[Stoves] TLUD progress in West Bengal …. was Re: [Stoves] Declaration about Woodgas

Sorry for the week’s delay in responding.  See below:

Dear Paul

 

That is very encouraging news about the project. I am happy to hear sales are 3000 per month. Do you have an expected working life for the stove?  What parts fail first?

In the pilot project in Deganga, the earliest stoves have completed over 4 years of virtually daily usage (with annual confirmations by the carbon credit verifiers).   This is with maintenance and repairs.   The major parts have many years of life ahead of them.   The repairs are on the grate and on the fuel chamber (innermost cylinder).   The project purchases the produced charcoal, so the users are quite good at dumping out the char at the end of the pyrolysis stage, thereby helping protect the grate and lower sidewalls.

The fuel cylinder has a “sacrificial cylinder” that is inside the main wall of the fuel cylinder.   When it is showing stress, it is removed (one screw) and inverted so that the less-stressed upper portion becomes the bottom area.  I am asking the project implementer (MB) about the frequency of the repair work.  The cylinders are produced with seam welding of stainless steel sheets.  Look good and hold up well.

 

Are you aware of any production issues such as quality control as the numbers get larger?

The stoves are assembled at one location (with quality supervision) from components from 5 different suppliers whose components are clearly comparable with each shipment.   There is surplus production capacity in the Kolkata area to greatly expand the number of pieces of each component. 

 

I believe this project needs to be written up in a way that provides an analysis of the conditions that must be in place to go forward. Having one working example is always 10 times better than talking up the first one.

I agree.  Just need to find the time to do the write-up.   I hope to do it before ETHOS.   By January 2018 the project will be passing 50,000 stoves in use, and (I anticipate) that the number of stoves per month will be over 4000, with new expansions of the project coming on-line as fast as funding will allow.   (I will discuss funding issues in a later message.)

Paul

 

Thanks
Crispin

 

 

Only yesterday did I return from India (GACC Forum and then 9 days at the TLUD (woodgas) project in West Bengal near Kolkata.  Passed 40.000 Champion TLUDs, and increasing at 3000+ per month.  More messages will follow.

Paul