Coal summary II

[Tami Bond <Tami.Bond@noaa.gov>]

Dear Stovers,

Some comments on more responses.

As Ron says, this list is more interested in biomass that was formed in 
the last 100 years. So after this, we could take the discussion off-
line; e-mail me if interested in more discussion and I will keep you 
posted.

Also as Ron says, probably nobody is going to *choose* to switch to 
coal. In many parts of China, there is not a choice. The trees have 
been gone for hundreds of years. For my interest (a bit academic; 
adding up global emissions) coal is of great concern because it's 
really darn good at making particles-- especially black ones. This has 
to do with the fuel chemistry. We estimate that domestic coal use might 
produce as much mass of 'black carbon' as domestic wood use, although 
there is a lot more wood used.

On to the stove stuff:
No, I have not seen the coal burned in Yunnan. I am relying on second-
hand accounts, and have asked some more questions there. Some other 
ideas: preheat air, start with charcoal. I will try these but first, I 
have to burn like the people REALLY burn.

John says 8-15 li per meal, is that LITERS? On the order of 15 kg coal 
per meal? That seems like a LOT!

Crispin says:
> I feel that 250 gm of wood is adequate to light the coal and that 
> a fire of as little as 200gm of coal is possible.  

Good! Can you do this with the lower-vol stuff? It is easy (for me) to 
light hi-vol bituminous but I can't use the same method with all coals.

By the way I have tried smaller chunks-- down to powder-- it makes a 
lot more smoke IMHO. The chunk size as used probably depends on the 
kind of coal; some holds its shape well, some is brittle and crumbles 
if you look at it, so I imagine a lot of small stuff gets burned.

I think coal is far more variable than wood. Will keep trying.

And thank you Andrew for your GREAT history lesson. You can write that 
sort of thing (to me at least!) any time. There is more to the stoves, 
fuel, cooking picture than tincanium and secondary air-- we have such a 
long history with fire.

Tami



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