Ron,
There are many parts of the Anderson reference of interest. Of historical interest the cobs, like oat hulls, were hydrolyzed to extract furfural. The residue was carbon rich material that made a very good fuel. It was a short step from there to activated carbon. The last of the furfural production in Iowa was in about 2004. Today the furfural production is all in China. So we don't have an easy carbon byproduct from extracting chemicals from these residues. The cobs go to ethanol plants and the oat hulls go into a university boiler where they are co-fired with coal. Tom From: Stoves [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ronal W. Larson Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2013 6:27 PM To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves Subject: Re: [Stoves] corn cobs and char AD, Art, Tom (not shown below) and list Apologies for no-content message just sent by me. I don't know how it got away (still learning new Apple language) Thanks again to all for more data. I am getting less certain with time on the availability of corn cobs. Must have a lot of regional variability. Also we need to note there have been a lot of kernels burnt in the US instead of pellets - not very likely in Costa Rica or India. So you would think cobs might have a place as well somewhere besides India. To AD> Are there places in India where cobs might be the "only" fuel throughout a year? Anything on market value? To Art> AD.'s question to you is important. It wouldn't seem that the pigs and chickens would be getting much nutrition from a cob. Might char from them be more important to a farmer in Costa Rico? To Tom> Thanks for the lead on the Anderson's book. My library and google say no copies anywhere in Colorado. If you or anyone think there is something important on char from cobs, I'll try harder on an interlibrary loan. Ron On Aug 15, 2013, at 6:39 PM, Anand Karve <[email protected]> wrote: Dear Art Donelly, are the cobs fed to pigs whole cobs with the grain or the shanks left after removing the grain? Here in India we regularly use the empty shanks as fuel. Yours A.D.Karve On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 2:53 AM, Art Donnelly <[email protected]> wrote: Hi all, It has been a busy few days, so forgive me if someone has already made these observations. We have used corn cobs with great success in the TLUD style Estufa Finca stoves. I love showing people our little tiny corn cob charcoal. We have also successfully made a lot of biochar from dried corn stover in our version of the 55-gal drum TLUd style J-Ros. MIT has also promoted both of these approaches in it's Field-to-fuel program in Haiti and Nicaragua. But there is a problem with thinking of corn cobs as a stove fuel: most cobs are used as animal feed (pigs/chickens) and needed for it. Applying a hierarchy or best use: the pigs win! However pelleted or briquetted corn stover mixed with paper waste seems like it has a lot of potential. Art On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 12:00 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: Send Stoves mailing list submissions to [email protected] To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_lists.bioenergylists .org or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to [email protected] You can reach the person managing the list at [email protected] hen replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Stoves digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: corn cobs and char? (Ronal W. Larson) 2. Re: LPG subsidy to be removed in Ecuador (Andrew C. Parker) 3. Re: corn cobs and char? ([email protected]) 4. Re: corn cobs and char? (Crispin Pemberton-Pigott) 5. Re: corn cobs and char? ([email protected]) 6. Re: corn cobs and char? (Ronal W. Larson) 7. Re: LPG subsidy to be removed in Ecuador (Anand Karve) 8. Re: LPG subsidy to be removed in Ecuador (Andrew C. Parker) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 13:08:04 -0600 From: "Ronal W. Larson" <[email protected]> To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
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