As far as disadvantages go, saving the charcoal it produces rather than its continued burning is the intended use, and thus it has a shorter burn time. This is also because it does not gasify waste biomass that surrounds the firewood, as the Anila does. Because it's materials costs are so much less, however, this burn time disadvantage can actually be countered by providing two of them to each family, to be interchanged as needed, which Dr. Anderson has done in India. The cooking structure into which the stove can fit is extremely similar to what is commonly used here, practically all free materials, and can be adapted in a variety ways, including maintaining the ability to use this stove while simultaneously cooking the old fashioned way.
Another metalworker here just finished a complement to this technology that would be used strictly as a way to efficiently produce biochar, and potentially make burning the charcoal in the stove a sound decision. It is a technology that has quite a lot of potential and the SeaChar engineers are tinkering with it in Seattle. The idea comes from the Appropriate Rural Technology Institute, in India, and it is essentially just a 55 gallon drum that is adapted to work as a TLUD to turn agricultural waste into biochar (for a more thorough description, there's a description here). By using this over the remainder of my time here it should be possible to set up larger scale biochar plot tests than with the TLUD stoves alone.
With what I see as, currently, a prohibitively high materials cost for the Anila, is an opportunity for applied research in these cheaper technologies that can provide comparable value in their advantages. If you believe in the potential of biochar like I do, the gap between the technology that is out there and who could be taking advantage of it is enormous. The article on biochar from the economist this week highlights the potential of this kind of stove (specifically mentioning one kind that has little chance in poor rural areas because it requires pellets as fuel), but right now I'm essentially the only person that's trying to make them work where people will actually use them.
As a final note, I was able to meet with the municipality's environmental secretary, and he confirmed my belief that the current cost estimate for the Anila would make it extremely difficult to work on a large scale. With this cheaper technology they'd consider a partnership, though, and that could give us access to thousands more families and the government's human capital. Until then, take care.
Scott Eaton
GO Project Coordinator
