[Stoves] An Application of the Anderson TLUD stove

[Ray Menke]

Thanks for the comments.  I will put a note in the video description
area correcting the definition of TLUD.
I have been experimenting with about ten different wood gas stoves,
and always dump the char into the bucket of water.  Usually, I pour
the liquid with the pieces of char into another bucket with a screen
over the top to catch any pieces larger than about 1 cm.  This second
bucket with the fines and ashes gets tossed on the compost pile (six
dump truck loads of chips mixed with cow manure).  I save the larger
pieces of char in large barrels and sacks in my barn for future use in
some larger gasifiers (for ten hp engines) that I have been building
on for some time.
Some of these chunks of char are used in cooking tasks where I want to
simmer rather than boil the food.
However, since I have a good supply of hardwood (Mesquite) I probably
use less than 1% of my char for cooking.  Perhaps 25% ends up in the
compost pile(s), and the remainder is stored in the barrels and sacks.
 (estimated half a dozen 55 gallon (200 liter) barrels.)
Last year, I built my version of the Anila stove using a 20# propane
bottle.  I guess it might be called a retort!  It makes large amounts
of beautiful charcoal from larger hunks of hardwood, while burning the
pyrolytic gas under a very large pot or pressure cooker.  My goal with
this retort was to make high grade charcoal while making complete use
of the flame for cooking, and producing no visible smoke.  It uses a
ten dollar ceiling fan speed control to vary the amount of forced air.
 It works very well, but has too much ¨firepower¨ for normal cooking
for two old retired people.  (It will work well to reduce large
amounts of cooked tomatoes into tomato paste.)  I keep this high grade
charcoal separate from the finer char produced by the cook stoves.
My Woodgas Campstove XL gets used about 60% of the time because I have
a pot shroud that fits around the stove and the pot that makes it very
efficient, especially when there is wind.  I don´t get much char from
this stove because I use it for things like rice and beans that need
longer cooking times, with low heat toward the end.  I have hardwired
an old waterproof flashlight equipped with two D cells into the fan,
and I use the flashlight switch to run the fan.  (After several
hundred uses, the factory installed connector got so loose the fan did
not run all the time.)  I let the fan run until the stove completely
cools down, after dumping the char and ash into the bucket.
I am saving the char and charcoal because it is used in the starting
of engine grade gasifiers.  It can also be used in the gas filtering
stages.  Also, once I have converted the wood into char, the
sub-tropical bugs stop digesting it...
As you probably saw on the evening news, there are many large
wildfires destroying houses and vast amounts of rangeland here in
Texas.  All open fires are banned, with large fines and the
possibility of two years jail time for violators.  So, for the time
being, I have shut down my outdoor kitchen...waiting (with my cows)
for rain (and grass).

Ray

On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 1:11 AM,  <ajheggie at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Ray
>
> It does show that TLUD devices don't have the problems which people expect
> from a simple batch burn and I see you do add fuel from the top. The
> acronym actually stands for Top Lit Updraught Stove rather than the top
> loaded you comentry implies.
>
> You say you use the char saved at the end of each run for cooking and
> gardening, any idea what proportions for each use and an estimate of
> production from your ~900 burns?
>
> AJH
>




-- 
Ray  Menke