Stovers and Charists,
Below are two important messages about TLUD stoves. Dave Lello replies to Julien’s earlier message. Both are important about FA and ND TLUD stoves. The discussion should continue on the Listservs.
Paul
Doc / Dr TLUD / Paul S. Anderson, PhD
Exec. Dir. of Juntos Energy Solutions NFP
Email: psanders@ilstu.edu<mailto:psanders@ilstu.edu> Skype: paultlud
Phone: Office: 309-452-7072 Mobile: 309-531-4434
Website: www.drtlud.com<www.drtlud.com>
From: Dave Lello <dave@lello.me<mailto:dave@lello.me>>
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2019 10:37 AM
>
Subject: Re: About our communications RE: data from the summit
Hi All
The points made by Julien and Dan are vlid and certainly echo’d by me.
Just to point out maybe the obvious.
The FabStove is designed aa a stove for:
* Peri-urban and urban areas where people cannot always harvest their own fuel for various reasons
* Where solid fuels are bought already (like charcoal or wood) and affordable but cannot afford Grid power where available or LPG in many cases and
* Households have some form of limited power (assuming they have mobiles, and small appliances). This can be small PAYG or paid for Pico Solar systems
* Cooking is done indoors in small cramped spaces (shack towns) or small 2 room homes
To illustrate this I have drawn a chart. To show that we really do not compete with the rocket and wood.
Rockets and other insulated side fed stoves are much cheaper to build and operate in rural environments well. The Champion is working in peri-urban areas north of Calcutta.
We intend operating in shack areas on the outskirts of large cities in developing countries.
Our business model is to make money off the pellet fuel and hopefully be able to subsidise the price of the stove from this revenue. This will be made easier if system like Paul’s Carbon Tracker were in place.
Our calculation is that in many urban environments the spend of cooking fuel is between 20 and 30 USD per month if some form of improved stove is used. More if not.
If the FA-TLUD saves just a third of the fuel use, the spend on solid fuel over 60 months is expected to be about $1,200 ($20 x 60 months) vs $1,800 and far exceed the cost of the FA TLUD. It obviously offers less fumes and risk indoors.
Lastly I am working on the premise that a small 5V fan and switch cost about $3, and is only marginally more than a metal riser component.
This market is estimated at about 20 – 30% of the targeted 1,6 billion people that are normally mentioned.
Regards
Dave
On 13 Feb 2019, at 17:59, Julien Winter <winter.julien@gmail.com<mailto:winter.julien@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi All;
I think Dan has made a number of valid points.
If we can’t get the PM2.5 down on natural draft stoves, we may have to start encouraging people to go in that direction.
The key advantage in the forced draft stove is the momentum of the secondary air produces good mixing of reactant gases, a hot flame with cracking of tars into smaller more reactive molecules. The other advantage of forced draft is that these stoves turn-up rather than turn-down (choke off), so we don’t have to design burners for very low gasification rates.
The philosophy behind my natural draft burners is to try to get the best possible degree of mixing of secondary air and pyrolytic gas. My best attempt yet is the internal riser (that was inspired by the concept of counter-current gas flows, although I don’t really achieve that). If I can’t get that to work, then I will start to encourage households to take up forced draft.
However, there are reasons why I work on natural draft.
The primary reason for working on natural draft is that the recipients of these stoves are poor; in particular, they are cash-poor. Much of their economic activity is barter. There are a lot of demands for the cash that they have, including school fees, books, medicines, clothing, hardware, and electronics. Adding to this the cost of a cookstove and commercial fuel competes with those other demands. Currently, by using a traditional stove — which is free — they are completely self-sufficient in cooking. When we introduce ‘improved’ cookstoves, we take away that self-sufficiency. The less demand we make on their cash with a new stove the better.
An additional motive for trying to keep stoves as simple as possible is that, for many of the countries that would be recipients of TLUDs, the metal and plastic components have to be imported. If these countries do not have a strong balance of trade with the external World, then their currencies have low purchasing power. Some of this is captured in the economic parameter called “purchasing power parity”. For example, the purchasing power of a dollar spent in Bangladesh is about three times greater than that dollar spent by Bangladeshis to import goods. This imbalance of purchasing power is even greater for rural people, because they are more removed from the cash economy. Eighty-percent of foreign exchange in Bangladesh is earned by the garment industry, and that is located around urban centers, not the countryside.
When I first went to Bangladesh, I expected to show them how they can play with TLUDs my making them out of food tins. I took along a copy of Kelpie Wilson’s booklet on TLUD-making for school children. However, when I got there I discovered that there are (almost) NO TIN CANS IN BANGLADESH. The metal has to be imported, so packaging food in a can is too expensive. If you own a tin can, it is too valuable as a container to want to cut it up for a model stove.
So, there is another element of self-sufficiency in cooking beyond the household. That is national self-sufficiency in cooking. Countries like Bangladesh would prefer that their 25 million households cooking with biomass don’t become dependent on imported stoves or their components. That is why Bangladesh has import barriers for imported stoves.
There is a notable exception to the above cash-poor situation. The TLUD makes biochar which has a tangible value for local farmers when it improves agricultural profits by reducing inorganic fertilizer requirements and increasing crop yields. Households can be in an improved economic position by using a TLUD. They can sell their biochar for cash, or biochar becomes a type of currency in itself. Thus, biochar can be a game-changer that makes stoves with imported components affordable, not the least because the country may have to import less nitrogen fertilizer. We call this the “TLUD-Biochar Ecosystem” were the TLUD is a ‘keystone species’ and the biochar is an ‘ecosystem engineer’ that makes a permanent change in soil productivity.
Anyway, I try to make stoves without fans, because that adds an additional dependency for imported goods. We are also trying to make stoves with concrete, clay and ceramic components. We may be able to make a viable case for pellets, because the population of Bangladesh is energy-starved (half there fuel is rice straw and other loose biomass). Also, broken electronic components can become toxic waste, whereas the old body of a concrete stove becomes just an interesting stone.
The natural draft TLUD may be a stepping stone to a force draft TLUD. If so, it would be good if the fans were made in Bangladesh, and the market for pellet fuels was developed. I don’t think that biochar can pay for both the stove and the pellet fuel.
My hope is that we can get these natural draft TLUDs cleaner, and see if we can make more ceramic components.
Hopefully, we can re-submit much of this discussion to “Stoves”.
Cheers,
Julien.