Bamboo in Thailand

["Matthew Owen" <owen@africaonline.co.ke>]

In Lampang in central Thailand there are 2 outfits making charcoal
briquettes from bamboo waste. Or at least there were when I visited in 1999.
The waste came from cottage industries making chopsticks and toothpicks. All
the jointed sections of the bamboo used to be thrown away, but two
briquetting companies were instead getting the farmers to carbonise this
material and bring it to their factories. They paid the farmers cash by the
kg.

The farmers used a rather rudimentary carbonisation system which was in fact
nothing more than very large open cylinders into which the bamboo pieces
were heaped and then lit. This led to low conversion efficiencies and high
ash content, as well as some poorly burned lumps of bamboo. They were using
5% tapioca flour as a binder and baking the briquettes in gas ovens
(something which would not be competitive in East Africa where lumpwood
charcoal is very cheap). The main market for the Lampang charcoal was an NGO
consortium supplying fuel to Burmese refugees. They were buying around $2
million worth per annum at that time!

I have a couple of photos of the bamboo carbonisation (140 & 180 kb) if
anyone wants to see them. Let me know and I can email.

By way of an update on this story, I was contacted in 2001 by a guy living
in Lampang called Jan Mrskos of ENHOLCO THAILAND (enholco@cscoms.com). From
the sound of it, the briquetting factories may have closed down. Here's what
he told me:

"I have been living in Lampang for more than 10 years, coming here as a
consultant for a local power plant and later staying on my own.  The factory
what I am running now for wooden kitchenware was run before for production
of bamboo chopsticks.  That time the huge bamboo waste was not so easy to
make use of. i.e, nobody from the vast surrounding was keen on it.  The
burning for the charcoal in a large scale with the legal Thai wages had not
been viable, it could be done only in a small scale by villagers.  As far as
I know they had run mostly on wood sawdust or surprisingly, on charcoal dust
brought in over 2,000 km from the south.   One of the charcoal factory you
mentioned belongs to an older gentleman, a good friend of mine who I
incidentally yesterday was visiting.  Currently, the production of both of
these charcoal factories is down to zero because of the low market."

Matthew Owen
Chardust Ltd.
Nairobi
Kenya


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