I reproduce a series of emails I exchanged with a number of research scientists from abroad, which might be of interest to you. It is possible that you could produce electric power from the sawdust at Anloga, for the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH)!
Yours in the service of Ghana,
Kofi Thompson.
"Flag this message RE: [biochar] biochar from microwavesMonday, 6 October, 2008 2:53 AM
From: "kofi thompson"
Many thanks MFH - will have to find someone to get this to the Kumasi Metropolitan chief to work on. Bless you.
It's so interesting how people here are always suspicious of one in such situations - they simply refuse to believe that a fellow human being could act for altruistic reasons.
The mindset here generally is that one has an "angle" or a "hidden agenda". Such a bore, when you simply enjoy helping others and promoting the "common weal". Hmmm, life.
Peace and blessings!
Kofi.
--- On Sun, 5/10/08, MFH
From: MFH
Subject: RE: [biochar] biochar from microwaves
To: biochar@yahoogroups .com
Date: Sunday, 5 October, 2008, 9:05 PM
There are a number of designs for simple stoves that burn sawdust with a very high efficiency. Generally made from a 20-litre drum and some concrete. If there are mountains of sawdust available it would be more beneficial to use this as stove fuel than to cut forest to make char.
Max H
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: biochar@yahoogroups .com [mailto: biochar@yahoogroups .com ] On Behalf Of AJH
Sent: Sunday, 5 October 2008 11:29 PM
To: biochar@yahoogroups .com
Subject: Re: [biochar] biochar from microwaves
On Sat, 4 Oct 2008 06:02:43 +0000 (GMT), kofi thompson wrote:
>Could smallish plants be designed to produce power for the teaching hospital in Kumasi , for example?
I'm not familiar with large scale projects. One has to ask why are the
piles of sawdust not currently used, is it because fossil fuel is
still relatively cheap? Producing power leads to waste heat, producing
power from biomass tends to make more waste heat than from fossil
fuels. In principle if a steam power plant were viable to burn this
sawdust to produce power then a combustion system for it that co
produced chardust is a relatively small step.
Unless Lewis Smith knows different the cheapest "off the shelf" steam
plants in the ~5MW region seem to be based on 1950s era ships steam
turbines.
IIRC a pyrolyser co producing chardust and electricity by direct
combustion at the 300kW scale was unlikely to convert more than 20% of
the heat value of the offgas into electricity and I think that is
optimistic.
AJH
Flag this messageRe: [biochar] biochar from microwavesSaturday, 4 October, 2008 7:02 AM
From: "kofi thompson"
My brain ceases to function the moment I see technical stuff, AJH! Could smallish plants be designed to produce power for the teaching hospital in Kumasi, for example?
That would mean that the money they now spend to purchase electric power, could be used to improve patient care - and perhaps provide free critical surgical operations (such as repairing holes in hearts, e.g!.) for the very poor.
Although we are yet to benefit from the massive oil and natural gas deposits ( hmmm, the potential harm to the environment from future oil spills, just doesn't bear thinking!), Ghana could buy such plants for all its major hospitals. Doable?
Peace and blessings! Kofi.
--- On Sat, 4/10/08, AJH
From: AJH
Subject: Re: [biochar] biochar from microwaves
To: biochar@yahoogroups .com
Date: Saturday, 4 October, 2008, 12:58 AM
On Fri, 3 Oct 2008 00:02:29 +0000 (GMT), kofi thompson wrote:
>Thanks, Andrew. That's good to know. There are huge mountains of the stuff in parts of our second city, Kumasi, where carpenters work. During the CAF football tournament, the smoke from sections of it torched by the carpenters, made it difficult for people to breath, apparently.
>
>The city authorities would welcome technology that could resolve this problem for it - and perhaps produce power in addition to that, Andrew?.
This message finally arrived!
Firstly a chap in Kenya made chardust from sawdust using a downdraught
method, until he found piles of waste charcoal to use instead, have a
search on that term.
Secondly the technology is straightforward, the issue is how you pay
for it even if the rawstock is free. The process produces waste heat
and char, who pays what for which parts?
Pyrolysis offgas is a decent fuel "gas" but it cannot be stored, it's
probably better than the producer gas from a wood gasifier, we
actually ran a gas turbine with it, very briefly, this gas turbine was
itself first adapted to run directly with sawdust, I still think the
idea has legs but if you want large scale a steam boiler is probably
still the best bet at the MW scale. That's 2 tonnes of dry biomass per
hour.
AJH"
No comments:
Post a Comment