Man in traditional dress holds charcoal, to show camera, he has produced from Mesquite wood with sacks of charcoal in the foreground.
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Authors
Issraa El-Kogali
Issue Date
30/01/2015
Type
Language
en
Keywords
Energy
Alternative Title
Improving Access to Useful Services, Systems and Structures Biomass energy from Mesquite shrubs - DGIS - 3900009I
Abstract
Hummadab Village, Kassala - more than 350 houses, 2500 individuals. Charcoal is the main job for all people in this village. It’s the only source of income. Before we were farmers and pastoralists but now there is no water. Last season as so bad there was not enough water to farm our land. We sell charcoal in the town. People use charcoal for cooking shisha and coffee. Also perfuming things. Women use it in their traditions. Wood is cheaper than charcoal and therefore in the villages people use wood. Sometimes, we and people in our villages use charcoal to prepare food but we need money so mostly we sell. Before Practical Action kilns what kilns did they use? We used a traditional method. Wood was placed in a circle, we then put earth over the wood and started a fire at the top. It would take 3 – 4 days for the process to work. In comparison the Practical Action kiln takes 1 day and requires no wood or straw.Mesquite (prosopis chilensis) is a bushy tree that quickly colonizes agricultural land especially irrigated land. In eastern Sudan mesquite has covered wide areas throughout the Gash delta. Efforts to combat mesquite through eradication failed. The current fashioned trend is utilizing and exploiting mesquite rather than eradicating it. A trial for small scale charcoal production was tested with 20 producers using small metal kilns. The metal kiln proved additional advantage over the earth-mound kiln, by enabling the production of fine charcoal from the small branches of the Mesquite tree. The charcoal makers were very happy with the metal kiln, particularly regarding the ease of operation, time and labor saving.
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