[Stoves] iCan w/ Deflectors @ 20 minutes

[Jock Gill]

Crispin,

As per usual helpful and informative.

As you note, shortening the stove can help in several ways.  The trade off is draft.  The shorter the draft pipe, the closer to the source of heat but the lesser the amount of induced draft/ turbulence.

Further, reducing the secondary air increases the heat in system and increases the pull on the primary air = faster pyrolysis.  But it also reduces the turbulence promoted by vigorous secondary air.

I find it interesting to try to balance and optimize the primary air, with the secondary air, with the heat delivered to the pot bottom, or the heat delivered into the coming chamber,  with the yield of good charcoal, with clean and complete combustion.

I should note that I generally do not boil water with my iCans, but rather insert them into cooking chambers such as a modified Weber grill or Big Green Egg.   In this situation I can cook over direct wood gas heat, searing,  or I can cook off center with indirect heat.  The results taste VERY good!  Corn on the Cobb, steaks, fish, sausages, eggs, bacon, etc.

Keep on Stovin'

Jock

Jock Gill
Marketing & Communications
Whitfield Biochar, LLC
Burlington, WA
www.whitfieldbiochar.com

Cell: (617) 449-8111

Sent from my iPad

On Feb 26, 2013, at 9:31 AM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Jock
>  
> >...you will see that they have quite different performance characteristics.
>  
> That is an interesting comment.
>  
> >1. Increase turbulence, yielding cleaner combustion, as in a TDI diesel;
> Turbulence is good.
>  
> >2. Keep the combustion mainly contained in the combustion zone;
> I favour this approach, other do not.
>  
> >3. Prevent the establishment of stable central spire of flame;
> That may shorten the stove, vertically.
>  
> 4. Create a very clean combustion with very clear stack gases.
> For that I have to see numbers J
>  
> >As for persistent central spires of flame, I have observe that such spires often eject considerable streams of soot particles.  I get cleaner results when there is no persistent central flame spire.
>  
> While this is your experience, I caution that there are other explanations. The environment in which that thin spire burns has a huge effect on the final result. I have been working on a stove that has 18 inches of deliberately created ‘spire’ that achieves very good combustion at a low excess air level (30%). The PM you see are emerging from the cooling effect. The existence of it in a very small stove is usually cause by the way the secondary air is introduced. As you are using a ring-gap, you do not get the advantage provided by multiple hole jets (which create a lot of turbulence. Left alone, the ring-gap creates a disturbance-free fire which are compensating for by adding parts. When a stove like the POCA used a ring-gap, the whole combustion process takes place to completion in the space between the fuel and the bottom of the pot in a very hot local environment. This can overcome quite effectively the need for turbulence in the whole chamber. In the case of the POCA the flame is conical with a CO-free zone at the top of the cone, in the centre of the chamber.
>  
> A different approach is to create the spire and spin it.
>  
> >…I achieve the same central disk effect when I put pots inside the flue pipe with sufficient space around the pot for flue games to escape. 
>  
> Because the pot serves as a bluff body on nearly all stoves, the selection of the pot often changes the measured performance. Pot size can change emissions. It also point to the problem of people testing stove without any pot at all ‘testing the combustion’. IT gives completely different answers.
>  
> >…I find the fixed gap I am using works quite well on average. 
>  
> We need to do creative things to have it automate by ducted flow! Most people try to get that average you are talking about. Running the combustion zone hotter corrects many minor design problems, however.
>  
> >Hugh has suggested that there is almost never enough secondary air in many TLUD configurations.
>  
> If you see a diffuse flame wandering around looking for oxygen, that is a starving flame.
>  
> >Please tell me more about what the eyes tell you.  I have noticed that some configurations I have used make my eyes water.  The current one does not.  Also some stack gases really aggravate the nose and throat.
>  
> I can’t say the approach is attached to any metrics, but as I demonstrated to AD Karve at ETHOS once, burning damp wood in a Vesto, that it is unexpectedly clean, and that it did not make one’s eyes water. I encouraged him to remove his glasses and stare into the exhaust about 3-4 feet above the flame where one can feel the heated emissions rushing by. He has been using it ever since as a way to test for ‘big differences’ between stoves and recommends it to all the people he interacts who do not have any instrumentation. While it is obvious that particles will cause irritation there are chemicals we have been discussing recently as well. Anything that irritates the eyes is bound to be bad for us. If it is not detectable, then it is probably better than the other conditions. CO is not detectable of course, but there is often (I can’t say ‘usually’) a correlation between PM and CO.
>  
> In short, a stove that makes your eyes sting is not as clean-burning as one that does not. As more testing gets done we will have a better understanding of the value of the ‘sniff test’ and the ‘eye-blink test’. Sometimes that is all the equipment we have.
>  
> Regards
> Crispin
>  
> _______________________________________________
> Stoves mailing list
> 
> to Send a Message to the list, use the email address
> stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org
> 
> to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page
> http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org
> 
> for more Biomass Cooking Stoves,  News and Information see our web site:
> http://www.bioenergylists.org/
> 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20130226/7feeae35/attachment.html>