Is this a feasible project?

[ilragazzo]

Hello All, I have been interested in starting my own still for various projects and reasons, so I'm glad I stumbled on to this forum.

I am a mechanical engineering student working on a clean burning cook stove project. The cook stove would be for use in place of smoky wood burning stoves to improve indoor air quality. My team has expressed interest in alcohol as a sustainable fuel source. Our project isn't necessarily to design a distillery but just the cook stove system. So we just need to understand the availability of an ethanol fuel source in our region. The regions we will be addressing are rural pacific island areas. We were thinking about a communal distillery that is capable of distilling 1L of ethanol for every family every day. This is based on the assumption that we will need roughly 1/4 of a liter of ethanol / meal at 3 meals a day with some room for error. I am sure that they grow enough fruits and plants to produce ethanol from various sources. Is this too idealistic or is this a feasible idea? How much biomass would they need to have to reliably make 10L / day? How energy intensive is the distillation process? And does scaling up the distillation increase or decrease productivity? Are there any question that I have over looked? And lastly if this is a feasible idea then why hasn't it been implemented yet?

Thanks in advance

[MadMasher]

I'm sure it could be done but maybe not worth it just to achieve better air quality. You could just make stove design better or house ventilation improved. If there is sugar cane there might be enough sugar to make the needed amount of alcohol. I don't know abut the plants in the area but edible fruit would be better used being eaten or used to make drinkin alcohol . You would also need a heat source to fire the still, probably wood. So wood would still need to be chopped, mash made with food and good water, a still built and maintained, containers for holding fuel, time spent working on alcohol production, and a special stove to burn alcohol. seems you could cut out the middle (cut the wood and burn it in your stove) and spend time elsewhere. IMO time spent making improvements on ventilation and stove design would be more beneficial.

[rad14701]

The problem, which you brilliant students should have surmised, is that it will take more energy to produce the ethanol than it will provide... Houston, we have a problem...!!! So it wouldn't be a "green" solution...

[aj2456]

seems like you guys have overlooked solar cookers... besides isnt getting others to do your homework cheating???

[azeo]

Rocket stoves have much potential and worth investigating, can be communal or individual, and easier for the locals to take ownership of than more complex processes. A better use for biofuels would be for substituting imported diesel/gas but this is not simple to establish. Good knowledge of the local culture is essential. As has been pointed out by other posters, it doesn't make sense to use fuel to make fuel for cooking, in this way, and prob wouldn't make sense to locals who could think of better things to do with the end result afer all the effort. It's a worthy cause though. . .

[googe]

An engineer and distilling is just to confusing, no, wait, engineers and common sense don't mix . Sorry, we have about 200 engineers at work and it's a painful experience .

[woodshed]

I don't feel it is a feasible project. As stated above the numbers don't add up.
Good on ya for thinking outside the box.

[rad14701]

I've been researching rocket stoves for several months and am hoping to build one in the not too distant future... I've played with alcohol stove designs for years but have always liked the idea of using wood scraps better...

[S-Cackalacky]

Good intentions don't always result in good outcomes. Before you embark on "improving" the lives of people that you probably don't really understand or know, have you investigated ALL of the potential consequences of what you are doing?

Just sayin',
S-C

[ilragazzo]

Yeah I was thinking that there were going to be losses in the process. All of us on the team agreed that the best thing we could do is just vent the burnt wood smoke out of these people's homes, but unfortunately we have to "design" something. When we originally got the project we all thought... these people have been doing just fine for 1000s of years... Cooking is one of those things that has been fairly unchanged in the majority of the world for a long time. why would we want to complicate such a very basic process. It's not like the pacific islanders really need to cook inside anyways. But if we don't design something then we don't get a grade. This is in no way going to go past an assignment in an intro engineering course.

Thanks for the verification guys, we appreciate it .

[S-Cackalacky]

Yeah I was thinking that there were going to be losses in the process. All of us on the team agreed that the best thing we could do is just vent the burnt wood smoke out of these people's homes, but unfortunately we have to "design" something. When we originally got the project we all thought... these people have been doing just fine for 1000s of years... Cooking is one of those things that has been fairly unchanged in the majority of the world for a long time. why would we want to complicate such a very basic process. It's not like the pacific islanders really need to cook inside anyways. But if we don't design something then we don't get a grade. This is in no way going to go past an assignment in an intro engineering course.

Thanks for the verification guys, we appreciate it .

So, I hope what you're saying here is that this won't be put into practice - just a theoretical solution. I would hate to think that you folks would actually fuck with these people's lives for a grade.

Just sayin',
S-C

[cob]

Yeah I was thinking that there were going to be losses in the process.

more like orders of magnitude.

.75 liter of ethanol (one theoretical days fuel) could easily require 7-10 cooking days worth of wood to produce.
importing material to produce etnanol in an island setting requires tons of transportation fuel.
bunker fuel for ships @ $600 /ton x tons per day. jeta-1 @ $6.00 / gallon x gallon per minute.
not withstanding the time it takes to produce ethanol the net losses would be astronomical.
that is assuming that once the "fuel" is produced it would not be used to cook brain cells.
the signs point to your professor grooming you for a career in $600 toilet seats for the gooberment.

[azeo]

Seems like you guys have given it some thought. Being students and interested in due diligence, research and literature reviews etc, (I'm sure) the following url will be prob be a really interesting resource... and possibly a source of ideas for something else depending what the brief or original scope/interest was

http://www.nzdl.org/gsdlmod?a=p&p=about&c=hdl/

and this reference which was one of the first rocket stove search results;
http://www.nzdl.org/gsdlmod?e=q-00000-0 ... e8f31f0.13

The following chapters make it plain that it is far from easy to design a stove which is a real improvement on what people are already using. Neither is it a simple matter to get such a stove accepted by a sufficiently large number of people to make the whole effort worthwhile. Without a clear view of how to go about achieving these objectives, there is little chance of achieving success with an improved stove programme. But nobody can now complain that there are no guidelines to what needs to be done.

In the last couple of years, there has been a profound change in the stove world. The tinkerers have largely given way to the thinkers, the enthusiastic amateurs to the experienced professionals. This manual clearly shows what was lacking in those early programmes. Drawing upon the full range of the experience of ITDG and the local organisations with which it collaborates, it fully sets out what is involved at the practical level i'n getting a stove programme underway.

Using local materials as much as possible to improve an existing situation is often a good way to go, less dependence on possibly scarce or expensive imported materials/suppliers, while still aiming to minimise impact on possibly scarce local resources.

Will be interested to hear anything about a rocket stove project Rad!

A gasifier cobined with an IC (Int. combustion) generator, or bio-char stove might be an intersting student project, although there are a few out there already, there's probably room for improvements and new ideas.

Much/most of the benefits of projects are also in what is learnt along the way.... not just the outcome everyone had in mind....

What SC says (in fewer words!), you have to be really embedded in the community and understand the environmental resources and culture not to mess with the community equilibrium. But a good project can provide some local employment/upskilling opportunities, empowerment, less dependance on costly imported fuels, sustainable cropping and farming opportunities, and some health benefits, if lucky. It has to be something that the locals can sustain when the "white gods" move on.....