Ethanol burning stoves reduce deforestation & improve health - Gaia Assoc wins Sustain Energy award

[JohnWxy]

ONe of the major causes of deforestation is the gathering of wood and woody plants for firewood. THis leads to denudification of the land in semi-arid areas and contributes to desertification. THe Gaia association started distributing ethanol burning stoves which use ethanol made from local waste materials (such as molasses left over from sugar production). This is a promising developement not only for fighting deforestation but also for health benefits for the people using the stoves as the stoves produce NO Soot, and very low CO2 emissions.

Gaia Assoc wins Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy for distribution of an ethanol burning stove which leads to less harvesting of local wood and provides health benefits (produces NO SOOT and very low carbon monoxide).


http://www.oneclimate.net/2009/04/13/gaia-2008-ashden-award-ethanol-stoves/">The Gaia Association won an Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy in 2008. They are producing and distributing an ethanol stove in refugee camps in Ethiopia. The ethanol is produced from waste molasses.

Refugees in Ethiopia, as in many countries, rely on fuelwood for cooking. Women who spend long hours collecting fuelwood outside refugee camps are frequently attacked, and there is extensive deforestation. The Gaia Association has provided ethanol-fuelled stoves to 1,780 refugee families, enabling clean, comfortable cooking and preventing wood use. The ethanol is produced from locally-available molasses, a sugar by-product which previously caused pollution. The Gaia Association is starting to supply stoves and ethanol for other refugee camps and also for new housing developments in Addis Ababa, and a local factory is producing the stoves. Stoves are also being introduced in Addis Ababa, and local manufacture has started.





Gaia - 2008 Ashden Award: ethanol stoves


http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/blog2/2009/10/16/gaia-bringing-ethanol-stoves-to-ethiopia-in-bid-to-reduce-soot-co-and-reduce-deforestation/">Gaia bringing ethanol stoves to Ethiopia in bid to reduce soot, CO and reduce deforestation

In Ethiopia, Project Gaia and its sister organization Gaia Association (an Ethiopian NGO) are leading a global initiative to promote the simple alcohols, ethanol and methanol, for household cooking and appliance use, and are leading with a high-performing stove, the CleanCook stove. This stove, developed by a Swedish inventor 30 years ago and popularized in developed world markets by the Swedish company Dometic AB, is ‘Best Available Technology’. It burns hot and clean, producing 1.5 kW per burner, closely resembling the performance of a propane gas or LPG burner. (NOte LPG or Propane are expensive fuels_JW)

It produces no soot and very low carbon monoxide (CO). Alcohol can be sourced locally from agricultural feedstocks and residues (ethanol), or even from landfill gas, gasified wood waste and flared gas from oil fields (methanol). Gaia is
currently commercializing the stove in Ethiopia, and runs a stove project for the UNHCR in several refugee camps where the camp residents have no access to traditional fuels. To date approximately 6,000 stoves have been disseminated.

[jwirr]

1. That is good news but they cannot feed themselves now so where

are they going to get the natural materials to make ethanol? What I have never understood is why they have not started using solar for this purpose? It is very accessible in most areas that are deforested.

[JohnWxy]

3. to refer to article mentioned in OP:

"Alcohol can be sourced locally from agricultural feedstocks and residues (ethanol), or even from landfill gas, gasified wood waste and flared gas from oil fields..."

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. DU post concerning fluoridosis... photo from the web

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x92158

Not a pretty sight

[JohnWxy]

4. Jesus. I didn't know about that. Burning coal without adequate ventilation I guess. Burning ethanol

much better for health pollution AND deforestation. GAthering wood for firewood and to make charcoal is a real problem in the developing world. THeir forests are their greatest resource and they are destroying them - because of a lack of just a little bit of technology.

[cornermouse]

5. Ethanol takes major amounts of water when made from corn.

http://www.ecoworld.com/water-supply/ethanol-water.html

Now we have a story in the St. Louis Post, dated April 15, 2007, entitled “Ethanol Plants Come With Hidden Costs: Water,” which surveys the impact ethanol refineries may have on fresh water supplies. Here’s an excerpt:

“The ethanol industry says it takes about 3 gallons of water on average to produce a gallon of ethanol and that recycling and other water-saving innovations will reduce that amount. Sometimes that consumption is understated: In Minnesota, one of the few states that require reporting of water use, a state study in 2005 found that ethanol plants used an average of 4.5 gallons for every gallon of ethanol. The water drawn for ethanol is a cost borne by communities — or whole regions — and a price sometimes ignored in the planning stages for new plants, experts say.”

Not mentioned in this story, of course, is the cost in water to irrigate the corn to produce the feedstock – the 3.0 to 4.5 gallons of water required for ethanol refining doesn’t include the water required to grow the corn, and corn is a relatively water-intensive crop.

http://www.swhydro.arizona.edu/archive/V6_N5/feature4.pdf

Says pretty much the same thing in the last paragraph. Around here, people have had to dig their wells deeper at their own expense in order to continue to have running water in their houses.

[JohnWxy]

6. in the OP they are talking about ethanol sourced from waste materials and agricultural feedstocks -

"Alcohol can be sourced locally from agricultural feedstocks and residues (ethanol), or even from landfill gas, gasified wood waste."

Ethiopia being a semi-arid country they probably use sweet sorghum or some other crop which is adapted to semi-arid conditions.



Regardiing corn, at the second link mentioned (http://www.swhydro.arizona.edu/archive/V6_N5/feature4.pdf)(pg 23) it says: "96% of corn used for ethanol production is not irrigated". Also, one thing that seems to need to be repeated is that when they make ethanol from corn they also produce Dried Distillers Grains and Solubles - a feed supplement for cattle which is a higher nutritional content than corn. If the 3.0 to 4.5 gallons of water used for the ethanol process is a TOTAL figure you have to apply a portion of that to the coproduct DDGS. Depending on the allocaion method used this would result in the amount of water allocated to making ethanol equal to ranges of (2.4 to 3.6) down to (1.2 to 2.25 (using output mass)) gallons of water consumed per gal of ethanol produced.

The link is to Arizona.edu, if "around here" is Arizona, I don't know, but I can't imagine very much corn is grown in Arizona - (frankly I'd be amazed if you could grow corn in Arizona. I would think the sweet sorghum mentioned above would be a much better choice - but I'm no farmer).

By way of comparison, for gasoline refined from Saudi Arabian crude http://www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/AF/557.pdf "> 2.9–6.1 gallons of water are consumed for each gallon of crude oil produced and processed . Since you get about 19 gallons of gasoline refined from 42 gallons of crude that works out to 6.4 to 13.5 gallons of water for each gallon of gas produced (not counting water used in the refining process).