All the talk about gel-alcohol fuel including
methanol reminds me of a proven option for cooking and even heating in remote
areas --- propane. It is economical, safe, and methods for its
use have demonstrated for the past 70 years or more. It is
available in liter size bottles up to multi-thousand gallon tanks.
Various propane fired grills and stoves are already available in discount
stores etc. Its infrastructure can be simple, just central tanks to
fill smaller containers, and trucks and/or barges to deliver it in bulk to the
central tanks. This infrastructure exists in rural USA today and is
relatively economical.
Propane is environmentally friendly in that is does
not consume needed local biomass, and it a gas at atmospheric pressure so
there is no risk of damage from spills as with diesel and kerosene.
Incidentally propane is an excellent engine fuel, and it is accepted as an
alternative transportation fuel in Texas. Being of rather low
molecular weight engine emissions problems are reduced.
The major task is one of minimizing
poverty so people can afford propane. Certainly not an easy social or
political task, but poverty is also a problem that is not completely solved
by better stoves either.
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My Mother remembered the transition in the Texas
Plains starting in 1900 or so, from "buffalo chips" (manure dried and leached in
our semiarid environment) and coal, then to kerosene, and finally
to propane. Our family farm home is still heated with propane
today.
Harry
