Chance Encounters

On Monday we made our fourth visit to Nkoarisombu to check on their progress after the briquetting training. We went primarily to answer questions or to fix any problems that arose during the two weeks after the training. The VICOBA members did not have any issues thus far and have been working on their own compost piles at home. We also asked them about charcoal sellers in the area, as we would like to look into making briquettes using charcoal dust. The group does not have ready access to charcoal and they primarily use wood, so we will continue emphasizing biomass composting. We will meet with them again next week to take a look at their compost piles and give them feedback.

A few weeks ago, we were getting out of a dala dala and met a pastor named Sossy who worked in a town called Moivaro, close to Arusha. He showed interest in our work and said that he would like for us to visit his home before we left Tanzania. After our visit to Nkoarisombu on Monday, we headed over to Moivaro to visit Sossy and see his workplace. Sossy works at Moivaro Tumaini (“Hope”) School, a non-governmental school dedicated to providing a good education to children from impoverished families. Sossy described his frustration with government schools, many of which have one teacher for 300 students. Sossy wants to lower this student to teacher ratio in his school, aiming to have 5-6 teachers educate around 150 students. Currently, his school has 2 teachers with salaries larger than what Sossy can pay them. Most of the children’s parents cannot pay more than $1 for their child’s education, so the school is struggling to obtain funding to complete construction.  Sossy relies on volunteer groups and donations to continue construction of the school.

The school's two classrooms

Nik and Sossy in front of the multipurpose building

As his wife sat us down for coffee, Sossy explained the issues with cooking meals for the children. Charcoal is readily available to the area, but it costs around 4,000-5,000 TSH every 2-3 days. This fuel cost is very high, but Sossy and his wife have not been able to find cheaper options cleaner than wood. We talked to them about our briquetting and stoves projects, and Sossy  and his wife were very interested in both technologies. They asked us to teach them and the surrounding community about briquetting, so they might be able to save money and possibly create revenue for the school. We eventually decided that if we provided  a training program, Sossy would gather interested members from the community to learn about briquetting  and create their own program. We plan on having the training next week and will adopt a program similar to what we taught Nkoarisombu.

Inside a classroom

In front of the gate to the school

Our briquetting project goal for the upcoming week is to create a poster highlighting the most important aspects of briquetting, which we will use in training programs and plan on giving to EARD-CI so they may continue briquetting training programs after DHE has left Tanzania. We look forward to teaching more communities about briquetting, so they may cut down on fuel costs and even generate a source of income.

Coffee Industry Visit

  For two days last week, we explored the various levels of the coffee industry in Arusha and Moshi. We hoped to obtain some coffee husk for stove testing and more importantly, better understand how coffee is processed. We began our journey on Thursday at a coffee plantation before continuing on to a wet mill and then a dry mill in Arusha. On Friday, we traveled to Moshi to learn more about coffee on the industry level by visiting with the Director of Marketing and Promotions in the Tanzanian Coffee Board as well as visiting two more curing and processing facilities. By traversing nearly every level of the coffee industry we were able to gather several important observations related to coffee husk and our stove.

First, we clarified our understanding of the path coffee takes in processing. After the bean is handpicked from coffee plants at the plantation, it is immediately sent to wet mills. This is where the outer fleshy portion of the coffee "nut" is removed. This fleshy pulp is returned to the plantation to be used as mulch and fertilizer while the rest of the bean is sent on to the dry mill. It is here at the dry mill that the coffee bean is finally separated from its husk. The bean can then be roasted and sold to consumers as the wonderful caffinated substance we all know as coffee. From understanding the processing path of coffee, we noted two related conclusions. One conclusion is that the coffee plantations usually don't have access to the coffee husk that would be used as fuel for the stove so plantation workers may not be an optimal user group to target. Plantations simply harvest and send the whole "nut" to wet mills. The husk is only produced and kept inside the dry mills. This leads to the second conclusion, that the coffee husk is essentially trapped inside those dry mills. When we visited Arusha Coffee Mills, we had to get clearance from security and be let in through a large  steel gate before being able to see the coffee husk. Without some dissemination scheme, it seems difficult for the average consumer to have access to coffee husk.

Second, it seems as though there is some interest in the coffee industry in promoting the use of coffee husk and creating distribution channels for it. With the difficulty of accessing coffee husk, this interest is very important. In speaking with the owners of Arusha Coffee Mills and managers of the Tanzania Coffee Curing Company, we found that coffee husk is really a seasonal fuel as it is only produced when coffee is being milled. However, when it is available, it lies in huge piles within the coffee mills. This coffee husk either decomposes naturally or is sold to nearby factories to be burnt in boilers.Though the coffee husk would ideally be free for stove users, its cost is still remarkably low. Both mills sell the husk at 15 TSH per kilogram and 14,000 TSH per metric ton. What was most apparent was the desire for mill management to utilize coffee husk better. One possibility is distributing the stove to the mill workers so the coffee husk can be used inside the mills to cook their meals. Another possibility is setting up networks to buy husk by the ton and sell it to consumers. Though coffee husk may be difficult to obtain for the typical stove user, the option of setting up husk distribution networks to offer a cheap fuel and utilize an agricultural waste should be explored in the future.

Third, agricultural wastes in Tanzania are already being utilized well. In between visiting the wet mill and dry mill, we also visited a branch of the Tanzanian Bean Research Program near the wet mill. Inside, we met with a researcher and described our project, hoping to see his perspective on our stove and if he thought there were any other loose biomasses that our stove could utilize. He told us that few agricultural by-products are wasted now. Farmers have found clever ways to use by-products in their operations as fertilizers or animal feed. He did note some agricultural by-products that are not being used include bean stalks and sunflower heads. While we do not foresee these burning well in our current stove design, we wondered about the possibility of using a loose biomass grinder to convert these biomasses into a granulated form similar to husk or sawdust. Combining what we learned at the research facility and coffee mills, it was clear that loose biomasses are not always available as free or nearly free fuel. Rather, it seems that using biomasses as fuel exists in an equilibrium with its other agricultural uses. For our stove and briquetting projects, this balance must be kept in mind.

        The two days we spent visiting the coffee industry taught us a lot about the phases of coffee production and important details about fuel availability and the willingness of various actors in the coffee industry to market coffee husk. We hope that the knowledge we gained can play a significant role in informing our decisions, especially as we move into stove distribution. We will surely visit these people again and thank them so much for teaching us so much!

Stove Development

The testing and development of the loose biomass stove from this past two weeks have yielded many important and interesting results. We had many moments of utter frustration when facing the problem of power output, but after some small, crucial changes, we are tremendously excited about our current product.

As mentioned in the previous development blog post, the current design is based largely on the design of the Kisangani Stove Group (KSG) in Njombe, Tanzania.  Testing showed that the design produces a long, steady burn that did not require tending for at least three hours. However, the stove lacked the power needed to boil water in a reasonable amount of time. Following the Aprovecho Water Boil Test (WBT) protocol and using five liters of water, we were only able to heat the water to 90 degrees Celsius, peaking at the two hour mark of the burn. Additionally, the first thirty minutes of every burn were always extremely dirty and did not produce a lot of heat. 

A new lid design seemed to solve some of these issues. Instead of the assorted concentric concentric cylinders and rings of metal rod in the KSG inspired lid, the new lid is simply a disk with an opening and three triangles of sheet metal to support the pot. Despite its simplicity, our new lid produced positive results.

With this new lid, the burn was clean within five minutes and the stove was able to boil the Aprovecho prescribed five liters of water (The local boiling point in Arusha is 95.7 degrees Celsius).  It seemed as though the innermost cylinder on the KSG lid was actually restricting airflow in the first thirty minutes of the test burns, thus producing inefficient combustion and visible smoke. With just a simple opening, the new lid design allowed more airflow for cleaner combustion. Furthmore, the smaller pot stand on the new lid lowered the pot, allowing more heat to be transfered to the pot.

Nevertheless, the new lid still did not solve a crucial problem: boil time. Once again using the Aprovecho standard of five liters, the stove still  required two hours (126 minutes) to reach a rolling boil. After conducting the WBT and performing some rough calculations, we found that our stove had less than 1/10th the firepower of other improved cook stoves currently being sold. Even without these calculations, it was clear that power output was a huge problem. Mamas using three-stone fires only a short walk away were able to boil our five litres of water in just twenty-five minutes.

Thinking that updraft and the height between the heat at the bottom of the stove and the pot were part of the power problem, we built a version 70% as tall as our original prototype. We hoped that the shorter chimney would provide less resistance to the primary air for hotter combustion and the smaller design might become a cheaper alternative to our earlier design. Unfortunately, the smaller stove was extremely difficult to light and even when lit, could not sustain a burn.

At this point, we seemed to be at an impasse. Though we could achieve a clean burn for over three hours using a cheap alternative to firewood on the KSG inspired design, we still could not complete the Aprovecho Water Boil Test in a reasonable amount of time. This suggested that our design lacked the power that would be needed to cook foods as well or as fast as traditional, less clean stoves. Knowing that our stove would ultimately be judged by the cooks of Tanzania, we were unsure of how to progress with the design.

However, we stumbled upon a solution to the power output problem the next day in the AISE workshop. Instead of just one pipe, we packed our stove with two pipes for the chimney simply out of curiousity. The difference was astounding. Just by changing the chimney from a single cylinder to a double cylinder ‘8’ shape, we were able to boil water in 18 minutes. Though the start was slightly dirtier, the burn became clean after only a few minutes. Furthermore, this configuration produces more complete combustion- much more of the fuel was burned to white ash when peering into the fuel canister after the burn. Subsequent tests have been able to duplicate this remarkable result and sustain burns between ninety mintues and one-hundred minutes. Eureka!

Since the stove group had been planning to visit EARD-CI and the stove demonstrated such strong results, we all brought the stove to EARD-CI headquarters yesterday. As we explained to them the progress of the stove and our plans to conduct a test using rice husk, Edith suggested we try to cook a meal on our stove. It was such a treat to enjoy a delicious lunch of fresh corn with avocado cooked on our own stove! Despite all of this good news and good food, it does bear note that the stove was unable to burn rice husk in the later burn.

These past few weeks of development have yielded truly exciting results. With enough power achieve a rolling boil in a time comprable to similar improved cook stoves, the efficiency to sustain the burn for over ninety minutes, and the consistency of each burn, we feel that we are close to having a mature product. However, we still have a lot of work to do. Next steps include:
1) Completing a full WBT as well as using the IAP meter to accurately quantify power and  air pollution from the stove.
2) Resume testing with coffee-husk and even explore other loose biomasses so communities with different resources can still benefit from the stove.
3) Polishing the design. Namely, designing stronger handles, adding a gate to regulate primary air, and a more sophisticated pot stand
4) Investigating distributors and possible distribution channels

Friday Afternoon Meetings

On Friday afternoon, following a very informative meeting with members of the Dochi VICOBA, we met with an environmental engineer named John Mshunju. He is the man who alerted Edith to the flourishing briquetting operations in Lushoto.  He is setting up his own private briquetting enterprise which will offer two products. One is a donut-shaped briquette of the type propagated by Legacy Foundation, made with one of the compound lever presses constructed by the carpenter of the Dochi group.  The other is a solid, cylindrical briquette that closely resembles traditional charcoal. These are made by first carbonizing the waste residues from shoe polish production. This fine material is then combined with a binder and compressed into the final state with a hand operated extruder. He is currently finalizing his business plan.

As the conversation turned to biogas, he offered to introduce us to Peter Jally of the New Rural Children Foundation (NRCF), the implementing partner of the Tanzanian Domestic Biogas Program (TDBP) for the Lushoto area.  Peter indicated that NRCF has built fixed-dome type digesters of up to thirteen cubic meters in size, mainly for farmers and livestock owners.  They build four, six, nine or thirteen cubic meter plants, with CAMARTEC, the organization coordinating the TDBP on a country-wide scale, taking over on any digester larger than that. The actual construction is done by masons specially trained at VETA Tanga (Vocational Educational Training Center in Tanga ), with their pay covered by the Tanzanian government and SNV. The recipient of the plant is responsible for providing the building materials including brick/stone, cement, and any plumbing necessary.   Peter noted that using the slurry exiting the digester as fertilizer has been increasingly promoted in the past year, due to its well-documented superior quality, offering higher levels of available nitrogen than even commercially available fertilizers.  We hope to visit with CAMARTEC next week to continue to learn about the TDBP (and connect with groups interested in the loose biomass stove).

After we finished up the meeting with Peter,  John showed us the offices of an NGO he co-founded, in part with a man named Hande Mwanjela. We met Hande earlier in the day at the briquetting event, as he originally introduced the technology in the area.  He has since done several briquetting trainings across the country (he is slated to do a training in the Kigoma region next month).  Interestingly, he cited fuel availability issues as a contributing factor to the Dochi group’s increased success relative to other parts of the country. Where firewood is still free in many places, expensive charcoal is the most prominent fuel source in the Lushoto area.  This situation parallels the Lulu VICOBA, where a seemingly large fraction of family income is spent on firewood.  Seeing the office gave us a chance to again thank Hande for the time he spent with us in the morning as well as finishing trading contact information with him.

Lushoto Briquetting Investigation

During our first week in Tanzania, Edith, the director of EARD-CI, told us of a briquetting project in Lushoto and recommended that we visit them. Emil Cashin, a member of the Summer 2011 DHE trip, echoed this recommendation and passed on contact info for people involved in the project.  On Wednesday, Amelia and I arrived in Lushoto and met with the a VICOBA located in Dochi, a thirty minute walk from the town center.  The group’s highly organized briquetting operations had clearly fostered immense success.  Most indicative of this success was the VICOBA building in which we sat, purchased with the proceeds of their briquetting business.

We quickly learned through the aid of our translator, a local teacher named John, that the group had been producing briquettes since 2007. The group was trained by the masters of briquetting themselves, the Stanley’s of the Legacy Foundation. We were also told that the Legacy Foundation supplied them with two grinding machines and a metal ratchet press. In addition to this press, they had a wooden compound lever press constructed by a carpenter within the group.

At the Dochi VICOBA, briquette making occurs when there is no rain, meaning most of the heavy briquette production happens in the dry season. The group quoted the long drying time as the reason production was abandoned during wet conditions.  VICOBA members work in rotating groups of five for five days a week when weather permits. They make 400 per day, with a portion of these distributed within the group for personal use and sold to generate individual income. The remainder are sold by an agent in Dar es Salaam.

This group’s effective time management and organization contributed heavily to their success. As we continue to help the Lulu VICOBA develop their project, we need to highlight the need for a clear leader of briquetting operations, as well as establish a regime for keeping track of material processing and recording production. We will also locate charcoal sellers in the Nkoarisambu area, as this may offer a valuable source of raw materials and an profitable venue for Lulu’s entrepreneurs to sell their briquettes. 

Nkoarisombu Briquetting Training

Nik and I visited Nkoarisombu (Lulu VICOBA) on Monday morning to hold our intensive briquette training session for interested VICOBA members. Naomi from EARD-CI came along with us as a translator, and was very helpful at translating for the four hours of training.

We began with discussing how the group plans on gathering materials for their briquetting program. Each member will be bringing materials from their home to their meeting location. After establishing the group's source for raw materials, Nik and I reiterated the general briquetting process. We then went into details about material processing, including material grinding, decomposition, and mixing. We took the group outside for demonstrations as we explained each process. We brought materials that had been composting for the past 3 weeks to show the group how to compost and how to tell when the biomass is ready. With help from the Legacy Foundation's instruction manuals, we taught Lulu everything we knew about briquetting, emphasizing the group's role in knowing how to compost different materials and develop new mixtures at different seasons. We wanted to ensure that once the DHE Summer group left, the VICOBA would be able to adapt once new materials such as coffee husk came in harvesting season. Nik and I explained to them the "ooze", "spring back", and "shake" tests, and had the group make their own biomass mixture with sawdust, paper, and rice husk Nik and I prepared the week before.

 After going over material processing, Lulu members were eager to press briquettes out of the mixture they had just prepared. We went over briquette production, explaining pressing and drying of the briquettes and press maintenance. The group continued to make briquettes until they were out of mixture, and then brought out the sawdust and banana leaf mixture they had prepared earlier. This mixture was not suitable for making briquettes (and now they knew exactly why), so they added some paper as a quick fix so that they would be able to make more briquettes once Nik, Naomi and I left. We thanked the Lulu members for taking the time to attend our training. Nik and I will be returning in 2 weeks to give them feedback on the compost piles they  are going to create. We will be traveling to Lushoto this Wednesday and we hope to use the information we learn about briquetting on our trip to improve Nkoarisombu's briquette program and DHE's briquetting project overall. 

Week 2 Stove Development

Last week, the stove project began a new prototype mostly based on a design by the Kisangani Smith Group (KSG) in Njombe, Tanzania. After much angle-grinding, hammering, and metal turning, we finished the stove on Monday, July 2nd. Bernard was enormously helpful as a consultant and a master welder throughout the process.
The reasoning behind building a prototype similar KSG’s design is that their stove is similar to our stove in many respects, but has interesting technical differences and is a vastly successful stove thus far.  The hope was that by building a prototype and comparing the burn characteristics of the stoves, we would gain insights about how their design choices affected the end success of their product.
Principally, there are two design characteristics we are interested in. First, the primary air entrance is on the side of the fuel canister rather than the bottom in previous DHE designs. A pipe enters through a side-entrance to the central chimney. We are interested in this pipe’s effect on primary air delivery to the fuel bed. Second, the new model includes a separable heat-transferring lid instead of a basic opening at the top of the stove. We would like to explore the effectiveness of a heat-transferring system versus an open chimney. Furthermore, the small openings in this different type of lid would seem to cause very different airflow from that of our stove. We would like to see whether this causes a more efficient mixing of secondary air with wood gas and possibility eliminate the outer shell of our stove.
Yesterday July 3rd, we conducted our first burn with the new prototype. To prepare the stove, we packed fuel just as we had done in our old model- sawdust around a 2 inch PVC pipe. Packing entailed pressing down on a specially dimensioned disk of metal for evenly distributed pressure.
The design calls for lighting the stove by dropping a match or heat source down the chimney of the fuel bed before placing the lid on the stove. Due to inexperience with this new design, it took several tries to light the stove. We eventually were forced to pour some kerosene down the central chimney of the stove to aid the burning husk we placed through the side air inlet. Until introducing kerosene, the sawdust on the bottom of the pot simply wouldn’t catch, despite the burning corn husks we put in the central chamber. Eventually, we hope to avoid utilizing kerosene as the cost is significant and increasing for Tanzanians.
After we got the fuel to begin combusting and the burn steadied we placed the lid on the stove. A serrated ring of metal on the bottom of the lid (which we termed the “bite” flange) dug into fuel bed and formed some degree of an air tight seal. After placing the lid on the stove, we used mud to seal the slight gaps between the lid and the stove. Ideally, these gaps should not exist as the flange on the lid should fit snuggly with the stove.
For the first twenty minutes, the burn was somewhat dirty. We speculated this might be due to an ineffective bite phalange- much of the fuel had become disorganized at the top from our unsuccessful attempts to light the stove. The flange may not have been properly trapping the wood gas and heat in the center of the stove. More investigation into this will be important in the coming days.
After twenty-five minutes or so, the burn became considerably cleaner. Our pot of water kept heating up, and within little time, wispy vapor began emanating from the surface. We waited with the stove, watching the vapor, for another twenty minutes. When the hot water didn’t reach a boil, at the fifty minute mark, we put a cover on the pot. Ten minutes later, the water began to boil.
Fuel continued to burn for at least another 30 minutes. A healthy flame could be observed at the bottom of the fuel bed from the primary air entrance as well as at the top of the sawdust pack. Presumably, this flame near the top was the combustion of fuel bed. After nearly two hours of watching the stove, we left to get lunch and acquire some cost figures from the hardware store. Unfortunately between leaving and returning, the burn had finished and uncombusted wood gas flowed from the lid.
Removing the lid, we found an interesting sight. All of the fuel opposite to the primary air tube had combusted into white ash. We could see much exposed steel of the inside of the fuel canister. On the other side above the primary air tube, we found much more char and some uncombusted sawdust. It looked somewhat similar to the fuel after the unsuccessful burns in our old design. This side exhibited some degree of hollowing as the uncombusted char was thicker near the top of the fuel bed. Ostensibly, a somewhat circular flow of air developed as it entered the air inlet, collided with one side of the fuel bed and “bounced” back to the other side. Because the air was not directly thrown at this side of the fuel bed there was not the complete combustion of the other half.
Overall, it was a very exciting burn. Despite the difficulty in the beginning, we were able to produce a steady burn lasting between two and three hours using just sawdust and a bit of kerosene. We hope to continue to improve our ability to light this stove, to complete a burn (without grabbing lunch in the middle…), and begin conducting the various Aprovecho testing protocols.

The next steps for us are to modify this design for increased efficiency and user friendliness. We want to produce a product that is easy to use and that is a wholly DHE design. These steps include:

1) Investigating why the first twenty minutes were a dirty burn as well as measuring the emissions from a complete burn
2) Finding ways to start the burn without kerosene. Kerosene is an already expensive commodity of rising cost.
3)  Increasing heat transfer into the pot. We would like to achieve water boil without a lid as some Tanzanian foods require this
4) Looking for ways to burn the fuel that did not combust fully
5) Determining the cost of producing this new stove design and reducing unnecessary components  in construction and in the stove itself.
6) Acquiring coffee husk and various other loose biomass source to perform burns with.



- Aneesh and Kevin

Second meeting with Nkoarisombo

Today Nik and I met with the Lulu VICOBA to ask them more questions concerning the feasibility of a training program in the area. The group plans on using briquettes mainly for their own benefit, and will sell them if there is a surplus supply of briquettes available. They are very interested in participating in a briquette training program, and are willing to dedicate a portion of their time to do so. At the meeting, the VICOBA members decided a 2 day intensive session for 4 hours each day would best fit their schedules. Together, we decided to hold the training for next Monday and Tuesday, July 9 and 10. Nik and I will be spending the rest of this week preparing a detailed plan for the training days. We will be emphasizing basic briquetting techniques and skills so the VICOBA members may develop different mixtures best suited for their area and create a  flexible briquetting program for when the DHE summer trip leaves the area.

After our meeting, the group showed us the biomass they had collected, so we could get a better idea of the materials in the area. They collected sawdust, corn leaves, and banana leaves. Though coffee is grown in the area, they were unable to gather coffee husk since it is not harvesting season. This is another reason why Nik and I plan on providing the VICOBA members with a foundation of the knowledge necessary for briquetting, so the group will have the skills to work with coffee husks and other materials that may not be in season at this time. Nik and I will begin composting these materials back at EARD-CI, so that we may have some already prepared materials for our composting demonstration during training next week.

The VICOBA members wanted us to make some briquettes with their press and materials they had begun composting last week. They made a sawdust and banana leaf mixture. It was a good start, but unfortunately the banana leaves were not given enough time to decompose and there was too much sawdust in the mixture, so the briquette fell apart after we took it out of the press mold. This was a great learning experience for the members because they were able to learn what was wrong with their mixture and why it did not produce a good briquette. Nik and I will go into further detail on proper composting and making mixtures during the training sessions. We are very excited about Nkoarisombo’s enthusiasm to advance their briquetting skills and knowledge and we look forward to working more closely with the group in the upcoming weeks.

-Amelia

Weeki Mbili

Week 2

After an immensely positive meeting with the Lulu VICOBA in Nkoarisombo, we decided to focus our briquetting pilot project in this community. Given that they are the only one of EARD-CI's VICOBA groups that grow coffee, it also fits our mandate under the GMCR grant. On Friday at EARD-CI, we tended our composting materials, made some demo briquettes, and arranged to attend the Lulu meeting next Monday. We will check on their current material decomposition and schedule a few day long intensive training session that interested group members will be able to attend.

After our stove struggled to burn without tending on Monday and Tuesday morning, we began building our own version of the Kisangani stove Tuesday afternoon using the sheet metal leftover from the spring group. By the end of Thursday we had all the major pieces of the stove cut out and for cylindrical pieces, bent into shape. Friday, Bernard of AISE welded the main body/fuel canister of the stove together and began welding together the lid. The new stove will likely be finished on Monday, with burn tests tentatively starting Tuesday. While it would have been beneficial to visit KSG in Njombe, it would have taken roughly a week of travel. In about the same time, we will have built our own version of their design, gaining valuable metalworking experience in the process, which will undoubtedly inform our future work and lead to designs that are easier to build.

During this week, AISE and Global Cycle Solutions moved from their old workshop to new, larger space nearby. We helped move some the heavier items like the lathe and drill press on Wednesday, and while the logistics of the move slowed our work slightly, it was great to be able to help out a group that has provided us with constant assistance and graciously shared their space with us.

We were lucky enough to have Misha from the spring trip visit us for part of this week. He had plenty of valuable experience to share in areas ranging from stove construction to Swahili to simply living in Tanzania. It will be sad to see him go, but we wish him all the best in his continuing travels.

-Nik

Week 1 Stove Development

This week, the stove group spent 4 days in the AISE workshop with Bernard further refining the stove design. It was exciting finally getting to see and test the hard work of the spring travelers after only reading about it and seeing pictures of it last term. After an initial test, we started to make modifications to alleviate concerns brought up while our group was in Hanover or by the Spring travelers.

(Note: The tests we have been performing have been using sawdust. As of this moment, we have not yet been able to acquire coffee husk in addition to the fact that sawdust is readily and cheaply available. Future design plans hope to be able to burn fuels regardless of their density e.g. both coffee husk and sawdust)

In development of the stove during this trip, we are focusing more on how to make this stove viable in the marketplace. Concerns that were apparent to us was the overall cost of the stove (at ~45,000 TSH while our target is 20,000-30,000 TSH), the need to replace the inner wire mesh insert (due to the lack of durability of wire mesh), and the length of burn (which at ~1 hour is not sufficient to prepare traditional food). We have been inspired by the Kisangani Sawdust Stove produced by the Kisangani Smith Group (KSG). This stove has been very successful as a cost effective stove, lacking our wire mesh design, and producing an incredible burn duration of 6 hours. Initial distribution has also been incredibly successful. We have reached out to KSG and they have an extended an invitation to meet in person and speak about their project. If time permits on this trip, we would be very interested in traveling to Kisangani and meeting KSG.

From the initial burn, we noted that the stove burned hot and steady for about an hour but was not a particularly clean burn. When analyzing the new design of the Spring travelers, we guessed that the additional outer holes in the bottom of the stove that vent air into the fuel bed were inhibiting proper pyrolysis and causing some of the improper combustion. Using one of plates from an old stove, we covered (and have continued to cover) these outer holes. Burns showed that this did not make a marked difference in the burn temperature or time but slightly improved the cleanness of the burn.

Keeping the Kisangani design in mind the next day, we tried to pack our fuel much like how it is packed in the Kisangani stove. We removed the wire mesh insert and placed a small wood log in the middle of the stove before loading the fuel. As we loaded the fuel into the fuel canister, we compressed the fuel. After completely filling the canister, the log was carefully twisted and pulled out leaving an intact chimney. Initial tests were tremendously exciting. We achieved burns of over 1.5 hours (time was limited due to the working hours of the workshop on the day of that test, but much fuel was left unburned) that were very hot with almost no smoke produced. The burn continued steadily without tending which was a major concern in previous models. We were tremendously excited about the possibility of removing the wire mesh from our design as well as the longer burn time initially exhibited before the test was stopped.

However, the initial success proved not to be repeatable. For the same afternoon, we only made one modification, hammering out the flanges on the plate we attached to the bottom of the stove to allow more primary air to reach the stove. The subsequent test that afternoon started with the same intensity, but stopped only 10 minutes into the test. Due to the high wind that afternoon and the fact that the flanges probably played some role in mitigating the effect of wind in the previous test, we concluded that the wind of the day limited the success of that test.

Unfortunately since then, the 3 tests we have run have not produced the same strong burn of the first day. Modifications we have made have been to cut the center of the bottom of the stove out to allow increased primary air and to hammer the flanges on the plate back down to imitate that initial successful test. From these tests, we have noted 2 major issues currently. First, with the pot on the stove, it seems as there is insufficient updraft to provide the necessary oxygen for combustion. Each time we place the pot on the stove, the burn will stop within 3 minutes. Without the pot on, the stove will continue burning for longer. Second, it seems as though the white ash building on the center of the chimney insulates the unburned fuel from air and heat.

During this last week, we were tantalized by the single very successful test that produced most of the characteristics we want our final product to have. In the coming week, we will continue trying to reproduce that successful test. Furthermore, we are planning on attempting to recreate the Kisangani stove to better understand their successes and how to improve upon them. We are hoping this next week will prove fruitful towards development of our final product.

Visit with Didas and EMORG

The community library under construction

       Last Tuesday, Aneesh and I got a chance to meet Didas, co-founder of EMORG and build on a relationship started by the Spring travelers. Didas graciously picked us up and drove out 25 minutes to the village of Kisongo where EMORG has began to build facilities to aid the education of the village children. Under construction was a community library to be filled with donated books, discussion centers for guided discussion of what the children had learned, as well as classrooms for enrichment courses on the weekends. EMORG and Didas's vision is that they can motivate children and enrich their education through these buildings and hiring teachers. Then, the stanard of living will hopefully rise with the increasing education level of the community.

In addition to hearing about EMORG's future goals, we also clarified the DHE bioenergy project's place in those plans. Part of the educational aims of EMORG involves motivating locals to design and innovate to solve every day problems. Didas believes that the stove project would be an ideal model project to present to the community as an example of a product designed to serve community needs. Outside of the community library, there will be several booths set up to present the work of EMORG's various collaborators. Didas expressed his desire for us to present our ongoing work and create a permanent display of the stove project in one of the booths. As a group in a part of an academic institution, we would be greatly excited to help in the education of local children.  

Additionally, Didas and EMORG's strong connections within Kisongo and various other small communities present other possibilities directly related to the stove. For example, Didas and serveral locals who saw us visiting expressed interest in our project and would be excited to test it given the high cost of charcoal in Kisongo. Furthermore, Didas noted that there is a very popular weekly marketplace that serves Kisongo and the surrounding communities. There is a possibility of marketing our technology or doing demonstrations in a stand of the market. Didas expressed hopes that once our design is presented in public and has started being used, citizens will naturally develop the stoves on their own.

On the drive home with Didas, we noticed an extensive coffee plantation bordering a village near Kisongo. We expressed interest in the coffee husk this plantation produces as well as working with the people living on the plantation. Because EMORG is coincidentally moving their offices to this exact village, Didas was able to introduce us to the village leaders. Upon hearing our plans and goals, the village leaders  approved of our worked there and sought to set a meeting between us, them, and the people of the plantation. We are very excited to meet with them soon and see how we can help this community with our projects.

Our visit with Didas and EMORG was a very useful and fruitful visit. It clarified our collaboration with EMORG as well as showed us possible sites for user testing of the coffee husk stove in Kisongo and the nearby plantation. We look forward to working with EMORG and Didas in the future with educational outreach and user testing in local villages.

- Kevin

VICOBA Visits

Thursday, 6/21 Amelia and I attended the King'ori VICOBA meeting with Sule of EARD-CI acting as liaison and translator. After introducing ourselves we asked the ten women present a few questions and collected some of their locally available biomass, namely dead corn leaves. They are interested in briquetting as a way to save money on their considerable fuel expenditures as well as conserve the environment by using waste materials. They reiterated the cost of 6,000 TZS per week for firewood reported by DHE's 12S trip. They indicated an average weekly income of 20,000 shillings.  Using this figure to estimate labor cost and following the Legacy Foundation's recommendations to price briquettes fifteen percent above labor cost, as well as their assumptions of 750 briquettes produced and 15 used per day, using briquettes for cooking would theoretically cost under 100 TZS per day versus 860 TZS per day currently spent on firewood. Given that all ten women are interested in the technology and said they would be willing to contribute 2-3 hours daily to briquette making, the production estimate, based on a team of six, is reasonable. The use estimate, based on a family size of 6, would have to be adjusted given an accurate survey of family size in the region as well as the specific burn characteristics of the local briquettes.

Monday, 6/25, we visited the Lulu VICOBA in the community of Nkoarisombo with Naomie and Faraja of EARD-CI. Immediately upon entering the meeting, we could see that they had constructed their own compound lever press. The press cost 60,000 TZS, approximately 40 USD. We inquired about the progress of their material processing, learning that they had begun collecting paper, sawdust, and banana leaf and composting these materials for use in a briquette mixture. They offered to show us their compost pile at their meeting next Monday. The community grows bananas, coffee, corn, and beans, offering a wide variety of organic matter available at differing times throughout the year. They stated 10,000 TZS per week as the income of the low-income families within the VICOBA, although this is certainly not average, as the spring group reported fuel expenditures of 14,000 TZS weekly. While income figures remain unclear, the higher fuel costs mean that this VICOBA would see an even greater economic benefit from replacing firewood with fuel briquettes than King'ori. The group indicated they want to meet for one two hour session weekly for briquette making, essentially as an extension of their existing meeting. This hardly seems like enough time to make a substantial amount of briquettes, but their actions to organize materials and build the production apparatus suggest a group that is highly motivated to initiate a briquetting project.

We were unable to meet with the Bonderi VICOBA due to internal problems. The persistence of such problems makes it a difficult and unlikely place for us to continue our work.

-Nik

First Meeting with EARD-CI

During our first visit with EARD-CI, we met the staff and were reintroduced to their program with VICOBAs, Village Community Banks. We were also introduced to PETS, Public Expenditure Tracking System, a project looking at the success of government expenditures in the agricultural sector. The briquetting project goals for this summer aim to work with a VICOBA to create a pilot project. One VICOBA, Lulu, has shown a lot of interest in briquetting and could possibly build a press for around 40,000 TSH (about $20 US). This is great news for briquetting, because we aim to make briquetting cheap and accessible to as many people possible. EARD-CI mentioned that some VICOBAs may have enough money to buy more expensive technologies like a mechanical briquette press, so our group may choose to research this further for the summer.

Another group project goal for the summer includes developing an ideal biomass mixture for regions around Arusha, Tanzania. We tested the briquette mixture the Spring 2012 group created for demonstrations and found that the briquettes burned but produced a lot of ash without a flame. We determined that briquettes constructed out of paper, sawdust, and rice husk mixture were not ideal for cooking. Thus, our goal is to spend the next few weeks creating a mixture that produces a flame with low smoke emissions. Edith, one staff member at EARD-CI, mentioned a man, John, in Lushoto (a few hours away from Arusha) has been working with carbonated and non-carbonated biomass materials for a briquetting in his community. We plan on traveling out to the area and talking to John to learn more about successful briquetting projects and get his insight on our own project.

We also began a compost pile soon after arriving, since composting will take a few weeks. Once composting is complete, we will be able to begin testing optimal biomass mixtures. So far, we have begun composting rice husks, paper, saw dust, and dried corn leaves.  Our plan for the next few days is to travel to the VICOBAs and determine levels of interest and biomass materials present so we may choose the best VICOBA for a pilot project. We plan on visiting King’ore on Thursday, and Lulu and Bonderi on Monday.

Summer Travelers Introduction

The 12X travelers will be working with coffee husk stoves, briquetting, rocket stoves, and biogas projects this summer. Here's a quick introduction of each of the travelers:

Nik Ortman '13
Trip Leader

Nik is a '13 Engineering Sciences major from Whitefish, MT. He has been involved in DHE since the fall of 2011 and will be the biogas project leader next fall. He is interested in alternative energy/fuels and will be primarily working on the briquetting project this summer, as well as doing some assessment for future biogas installations. At Dartmouth, Nik is the house manager of Bones Gate fraternity and works various on-campus jobs. He is an avid skier and also enjoys hiking, soccer, reading, and knitting among other creative pursuits. 


Aneesh Chuttani '15

Aneesh Chuttani is a '15 at Dartmouth College, interested in majoring in engineering. Along with D.H.E, Aneesh he enjoys playing soccer on the green, going for hikes, and playing the piano. His favorite aspect of Dartmouth is the close community, and especially enjoys the Dartmouth spirit during homecoming weekend. For the summer trip, he is excited to build and experience Tanzanian culture. He also looks forward to learning more about development and the economics related to alternative energy systems. He has traveled previously to Europe, India, Cambodia, Peru and Brazil. 

Amelia Ritger '15

Amelia is studying Biology at Dartmouth. In addition to her involvement with Dartmouth Humanitarian Engineering, she is on the Dartmouth Women's Ultimate B-Team, Princess B-Ride. She hopes to get more involved with DOC (Dartmouth Outing Club) next year, a campus outdoor enthusiast group, and take advantage of New Hampshire's natural beauty. In her free time, Amelia enjoys playing tennis, hiking, skiing, and reading. The trip to Tanzania will be Amelia's first major experience with international travel. During this summer, Amelia hopes to learn more about Tanzanian culture and expand her own understanding of human centered design while on the briquetting project.


Kevin Chen '15

Kevin Chen is majoring in Government and Economics. On campus at Dartmouth, he's a clarinetist in the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra,  DAO Culture Night Co-Chair in Dartmouth Asian Organization, as well as members of the Agapé Christian fellowship, Dartmouth Society for Investment and Economics, and Dartmouth Humanitarian Engineering. If Kevin has any free time at all, you will find him lounging on the green with friends, doing something related to music, or enjoying the beauty around Hanover. During his short time at Dartmouth, Kevin's gotten a chance to meet some truly amazing people inside these groups and just around campus. What has been most refreshing has been how Kevin's peers have such big dreams and work tirelessly at those aims like his fellow posters here! For this trip, Kevin's looking forward to immersing himself in Tanzanian culture and getting to know as many people as possible to learn how to best serve them. He'll be focusing primarily on the Coffee Husk Stove project as well as considering economically sustainable distribution schemes in the Tanzanian communities the group will be visiting.