TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT

In 2014 Carbon Neutral Commons began consulting award-winning Filipino engineer Alexis Belonio for his assistance developing a best-in-class gasifying cookstove. First introduced to CNC by Dr. Paul Olivier, Belonio is an expert in biomass conversion to energy, post-harvest engineering, agricultural machinery design, development, and manufacture and the utilization of non-conventional energy sources. In January 2015 Professor Belonio began working full time for CNC, developing rice husk and straw processing, gasification, and battery-charging technology.

As his first project with CNC, Belonio has been improving his domestic rice-husk cookstove with the mandates listed below. He is also now creating gasification technology that transforms rice husk into syngas for small-scale electrical generation, and a system of torrefaction and pelletization for rice straw, so it too can be a viable feedstock for the gasification process. 

These technologies are the backbone to using the untapped energy potential of agricultural residue while sequestering carbon out of the atmosphere. Once proved and tested through field work, we hope the economic viability of these technologies will lead them to be adopted widely throughout the rice-farming areas they were designed to serve. 

Professor Belonio's mandate for cookstoves includes these points:

1. Optimizing the quality of the char in terms of carbon recalcitrance: molar ratio H/C (max Carbon)
2. Lowest possible levels of PAHs in the char (min PAHs)*
3. Minimizing emissions (min emissions)
4. Maximizing robustness  (max robustness)
5. Maximum energy output (max energy)
6. User friendliness (max usability)

*Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons

 See Alexis Belonio's bio here