[Stoves] things rattling in my brain after ETHOS

[Erin Rasmussen]

In chatting with  people who who had been doing work in Africa, I learned some pretty interesting tidbits this weekend that I'm just noting down here before I forget. 

 1- We were taking a look at some pictures of beautiful improved stoves that had signs of terrible smoke and high heat damage, and were trying to figure it out, when this story emerged from the field. It turns out that the ladies in that village LOVE their new stove, they use it with wood and other biomass to cook dinner and then they pack it full of charcoal and drag it indoors to keep the 'house' warm all night.  These stoves with combustion chambers tuned for wood, were starting to fall apart after being used as charcoal braziers every night. 

2 - the African ladies LOVE the charcoal stoves (see 1), another reason for this is fairly obvious to anyone that's tried to cook beans over a hot, fast fire.  Beans and other grains and pulses cook best with a long slow heat, after a few minutes of a fairly intense boil.  So one sound approach would be to help them with a better biomass attachment to the regular charcoal stove, or a better charcoal.  Teddy in Kenya recommends a more efficient  biochar retort, and Paul has the T-Char. I think both are good approaches, but I tend to think that these problems are large enough that there's plenty of room for multiple solutions. There may be better ideas too, what do you all think? 

3 - To quote Christa Roth: "Women in Senegal use a 20 L pot. Deal with it."  There are some great small stoves, and there are some great institutional stoves, but we need something for the family of 8.  Obviously, most ladies would prefer to have multiple small stoves in the household, but there are some people with big families, and it would be nice to have a good solution for them. 
 
Erin Rasmussen
Biomass Stoves discussion list
erin at trmiles.com