We’re thrilled to see this kind of research is underway! We are even more thrilled to see news out of The Gambia, which you never, ever, ever hear about. Except for the fact that it is the home of the Ninki-Nanka, of course.
Still, this study would have been more interesting if it had also compared the emissions of charcoal against the ground nutshell briquettes. We couldn’t find any information indicating if the briquettes were produced from carbonized material or not.
Either way, we managed to extract the essence of the study, which we are sharing with you below. The study comes to us via our good friends at IAP Updates.
You can read the complete blog-post here.
(…) Three fuels and five stoves were tested to measure harmful pollutant emissions. The preliminary results showed that the largest difference was found in the fuels (briquettes cleaner than wood), with a smaller difference found between a couple of the improved stoves and the traditional 3-stone. (…)
(…) There are a handful of studies throughout developing countries that are currently looking at using crop waste as an alternative fuel. But because crop waste varies greatly with locality, separate testing needs be done on these different crop wastes and their transformation into cooking fuel. In The Gambia and most of West and Central Africa, groundnuts are a major cash crop and their shells are available in abundance. Recently, two separate factories have been established in The Gambia to process these dried groundnut shells into biomass briquettes, which will then be used as cooking fuel. During Phase I of this study, the investigators have tested (and are currently retesting) the two available biomass briquettes made from groundnut shells. Both the WBT and CCT are being conducted to evaluate the performance of these fuels (in comparison to wood and charcoal) when used with different stoves, as well as IAP emissions. (…)
(…) For Phase II (this proposal), the investigators will test the effectiveness of the biomass briquettes in the communities. It is possible the investigators will also use an improved stove with the briquettes, though this decision will not be made until the final analysis is complete in December/January. However, based on the preliminary analysis, the investigators are leaning more towards briquettes with the traditional 3-stone. For simplicity sake, briquettes are mentioned as the intervention throughout this document. Though RCTs usually measure the efficacy of an intervention, this study is slightly different in that the efficiency and efficacy have already been conducted in Phase I. This study will enable the investigators to evaluate the true reduction of IAP emissions in the study population, as well as the cost effectiveness of using briquettes compared to wood or charcoal. From the preliminary research, the investigators found that the briquettes performed very similarly to wood, and therefore do not anticipate difficulties in adopting the use of briquettes. (…)
English 
French 
Indeed it is nice seeing something about biomass energy from the Gambia! My feeling is that they are talking about non-carbonised briquettes – for two reasons. 1) they suggest that briquettes + three stone stove might end up being the most appropriate intervention (it’s rare that one would use carbonised briquettes with an open stove), and 2) they say that briquette performance was similar to wood (carbonised briquettes would have performed more like charcoal). Any plans to carbonise some of the briquettes?
A flawless deduction, punctuated by a good question, T.
The bio fuel briquettes are renewable energy fuel which found in many industries to produce heat and power. So, briquettes can take place of any fossil fuels as well as natural resources like tree wood or natural gas. The biomass briquette plant provides such kind of briquettes from agro-waste.