Appropriate Technology Workshop Part 2 (New Charcoal Project)

As we were getting everything ready for when all the participants were arriving, we had the opportunity to work a bit on our own projects. I wanted to spend some time doing charcoal work.

One of the big struggles with the charcoal from agricultural waste project is that in order to make the charcoal into briquettes, you need a sticky binding material. Typically, we use a bit of porridge made from cassava (I've also used wheat flour), which is nice and sticky. Many communities, however, have issues with food scarcity, so asking them to divert this precious resource into cooking fuel is rarely worthwhile (the exception being in peri-urban areas, where charcoal usually fetches a rather high price and is a good way to increase income). Items like dung or plant extracts may be sticky, but they often produce some harmful chemicals when burned.

So, during the workshop set-up, while other people were building all sorts of technologies, I was off in the kitchen experimenting. The first day we had some oranges, mangoes and bananas. I made a few different recipes for the experiments: boiled banana with and without peel, mashed uncooked banana, mashed rotten mango, mashed mango peel, orange juice, and orange juice concentrate (as well as cassava porridge as a control). Then, I used the charcoal briquetter and some charcoal powder and made a briquette with each binder and left them out in the sun to dry. Unfortunately, most of the best results were from using valuable products like boiled banana without peel or mango juice (technically, there are surplus mangoes in this area, but that's not common in many of the areas I've tried charcoal projects) or the orange juice.

But I was not about to give up. When I boiled the banana peel, I saw that it had made a somewhat sticky liquid, but by adding the stringy pieces of the peel it had become much weaker. So, in the interests of finding a method that also doesn't require boiling, I used a large mortar and pestle to crush the banana peel and poured water slowly to collect the residue that was coming out. (The process took some practice and there were a few times where I splashed banana peel juice in my face.) When I got rid of the solid part, I found that it was actually a fairly sticky liquid. I tried the same process with mango peel and discovered that it also looked pretty good.

My colleague David (a member of the Peace Corps Zambia staff) helped me out by diligently making lots of briquettes. We were not entirely thrilled by how popular the charcoal was with the flies, but once it dried, we found that it held together really well. We also started joking about charging a higher price for fish grilled over "fruit-infused charcoal". Maybe half-joking. I'm curious about whether the same would work for things like potato peels, but I feel like this is the start to a much more workable solution.