[Stoves] K Smith Article in Energy for Sustainable Development

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Friends

 

I agree with Ron that $10 is a believable figure for an improved stove with a dramatic (90%) reduction in emissions of PM. For the +$50 stove category one can get pretty fancy materials, fans, charging circuits and so on.

 

I have always been fascinated by the potential to cook while making charcoal because it removes one of the inefficiencies but despair at the numbers when analysing the whole system including transport of the fuel to the person making the charcoal. It could be nice to see a system approach taken defining all the relationships between elements (standing/fallen tree to cooked meals) and use that to set down criteria the stove must meet.

 

This approach is want an industrial designer uses to circumscribe the product’s performance. They don’t usually start with a stove and then look for ways to make it fit into some portion of the market.

 

It is hard to get away from the feeling that the char-producing stove was accidentally invented and then a place sought needing it. The advertised benefits are very clean combustion with low particulates (especially black carbon ones). This is accomplished not by really good combustion but by avoiding the burning of the carbon in the first place. Interesting, but hardly the pinnacle of combustion science. Promoters of the char producing stove will have to face, in the market, arguments from promoters of whole fuel burning stoves that there is some particularly good reason to go to the trouble of producing and handling char.

 

The idea of producing char for sale is intriguing. The question arises though: Why would the charcoal buyer not also get a clean burning stove that uses wood and burns everything? The charcoal market exists because the current wood stoves blacken the pots and are not very efficient.  It would save them money and produce only ash. If two good stoves, one producing and one not producing char were on the market, which would you buy?

 

Regards

Crispin

 

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