World Development,

1976, Vol. 4, Nos. 10/l 1, pp. 929-937.

Pergamon Press. Printed in Great Britain.

Intermediate Energy Technology in China

VACLAV SMIL*

hiversity
Summary.

ofildunitoba

- Intermediate energy technology - construction and operation of small projects using mass labour participation and local materials, minimizing capital investment and combining modern and traditional approaches - has become an important part of Chinas energetic?. Construction of small energy projects originated during the aborted Great Leap, but a rational - and apparently successful - expansion dates only since 1969. Small mines now produce almost one-third of the countrys raw coal, and small hydro-stations generate one-third of Chinas hydroelectricity. Methanogenic fermentation is increasingly used in South China to produce biogas and the first steps have been taken in introducing small solar collectors.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Increasing numbers of experts have been questioning the transfer of the advanced, capital-intensive and highly efficient Western technology into developing countries ~ and arguing in favour of the developmental model combining the modern and the traditional approach as the only sensible way of modernization in populous Third World nations. Ernst F. Schumacher, perhaps the most influential proponent of this new approach, outlined four fundamental rules of the new technology required to support an economy based not on goods but on people: 1. Make things small where possible. 2. Reduce the capital-intensity because labour wants to be involved . . 3. Make the process as simple as you can . . . 4. Design the process to be nonviolent. China, the largest and the most populous of all developing countries, has been forced by necessity to adopt the intermediate technology approach based on very similar principles: any effort to modernize her vast and backward countryside is hardly imaginable in any other way. Walking on two legs, that is developing not only large complex enterprises of the modern sector but also small simple projects in rural areas, has been a leading dictum of the Chinese economy ever since the late 1950s. Although the achievements have been mixed, the basic soundness of the approach cannot be doubted. Adoption of intermediate technologies in Chinas energetics has been especially

important. While energy output of large since enterprises has increased dramatically 1949, virtually all of this production has been destined for major industries and urban areas; moreover, the countrys sparse and overloaded transportation network has made any longdistance, large-scale fuel transfers to the rural areas difficult and costly. Production of fuels and electricity by small rural enterprises has thus played the crucial role in rudimentary modernization of the Chinese countryside. Small-scale developments in the countrys energy industries have been predominantly concentrated in three areas: coal mining, hydroelectricity generation and biogas production.

II. SMALL COAL MINES Massive opening of small outcrop mines had a spectacular - though ill-fated ~ beginning during the years of the Great Leap Forward (1958-60). The native pits campaign became, together with the erection of little backyard iron furnaces, the chief embodiment of Maos economic delusions instantaneous about industrialization. Some 110,000 pits were in operation by the end of the first Great Leap year (1958), engaging the incredible number of 20 million Chinese peasants.3 Pit coal output, * Most of the material in this article is drawn from Chapters 2-4 of my book, Chinas Energy: Achievements, Problems, Prospects, and is used here permission of Praeger Publishers, Inc., New York. with

929

930

WORLDDEVELOPMENT Table 1. Raw coal production in China I949 ~ 74 Total production Small mines output (million tons) 1949 1952 1953 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1965 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 32.43 66.49 69.68 130.73 230.00 300.00 280.00 170.00 220.00 250.00 300.00 320.00 340.00 365.00 390.00 1.45 2.96 3.11 7.50 51.34 66.07 66.54 26.00 32.00 55.00 75.00 83.00 92.00 102.00 112.00 Small mines share 4.5 4.5 4.5 5.7 22.3 22.0 23.8 15.3 14.5 22.0 25.0 25.9 27.0 28.0 28.7

totalling 3.11 million tons in 1953 and still over 7.5 million tons in 1957, surpassed 50 million tons in 1958.4 Pit extraction was supplemented by mass construction of primitive coking batteries. Increases in native pit extraction continued in 1959 - but further expansion was obviously unsustainable. Much of the hastily expanded and badly disorganized pit output, often of appallingly low quality, was wasted; the lifetime of many small mines was ephemeral; a large part of the production was consumed in an equally ephemeral iron-making campaign. In fact, it is very likely that human and animal energy necessary just to open, operate and maintain many small mines surpassed their actual energy yield6 while, at the same time, draining the farm production of its essential human and animal energy inputs. After the collapse of the Great Leap in 1960 the coal industry was thrown back to near the 1957 level and small mine output declined by about 60% (from over 66 million tons in 1960 to about 26 million tons in 1961). Production started to climb in the mid-1960s but most of the new small mine capacity has been added since the end of the Cultural Revolution (1969). This new wave of small mine diffusion has differed substantially from the aborted Great The basic rationale is, Leap expansion. undoubtedly, the same: small mines can be opened up and brought to their full capacity much faster than the large enterprises; they can be run at a relatively low cost, relying on abundantly available labour supplemented, if simple, locally-produced necessary, by machinery; consequently, they can yield quick and favourable returns on a limited investment, enabling the accumulation of funds for farm mechanization, light rural industries, chemical fertilizer and farmland capital construction. However, the actual execution is different. Opening of new small mines (i.e. mines run by administrative regions, counties, communes and production brigades) is now done in a rather orderly manner, with some essential planning and, if one is to accept official claims, with much more real success: close to one-third of Chinas raw coal output originates in small mines,7 a higher share than at the height of the Great Leap native pits campaign (Table 1; Figure 1). In some southern provinces small mines account for an even higher share of raw coal output (Table 2), and are instrumental in lessening the costly dependence of southern China on northern coal.

Source: V. Smil, Energy in China: achievements and prospects, The China Quarterly, No. 65 (March 1976), Table 5, p. 62.
400-

300-

z to
2
200-

Figure

1. Total and small mine (shaded area) raw coal

production in China, I949- 74. While the total southern coal output nearly doubled between 1965 and 1973, local pit production increased six times.g Every province south of Yangtze - and even Tibet - has now a large number of permanent or seasonal small mines and their further moderate expansion,

INTERMEDIATE ENERGY TECHNOLOGY IN CHINA Table 2. Numbers and production shares of small coal mines in South China Province or autonomous region Anhwei Chekiang Fukien Hunan Hupeh Kiangsu Kwangsi Kwangtung Kweichow Yunnan Number of small mines 138 >400 5 052 1 500 719 770 460 1 330 _ 2 600 Percentage of the total raw coal output _ 64 >60 25 46 25 43 50

931

Sources: NCNA and provincial broadcasts, SWB, FE/W799/A/13-15, 27 November 1974; FE/W860/A/6-9, 14 January 1976. both in capacities and in numbers, will undoubtedly continue. It is, of course, undeniable that - especially when judged in terms of modern Western economics - the Chinese small pit coal extraction has many drawbacks. Raw coal output is usually of a lower quality than the large mine production; economies of scale cannot be attained in thousands of scattered enterprises; labour productivity is rather low and the lifespan of many outcrop mines is often very short. However, these criteria are hardly appropriate when the main concern is to introduce the technology into the rural areas within reach of poor peasants.

III.

SMALL HYDRO-STATIONS

Construction of small hydro-stations has been perhaps the most meaningful application of intermediate energy technology in China, especially during the recent past. The programme was originally initiated as a part of massive water conservancy work during the Great Leap years, when as many as 100 million people were engaged in building dykes, dredging and regulating streams, repairing reservoirs and digging new irrigation canals. Thousands of small stations with the total designed capacity of 900 MW were begun in 1958 and a very ambitious plan predicted a 1,000 MW total in 1962 and as much as 2,500 MW in 1967. The reality was much less impressive. During the year between October 1957 and September 1958, 4,334 small stations with aggregate

capacity of 13 1.5 MW were put into operation, and another 200 MW were finished in 1959.* Then the Leap collapsed and the massive conwas small hydro-stations struction of abandoned - to be resurrected only in the latter half of the 1960s with most of the projects starting after the end of the Cultural Revolution (1969). General guidelines for the development of simple : hydro-stations are quite small dependence on local resources, maximum thrift and construction speed. Stations are built with funds accumulated locally through agricultural production or light industry activities; central funds are released only for necessary assistance in design, manufacturing of power generating equipment or training of future operators. Labour and construction materials are strictly local. Traditional mass methods of numbers of peasants construction - large marshalled to a site and performing all tasks picks, shovels, with the aid of chisels, shoulder-poles, straw or bamboo baskets and pull carts - are used in almost all cases and the work is often accomplished in a very short or time. 3 Small dams are either rock-filled structures, requiring earth-filled only a minimum of cement, steel and timber. Many counties are now even producing their own small water turbines and generators, transformers, cement poles, aluminum wire and switches, and training new electricians and operators. 4 Some 50,000 small and medium hydrostations were in operation in 1973 and over 60,000 in September 1975, concentrated overwhelmingly in the rainy southern half of China. Yangtze Basin has about one-third of all stations, 6 approximately four-fifths of the total are in the eight southernmost provinces and Kwangtung alone accounts for almost 20% (Table 3; Figure 2, overleaf). Naturally, the typical installed capacities of these stations are very small: available figures for the southern provinces (Table 3) give the weighted average of roughly 48 kW per hydrostation. 7 Consequently, the total capacity of Chinas small hydro-projects was around 2,000 MW in 1973 and about 3,000 MW in 1975.18 In many provinces small hydro-stations are much larger than indicated by the national or regional averages. Table 4 overleaf summarizes most of the information available about capacities on the county level, showing averages over 100 kilowatts in some areas of Hupeh, Kiangsi, Kwangtung, Chekiang and Yunnan. A 1974 report claimed a county in KwangsiChuang Autonomous Region was engaged in building a one-megawatt hydro-station, i.e. an

932

WORLD

DEVELOPMENT

Miles

200

400

600

Kilometers

Figure

2. Numbers

of smallhydro-stations
in China

in South the end of 19 75).

China (estimated

totals for

Table 3.

Small hydro-stations provincial drstribution Installed capacity kW 688,000 300,000 200,000

Table

4. Small hydra-stattons rn China selected county statmtlcs Number OS stations 306 226 155 139 215 120 126 50 141 44 57 29 160 31 19 37 79 Total capacw kW 10.900 13,290 16,000 7 500 10,325 8 000 3 364 1 290 20,000 4 720 2 380 9013 3 000 641 2 370 4 200 3 100 Average capacity kW 35.62 58.81 103.23 53.96 48.02 66.67 26.69 25.80 141.84 107.27 41.75 310.79 18.75 20.67 124.74 113.51 39.24

Province or region Kwangtung Szechwan Hunan Yunnan Fukien () Cd) (e) ( (g) (h) (0 (i) (k) (a) (b

Number of small hydra-stations 11,740 6 000 6 000 5 000 4 600 4 290 4 000 3 600 >400 278 146 100 (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (0 (g) (h) (0 (i) (k) (I)

Average capacity kW 58.60 50.00 33.33

Date of reference x-1975 x11-1974 V-1976 x-1974

COUllty I:eng-kai Lo-ting Chieh-si Yang-shan Yung Luchuan Chien-yang Ning-hua Chin-hua Fengching Chuan-nan I-chun She Shih-tal Chuang-ho Ta-WU Ching-lung

Province Kwangtung Kwangtung Kwangtung Kwangtung Kwangsi Kwangsi t.uk1.m Fukien Chekiang YUIlIUll Klangsl Kiangsi Anhwei Anhwei HUllUl Hupeh Hupeh

155,000

33.69

IX-1973 IX-1974

Kweichow Kwangsi Chekiang Kansu Liaoning Tsinghai Tibet (I

114,000

28.72

x-1973 x-1973 IV-1976

16,800 22,800

60.43 156.16

X11-1972 VII-1974 IX-1975

Sources NINA in English and in Chmese, provmc~al services, E;E/W758/A/15; I~EIW755iAill: SWR. l-EIW747iAi9: FE/W760/A;9; FEjWj86/A/4; FE/WBlO/A/IO; FE/W845/A/21;

FE/W847/A/l5, 24425;FE/W849/A/9; FE/W854/A/56.

Sources:

Kwangtung provincial service, SWB, FE/W847/A/24, 8 October 1975. NCNA in Chinese, SW& FE/W812/A/5, 5 February 1975. Hunan provincial service, SWB, FE/W879/A/6, 26 May 1976. NCNA in English, SWB, FE/W799/A/ll, 30 October 1974. NCNA in English, SWB. FE/W/743/A/S, 26 September 1973. NCNA 1974. ;9,3! in English, SlVB, FE/4699/CI, FE/W747/A/lO, 10 September 24 October

in English,SWB,

ibid. NCNA in En&h, SWB, FE/W875/All, 28 April 1976. Liaoning provincial service, SWB, FE/W718/A/9, 26 March 1973. Tsinghai provincial service, SWB, FE/W799/A/lO, 30 October 1974. Peking home service, SWB, FE/W849/A/lO, 22 October 1975.

installation 1O-30 times larger than a project of typical size. I 9 On the other hand, the Tientsin Electra-Driving Research Institute is trialproducing seven types of miniature hydroturbogenerators (0.6-l 2 kW capacity) suitable for isolated moyztain villages with scattered There is also a series of water resources. remarkable small hydro-stations in southern Kwangtung using low head tidal power for single (ebbing) or bi-directional generation. Small and medium hydro-stations have contributed immensely to the basic electrification of the Chinese countryside. In 1974 they accounted for about one-third of the total hydro-generation (i.e. about 9 billion kWh) and produced most of the power for more than 70% of communes and about 50% of production

INTERMEDIATEENERGYTECHNOLOGYINCHINA brigades in the country which had electricity supply at that time.2 Private rural electricity consumption still remains very low - usually only one or two low-voltage bulbs are allowed per household - but power available for small local industries (including fertilizer production) as well as for irrigation and drainage, and for such diverse primary processing tasks as grain threshing and milling, fodder crushing, oil extraction or timber sawing often represents the first step toward modernization in many Chinese villages. Certainly no less important than power generation is the regulation of water supplies for irrigation and flood control provided by small reservoirs. This multi-purpose nature of small hydro-projects is perhaps the best assurance of their further vigorous development.

933

IV.

BIOGAS PRODUCTION

Biogas generation has been spreading throughout some of Chinas rural areas since the early 1970s. The procedure is, at least in rather simple, and the processes principle, involved are well known. Animal dung, night soil, pieces of vegetation (crop stalks, straw, grass clippings, leaves), garbage and waste water are sealed up in insulated containers (digesters, pits) and left to Digestible organic materials decompose. (liquids, proteins, most starches) are broken down by acid-producing bacteria and the converted by volatile acids are, in turn, anaerobic methanogenic bacteria into a gas which is typically composed of 55-70% methane, 30-45% carbon dioxide and a trace of hydrogen sulfide and nitrogen. Besides the versatile low pressure medium-caloric gas (between 5,300 and 6,300 kcal/m3; pure methane has 9,345 kcal/m3), the process yields an organic fertilizer of outstanding quality and can c;snsiderably improve sanitation of rural areas. Small-scale, non-commercial production of biogas (called also dungas and in India gobar gas; the Chinese reports usually use the name marsh gas) was tested in India and in Europe in the late 1930s but it has received greater world-wide attention only during the past decade.24 The first Chinese attempts date from the Great Leap period,25 but a massive, and apparently well campaign to organized, popularize the technology started only a few years ago in Szechwan, where the numbers of

fermentation pits have been growing at a very fast rate. Chung-chiang county pioneered the process in winter 1970 and some 800 digesters were operating by 1972.26 More than 30,000 tanks were built throughout the province by the end of 1973,27 the total was 209,000 a year later (with 169 000 containers used for as many biogas production)2 and twice (410,000) digesters were reported to be in operation by the middle of 1975.29 The leading area in the province - and the whole country - is Mien-yang county where, as of July 1975, some 60,000 pits were completed and another 20,000 were under construction, with more than 60,000 peasant households using biogas for cooking and lighting.3o The recent Chinese reports stress, as might be expected, the advantages of the method. Biogas production is undoubtedly an economical method to solve fuel problems in many rural areas as it conserves local fuelwood or imported coal and kerosene, upgrades vegetal refuse and human and animal wastes into an excellent fertilizer and contributes to a cleaner environment.3 With minor equipment modifications biogas can be used to power internal combustion engines and to substitute for diesel oil in small electricity generators. And it is, of course, a clean and convenient fuel for household cooking and lighting. Consequently, the biogas campaign continues to spread the technology throughout the country. About 50,000 containers were operating outside Szechwan in the summer of 1975, mostly in Tung-ting Hu area in Hunan, in Kiangsu, Kiangsi, Kwangsi, Kwangtung and other regions of South China. The New China News Agency (NCNA) claimed that biogas pits are used not only north of the Tsinling Shan and Huang Ho but even north of the Tien Shan and north of the Great Wal1.32 The effort is supported through national conferences (organized by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, State Planning Commission and Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry), trainin of technicians (100,000 in Szechwan alone), $3 manufacturing the simple gas stoves and lamps, rubber or plastic pipes and pressure gauges, and by designing differently shaped fermentation pits. Construction of containers is claimed now to be simpler and cheaper: cement consumption was reduced from 400 kg to less than 150 kg and the cost dropped from 100 to 40 yuan for a typical ten cubic metre digester which is, when properly managed, sufficient to supply a South Chinese family of five with enough fuel for cooking and lighting.34 Peasant families are

934

WORLDDEVELOPMENT

thus encouraged to dig their own pits and larger digesters are built collectively to produce biogas for fueling water pumps, farm processing machinery and small-scale electricity generation.35 But the biogas production is not without problems. Certainly the most important limitation of the method is the impossibility to use it efficiently - or at all - in colder regions of the country because of the thermal requirements of the fermentation process. Methanogenic bacteria, unlike their acid precursors, reproduce rather slowly and are very sensitive to environmental changes. During mesophilic fermentation the temperature should be kept in optimum range of 2&45C, without fluctuating more than *2C.36 While Szechwan Basin, Fukien, Kwangtung, Kwangsi and southern Yunnan - having high average ambient temperatures and less than five freezing days a year - are best suited for fermentation (Figure 3), methanogenic possibilities of widespread, economic biogas generation north of Tsinling Shan and Huang Ho (i.e. in areas with more than 100 freezing

days a year) are - the claims of encouraging results notwithstanding - practically riiL3 7 Even in warm climate with concrete digesters well-insulated in dry soil a considerable drop in efficiency and eventual cessation of the biogas production can occur if the pH is not maintained near neutrality (6.8-7.4), if materials fed into a digester do not have a proper carbon/nitrogen ratio (between 25 and 35), and if the sludge lacks the necessary quality and liquidity to balance the acid and the methanogenic bacteria.38 Other operation problems are associated with sand accumulation, scum build-up and removal and collection and loading of human and animal waste. On the assumption that digesters can operate viably only south of Huang Ho 1 have estimated the total Chinese potential biogas generation at some 60 billion cubic metres annually, equivalent to about 50 million tons of hard of this potential is coal.3 9 The full realization highly unlikely - but all future attempts to introduce the fermentation technology in suitable regions are most desirable. In spite of well-managed biogas the associated problems,

Figure 3. Annual frequency of freezing days in the eastern half oj China (warm Szechwan Basin stands out conspicuously).

INTERMEDIATE

ENERGY

TECHNOLOGY

IN CHINA

935

production offers a clean, efficient and, what is certainly most important, a non-exhaustible source of energy which can be tapped inexpensively to benefit indefinitely a large segment of Chinas population.4o

VI. CONCLUSIONS The advantages of intermediate energy technology for China are indisputable. Small projects - while providing fuel and electricity for development of diverse local light industries, for agricultural modernization and also for household consumption - introduce modern technology in a way which allows for large-scale labour participation and reduces capital investment to the essential minimum. Moreover, the benefits go further: part of the energy output which goes for private consumption raises the standard of living and helps in easing household work; many peasants acquire various basic technical skills necessary for more sophisticated work to be done in the future; substitution of fuel and electricity produced in large enterprises by local production brings not only considerable savings, but it greatly reduces the need for energy-intensive transportation and transmission of primary energy. Environmental implications of small energy projects are mostly positive: availability of coal, electricity and biogas reduces, or even eliminates, the need for firewood, grasses and crop residues (traditional fuels in the Chinese rural areas), which can be either conserved or used for cornposting or as fodder. Irrigation and flood control roles of small dams might be, in many instances, economically more important than power generation. Improvement of hygienic conditions and concomitant reduction of infections and parasitic diseases may result from biogas generation. Biogas fermentation also yields excellent fertilizer, representing further savings, doubly important in the era of rising hydrocarbon prices mirrored by fast increasing chemical fertilizer costs. Based on these considerations, I would not hesitate to forecast the further diffusion of small energy projects in China ~ and elsewhere in the developing world.

V. SOLAR

ENERGY

The latest addition to Chinas intermediate energy technologies has been the use of solar energy for water heating and cooking. While an effective large-scale utilization of solar radiation faces many difficult obstacles,41 simple solar furnaces - with practical applications in household cooking, space and water heating, cooling, water desalination and crop drying - are economically viable. They can be used intermittently and a satisfactory, though not highly efficient, operation can be achieved with unsophisticated and relatively cheap mechanisms. The first series of 1,000 small solar stoves was experimentally produced by the Shanghai No. 15 Radio Factory in 1974 to be used mainly by peasants on the outskirts of the city.42 The simple device has a parabolic collector and will boil three litres of water in 20 min and cook a kilogram of rice in 15 min, the rates comparable with those for a small coal stove. Use of solar stoves has since spread to several provinces; unfortunately no figures are available, except for Honan where 2,300 stoves and eight solar water heaters were built by the end of 1975.43 As for the price, a folding type solar stove for boilin and cooking produced in 54 Kansu costs 15 yuan. The most advantageous conditions for smallscale solar technology exist in Tibet, where annual sunshine averages 3,000 hr and is accompanied by low air density, low humidity and low turbidity: a 280 m* glass absorber now heats water for a public bath in Lhasa and similar smaller units, as well as solar stoves for heating and cooking, are operating elsewhere in the region.4 s

NOTES 1. Ernst
with F. Schumacher, Economics should begin people, not goods, The Futurist, Vol. 8, No: 6

(December 1974), p. 274; for details on Schumachers

intermediate technology see his book Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (New York: Harper, 19731, 290 pp. 2. Since these enterprises have been recently fairly

successful, the Chinese - in departure from their usual mode of extreme sketchiness, if not a near total secrecy - are rather liberal in releasing information on
their performance. Critical evah&on of these materials shows only rare implausibilities or inconsistencies. Thus, in my opinion, the official Chinese claims in these areas ought to be accepted as a reasonably accurate account of the reality.

936

WORLD

DEVELOPMENT 18. This of units Chinese worlds Sayany, total capacity, composed of tens of tousands and built and maintained by millions of the peasants, is about half of the power of the single largest hydro-stations (Grand Coulee, Krasnoyarsk). in English, SWB, FE/W784/A/4, 17 July

3. Yuan-li Wu with H. C. Ling, Economic Development and the Use of Energy Resources in Communist China (New York: Praeger, 1963), p. 44. 4. ibid., p. 40. 5. While the conversion rate of the Chinese output to hard coal equivalent was 0.71 for Five-Year Plan years, it dropped to 0.48 in 1958: Yuan-li Wu with H. C. Ling, op cit., 108-109. raw coal the First the year pp. 39,

19. NCNA 1974.

20. Midget water-turbine villages, Peking Review, 1975) pp. 30-31. 21. Power generation Shih-yen (Scientific 1973), pp. 4-5.

generators for mountain Vol. 18, No. 21 (23 May

6. It is unavoidable that a process in which energy cost of primary energy surpasses the net yield cannot lx sustained. 7. New China News Agency (NCNA) in English, British Broadcasting Corporation, Summary of World Broadcasts (SWB), FE/W803/A/15, 27 November 1974. 8. Virtually all of Chinas large collieries are north of Yangtze (in Anhwei, Shansi, Shantung, Hopeh, Liaoning and Heilungkiang). Costly transfer of the northern coal to the South has been one of the major intractable problems facing Chinese energetics. Another obvious advantage is the saving of mine timber, a commodity in chronically short supply in China. 9. NCNA in January 1974. English, S&B, FE/W760/A/lO, 30

by low water Experiment),

head, Ko-hsueh No. 1 (January

22. NCNA in English, SWB, FE/W849/A/20, 8 October 1975. Minor portions of rural electricity supply come from small fossil-fueled stations or from interconnections with high voltage grids (mostly in villages near large cities). 23. For detailed description of anaerobic fermentation and methane power plants see, among others, L. John Fry, Practical Building of Methane Power Plants fbr Rural Energy Independence (Santa Barbara: Standard Printing, 1974); Proceedings of International Biomass Energy Conference (Winnipeg: Biomass Energy Institute, 1973); Chaman Kashkari, Energy Resources, Demand and Conservation (New Delhi: Tata, McGraw Hill, 1975), pp. 86-94; Energy Primer: Solar, Water, Wind and Biofuels (Menlo Park: Portola Institute, 1975) pp. 142-147. 24. In the 1960s biogas development were started in Taiwan and in India Maharashtra). programmes (Gujarat and

10. Very few small mines have any coal preparation facilities and the fuel is thus used unwashed and unsorted, containing a large proportion of incombustible waste. 11. Marion R. Larsen, Chinas agriculture under communism, in An Economic People of Mainland China (New York: Praeger, 1968), p. 241. 12. Robert Carin, Power Industry in Communist China (Hong Kong: Union Research Institute, 1969), p. 144. 13. NCNA in January 1974. English, SWB, FE/W760/A/9, 30

25. NCNA in English, Survey of Peoples Republic of China Press (SPRCP), No. 5864 (2 June 1975), p. 24. 26. Marsh gas used in rural China, Peking Review, Vol. 16, No. 2 (12 January ?973), p. 22. 27. Szechwan FE/W760/Alll, provincial 30 January 1974. service, service, SWB,

14. NCNA in English, SWB, FE/W784/A/4, 17 July 1974, and FE/W845/A/20, 24 September 1975. 15. NCNA in English, SWB, FE/W756/A/14, 2 January 1974, and FE/W845/A/20-21, 24 September 1975. 16. NCNA in October 1974. English, SWB, FE/W799/A/9, 30

28. Szechwan provincial 5 February 1975. 29. NCNA 1975. in Chinese,

SWB, FE/W812/A/6,

SWB, FE/W834/A/14,

9 July

30. Popularizing the use of marsh gas in rural areas, Peking Review, Vol. 18, No. 30 (25 July 1975), p. 15. 31. Besides reducing the felling of trees, biogas generation saves much labour spent in cutting and transporting firewood; part of plant residues, which was traditionally burned (with very low efficiency) and could not be used for fertilizer or as animal feed, can now contribute to production of very efficient

17. The smallness of these stations is perhaps best indicated by a comparison. An average American electrical range with oven has the power rating of 12.2 kW: a typical small Chinese hydro-station could thus serve only four average American kitchen ranges.

INTERMEDIATE

ENERGY

TECHNOLOGY

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937

fuel and can be used afterward as fertilizer as well; some straw and dry plant tops are also saved for additional fodder. An interesting example of various savings affected by biogas in South China is described in Mi-lo County, Hunan, exploits methane in a big way, Jen-min Jih-pao (Peoples Daily), 19 January 1976, p. 3. 32. NCNA July 1975. in Chinese,

38. According to the Chinese experience (Office of Science and Technology of the Mien-yang County, Szechwan) the best combination for digester loading is 10% of human waste, 30% of animal waste, 10% dry stubble and 50% water: Native method of manufacturing and utilizing marsh gas, Ko-hsueh Shih-yen (Scientific Experiment), No. 5 (May 1973), pp. 32-34. 39. This figure must magnitude estimate. be seen merely as an order of

SWB, FE/W834/A/13314, SWB, FE/W812/A/6,

33. Szechwan provincial 5 February 1975.

service,

40. Approximately threequarters of Chinas rural population (i.e. at least 500 million people) live in areas where biogas production is viable. intermittent flow of radiation, 41. Above all, atmospheric scattering and absorption, and need for very large collection surfaces and heat storages. 42. Solar energy stoves, Peking Review, Vol. 17, No. 40 (4 October 1974), p. 38. 43. Honan provincial February 1976. service,

34. NCNA in Chinese, SWB, FE/W834/A/l3, 9 July 1975. For comparison, the greater part of Chinese peasants earns 12 yuan or less per person per month from communal activity on the farm: J. S. Prybyla, A note on incomes and prices in China, Asian Survey, Vol. 15, No. 3 (March 1975), p. 270. 35. NCNA in English,

SPRCP, op. cit. SWB, FE/W866/A/2,

25

36. Thermophilic fermentation (SS-60C) is even more temperature sensitive, while psychrophilic bacteria (0-7C) are unsuitable for digester biogas production. 37. High, steady digester temperatures can be, of course, maintained even in cold climate - but the heating may easily require more energy than is released in biogas by methanogenic bacteria.

44. Kansu provincial service, l?anslations on Peoples Republic of China, No. 327 (21 November 1975), p. 15. 45. NCNA in February 1976. English,

SWB,

FE/W866/A/lO,

25