Hi Richard,
Is it fair to say that the technology side of your ag briquette fuel
paradigm has progressed to the point that recent improvements are small?
I am a tech guy who likes to here tales of "oh well, to bad, not this
time". I can see that in the right hands and community its all good.
Surely there are examples where it didn't just all fall into place.
I could be wrong, but I don't think the manuals you sell are about the
cultural challenges or non mech-tech part the equation.
What holds this idea back.....tree planters:)
Alex
On 04/12/2011 4:11 PM, Richard Stanley wrote:
Hi Alex,
The kind of variations you, Paal and others are experiencing in attempting to
combust such as a bannana peel, reflect much of the fine tuning we have to do
when selecting agro residues even those of a particular species in different
bioregions.. Intersting eh ? The notion that one could waash out soloubles such
as potassium to make the bananna skin more combustible is well practiced in
many plants at the local level. Its in finding and incorporating
technico-cultural practices like this, that the more clever biomass briquette
maker thrives. Combined with an analytical assessment of the process its a
powerful tool eh ?
But you are not alone on the western front either:
A one Joel Chaney has recently completed his PhD in Mechnical Engineering at
Nottingham University. Prior to that asn erhaps as part of it, he had been
working on banana briquettes for some time in Africa. ( His crowning
demonstration of the feasability of using the peels was in the briquetting of
them and cooking with them to make …Banana fritters…
Less facetiously, Joel has done a wonderful technical analysis of the briquette
combustion as a function of shape in the course of his studies…
Here is his email contact: Joel Chaney<[email protected]> But I see
that Marc kindly sent you more specific referencesto Joels work and to a BBC piece on
him while at Nottingham.
At the same time a on Lee Hite, a professional engineer and woodworker, with
Engineers without Borders in Ohio, US, has been working on technologies for
processing agroresidues focussing on bananna bark --for briquetting. His
efforts have culminated in new forms of simple hand operated presses, a
chopper and grinder.
Lees site is;
http://home.fuse.net/engineering/
Richard Stanley
Dar es Salaam Tz.
On Dec 4, 2011, at 3:10 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Sunday 04 December 2011 13:31:11 Alex English wrote:
The numbers here
http://ejeafche.uvigo.es/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_view/gid,
495 don't add up but other sources suggest peels are around 15% ash. 8%
potassium, a component of fire retardant, might be the reason. I think
they sub'd manganese for magnesium.
Which seems to show they should be a good animal feed, I've never tried to
eat a banana and its peel but baana peel was the preferred titbit for our
dairy bull.
You could try blending the peels with water which should remove a lot
of the soluble K and then after drying it, or even before, make a holy
briquette :)
When pelleting& briquetting has been discussed here I've often wondered
id pressure cooking, draining under pressure and then flashing the
residue would be a means of quickly leaching out soluble salts.
Thanks for finding the info Alex, I eat a banana most days so will try and
save a few skins for experiment.
AJH
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