Re: [Stoves] Energy content cow dung

Kevin Tue, 12 Feb 2013 19:26:38 -0800

Dear Ron
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: [email protected] 
  To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves 
  Cc: Kaji Sanu ; Kavita Mary and Francis 
  Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2013 8:17 PM
  Subject: Re: [Stoves] Energy content cow dung

List, Richard, etal

I started this note off thinking I would try to prove that dung should not
be used for cooking at all. In googling, I found nothing (repeat nothing)
good to be said about using dung for cooking - except that it was sometimes
necessary because there was nothing else. The alternative of course is the
tremendous value of dung to improve soils. My guess is that almost
everywhere, that something can/should be planted for long term alternative fuel
supply not using dung.

# About 6 years ago, I introduced the concept of "Washing Dung." The idea was
to simply slurry the dung with water, and "filter off the 'wash water." This
can be done very easily. I forsee major benefits as follows:
1: The washing would remove the soluble salts, including chlorides, , and as
such would virtually eliminate the potential for dioxin formation.
2: Soluble nitrates, proteins, hormones and micro-nutrients would be removed
in forms that were most available to plants.
3: Salts interfere with combustion, and their removal would permit better
combustion of the filter cake.
4: Since the animals have digested the cellulostic fractions of the feed and
rejected the lignin fraction to the manure, the filter cake would have a higher
heating value per pound than wood or the original feed materials.

The "Wash Water" would be a "Manure Tea", and as such, would be an excellent
fertilizer. The filter cake could be briquetted and
a: Be used as a much easier burning and very much safer fuel
or
b: The filter cake could be charred, where the char was more valuable to the
user than the fuel value.

We have had recent discussion of Jatropha seeds for instance.

But after looking at a lot of web material, an Australian site popped up
for improved cooking using a TLUD with dung. Many years ago I tried using dung
in Ethiopia with a TLUD and had zero success - so I was impressed. The site is

https://www.engineeringforchange.org/news/2011/10/09/cooking_in_adelaide_with_experimental_dung_burning_stoves.html

# The washed dung, if briquetted and crumbled, to give void space, could turn
out to be a very good fuel for a TLUD stove.

It probably is necessary to only view what they call Blog #4, but there are
three earlier - some showing the conversion of the dung into a fuel shape. I
could not tell from blog #4 what their eventual fuel shape was, but maybe
"cubes" of 4-5 cm size, if their starter material was typical. I doubt that
it was in the form of "patties" I liked all I could tell about their TLUD,
but think it could perhaps be improved with primary air control.

The saved char certainly has more value for soil improvement than the ash,
if ash from typical non-TLUD stoves is ever saved/used.

# The major advantage of "Dung Washing" is that all the leached nutrients are
in a form that is more readily available to plants than they would be after
burning.

But it is not clear to me that their input dung wouldn't have been better
used for composting with wood char being used (from the beginning - not added)
with the raw dung.

# As I understand it, wood is the preferred fuel, and dung is only used as a
fuel when wood is unavailable or unaffordable.

Not sure but there seemed to be enough efficiency improvement with the TLUD
over the three stone, that they need not use more dung - and can still retain a
good bit of the dung's soil-nutritional value.

# with dung washing, most of the nutritional benefits of manure would
probably report to the wash water.

In this note I am trying to emphasize using dung to replace fertilizer - a
topic I know little about, except I couldn't find a single place where dung use
is recommended for cooking.

# Anyone who has made "Manure Tea" would likely confirm its benefits as an
organic fertilizer.

Contacting these clever Australian students would probably lead now to even
more information on the dung-stove-soil nutrition topic.

# Perhaps they would be interested in dung washing, and developing a stove
that burned teh filter cake. By virtually eliminating teh dioxins in teh smoke
from an "unwashed dung fire", tehy would be bringing a great health benefit to
the "Washed Dung stove users."

Best wishes,

Kevin

Ron

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Richard Stanley" <[email protected]>
To: "Discussion of biomass cooking stoves" <[email protected]>
Cc: "Kaji Sanu" <[email protected]>, "Kavita Mary and Francis"
<[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2013 2:37:52 PM
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Energy content cow dung

Dear Sarabagya,

I have ccy'd your request to our good friends, and briquette trainers'
researchers, Mary and Francis Kavita who are based in Kenya. They have trained
Masaai in making nice smelling, clean burring dung blend fuel briquettes ot in
Masaailand a couple of years ago. ( They have also developed similar blends for
elephant dung blends in same and neighboring regions in Kenya.

I also ccy it to Sanu Kaji of the Foundation for Sustainable Technologies
(FoST) in Thamel /Kathmandu as he is the resident expert in briquette making
there in you country (…and probably regionally as well). Finally wanted to
touch base also with Mzee Bob out there in Northern Masaailand, it may also
be useful to you as well in that you are looking at dung burning now. As a
replacement for wood (which was probably far more obtainable when you began
your work there), it made little sense to go to the trouble to making
briquettes-- but now ??

I'd trust Mary and Francis skills implicitly: We trained then in 2001 and
they have been all over the nation and region in fact, training others on
their own steam under their own business since that time. We had some camel
dung blends they made, tested at the Kenya Industrial Research& Development
Institute (KIRDI) for a potential project up in Somaliland a couple of years
ago.

All the best (ukinaweza saida huyu jamaa, Francis, ilikua mzuri , asante
sana)

Richard Stanley(mzee pia)
www.legacyfound.org

This may or may not be useful to you buOn Feb 11, 2013, at 6:49 AM, Sarbagya
Tuladhar wrote:

Hi Bob,

Really interesting on the work regarding the Maasai stove for cow dung. Can
you provide me more information on the stove ? Dung burning for fuel is a major
problem here in South Nepal and we are exploring on ways to combat them.

Cheers

Sarbagya Tuladhar
Nepal

Sent from my iPhone

On 11/02/2013, at 12:13 AM, [email protected] wrote:

> Some of the Maasai burn cow dung in their three stone fires and now burn it
in our stove and report it is okay and they use less just like the wood burning
folks. I want to do some analysis and need a reasonable estimate of energy per
mass of some average dung. Googling I got about 75% of the energy density in
hard wood fuel. Please send me info or sources on this. Don't need to bore the
whole list so use my email. Thanks
> Bob. Maasai Stoves and Solar.
> Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone provided by Airtel Tanzania.
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