Hello Alexis
Dear Armando, Hakan, Chris, Mel, and everyone else,
Thanks for the responses received to my question. I make two tentative
conclusions:
(a) It seems biodiesel is probably more attractive than bioethanol, as far
as local production for poverty reduction is concerned.
You don't have to choose, indeed you shouldn't choose. There'll
surely be some circumstances where bioethanol is more appropriate
than biodiesel, for one or another reason, and there'll be other
circumstances where both would be better.
Another option is biogas, to provide heat for processing, and as a
useful village technology in iteself. By-products and wastes from
fuel production help to feed the biogas unit; the biogas effluent and
sludge is composted to provide more fertiliser for growing the
biofuels crops.
In some situations using the mash from ethanol production as
livestock feed can be a critical cost factor in whether the whole
operation is economically viable or not. (The livestock manure then
feeds the biogas unit and the compost unit.)
And so on.
"A rational and sustainable energy future requires great reductions
in energy use (currently mostly waste), great improvements in energy
use efficiency, and, most important, decentralisation of supply to
the small-scale or farm-scale local-economy level, along with the use
of all ready-to-use renewable energy technologies in combination as
the local circumstances require."
This is from a previous message:
I am mainly concerned with plant oil as fuel in developing
countries on the basis of village technology, and in this case all
blends of oil with alcohol or biodiesel make the system more
complicated (oil extraction is a simple technology compared with
alcohol destillation).
Well, I agree, but I also think there are many village situations
where both alcohol and biodiesel are feasible. I think it's not so
easy to find an area where distillation is unknown. All over the
world (not just the Third World) local people make hooch - very
often beer, but there's usually some distilling going on too. We
hear the bad stories - 20 people killed after drinking illegal
liquor at a village wedding party, you know what happens. I think
however that these are a small minority of cases, most local hooch
is well-made with no methanol. Whatever, the local technology is
often there, and improving it, making it safer, while providing a
useful fuel supply is no bad thing, and can provide double-use for
local crops and/or crop wastes.
Again, with biodiesel, most or all of what's required can be locally
available (the oil, ethanol, an easy way of drying the ethanol, KOH
from ash, simple ways to control quantities and pH). But it all
depends on local conditions, local requirements. I think it's as
well to have as many options available as possible.
Keep your options open rather than deciding in advance.
(b) It seems that the local rural market may be much larger than I initially
thought, since, if the price is right, biodiesel can also be used as an
alternative for fuel in the home (cooking, lighting).
So can biogas, and so can ethanol, all the more so if the local
community is producing it themselves from their own resources.
Any more contributions gratefully accepted! In particular, what is the
"best" feedstock for Mozambique? Coconut/copra, sunflower, oil-rich algae,
oil palm, jatropha? I suppose it partly depends on whether we are talking
about coastal or inland areas.
There is no "best" feedstock.
It just doesn't work that way. This is how it works:
http://journeytoforever.org/community.html
Community development
http://journeytoforever.org/community2.html
Community development - poverty and hunger
It's a sad fact that most development projects don't work well, if at
all, and at worst they can do more harm than good.
A major reason for this is that no doubt very well-intentioned people
get to thinking they're the ones who should decide what's the "best"
feedstock, the "best" technology, the "best" methods, without the
local people having any say in it, although they're the ones who'll
be doing it, and they're the "target group" who're supposed to
benefit from it.
It just doesn't work - they have to be involved at every level,
including the decision-making level, and particularly with women's
issues. If projects aren't done this way, it's not too cynical to say
that perhaps the only way they'll "work" is in providing
opportunities for grant-seeking, for field experience that looks good
on a CV, for research material for a doctoral thesis, for career
enhancement for development workers, while what happens on the ground
is another story, with the intended "benefits" going in all the wrong
directions or "unforeseen" side-effects somehow achieving the
opposite of the intended results.
Working with community involvement is more difficult, and you end up
with a bunch of different projects - the one in this valley isn't the
same as the one in that valley, difficult to manage.
But at least there's a fair chance that if you do it this way it
might end up achieving the benefits you intended when you first
thought of it.
In theory, at least, though often in practise too, it's best to use a
different approach. Rather than trying to solve the problems in a
whole area at one stroke with a top-down approach, you start small,
local seed projects instead, working with the local communities. You
know you've succeeded when you lose control - other communities start
copying your seed project on their own, and changing it to suit
themselves. Then it'll spread like a weed and you're not required any
more. Time for the next project.
Best wishes
Keith Addison
Journey to Forever
KYOTO Pref., Japan
http://journeytoforever.org/
In the meantime, here are a couple of biodiesel initiatives I have found on
the Internet which seem to go along the same lines I was thinking of:
- A non-profit pilot run by the Kluyver Centre with Dutch school students,
on algae in Mozambique (see
http://www.kluyvercentre.nl/content/documents/Projectdescriptionwebsite.pdf)
- A World Bank-sponsored pilot by CTx Green and Gram Vikas in India (see the
WB Development Marketplace at
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/OPPORTUNITIES/GRANTS/DEVMARKETPLACE
/0,,contentMDK:20214658~menuPK:214469~pagePK:180691~piPK:174492~theSitePK:20
5098,00.html)
In addition, I have seen that there is a start-up commercial venture based
around jatropha in Mozambique and South Africa (see
http://www.deulco.co.za/).
Any further information on these and other relevant projects would be very
useful.
Alexis
-----Original message by Armando-----
With the current oil prices I am sure many things can be done in rural
communities in Mozambique in the area of biofuels.
I would leave fuel ethanol for the sugar cane factories to produce. It can
be mixed up to 10% in gasoline as the Malawians are doing, apparently.
The rural poor buy kerosene (and sometimes gasoil) for illumination at very
high prices, above USD1000,00 per cubic metre in many remote areas, were
vegetable oil (coconut oil for instance) could be used. This would be a very
small-scale project, but the local alternative price of the raw material
should be investigated. I have done some calculations on coconut oil and
found out that the raw material (copra) is the most important single cost in
the production of oil.
The vegetable oil could also be used in diesel engines running the
small-scale mills scattered around the rural communities.
-----Original message by Alexis-----
I am toying with the idea of trying to set up a pilot rural community
development project involving biofuel (bioethanol or biodiesel or SVO,
whichever is most appropriate) in Mozambique. I am hoping that you can give
me your opinion and advice on the technical feasibility, commercial
viability and ultimately, long-term sustainability, in a poor isolated
African rural setting, of small-scale, community-based, locally-run biofuel
production. If anyone has had experience of a similar project, I would be
extremely interested to have information about that.
[...]
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