[Stoves] Cow dung and chimneys

rbtvl at aol.com rbtvl at aol.com
Mon Feb 11 13:01:00 CST 2013


Dear Sarbagya Tuladhar

I have little experience with cow dung as a fuel. Please share sites where I can learn about its dangers and other information. 

The Maasai we started working with all cooked with hardwood fuel indoors in unventilated houses.  So it was essential that we started with a reasonably efficient wood burning stove with a chimney.   

Only now we have found that in at least one of our new villages about one third of the people cooked with three stones indoors with dung.   Those who bought and had installed our chimney-based stove tell us the stove works with dung fuel, gets smoke out and uses less dung, just as our wood users report.

Our particulate and CO measurements for wood fuel indicate 90% reductions with our stove. Perhaps we are getting this sort of reduction of combustion products from dung in the house as well.  

You can see our current distribution model on the "stove" page on
www.maasaistovessolar.org. 
We are developing new models that work just as well but are much cheaper to produce and some include a "two burner" capacity.  

If, then, getting combustion products out of the house is a key cow dung fuel issue, then maybe our chimney-based approach is useful. 

Bob Lange. 
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone provided by Airtel Tanzania.


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