora (mesquite)
> growing everywhere. People cut it and sell it as firewood, but if we made
> charcoal from it, we would be breaking the law.

There are probably two good reasons for the law against making charcoal from
wood in Maharashtra (and possibly political and financial reasons as well).

1)  The yield of charcoal from wood is typically 15-25%, so that >2/3 of the
energy is wasted.

2)  Conventional charcoal making puts out  incredible amounts of
yellow-green emissions, so that the "clean cooking" for the family becomes
dirty air for the rest of us!

ADK's new cane charcoal process has minimal emissions and would also have
minimal emissions for wood, I presume.  This overcomes objection 2.  If ADK
can now find some use for the heat that he generates by burning the
yellow-green tar emissions, he will have overcome objection 1.

~~~~~~~~~~~~
The process of toplit updraft (inverted downdraft) cooking on the other hand
uses 3/4 of the heat content for clean cooking by burning the emissions and
leaves 5-25% (depending on moisture content) as a charcoal by-product. There
must be some happy combination of these two processes.

Musing.

Tom Reed     BEF


----- Original Message -----
From: "adkarve" <adkarve@PN2.VSNL.NET.IN>
To: <STOVES@LISTSERV.REPP.ORG>
Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2004 7:49 AM
Subject: Re: [STOVES] Availability of Fuel for smokeless (gasifier-type)
domestic cookers.