[Stoves] Example of missed opportunities was Re: is this new?

[Kevin]

Dear Paul

Once upon a time, a Traveller was driving along through a rural District. He noticed that most stop signs, Billboards, Barn Doors, etc were shot full of bullet holes, but that the bullet holes were in the exact center of every circle! He was amazed at the shooting accuracy, and stopped at the local Barber Shop to find out the identity of the Marksman. When he inquired of the Barber, the Barber replied:

"That's the Village Idiot. He shoots first and draws the circle after."

This silly little story contains an important lesson: 
"When wishing to develop a new product, first find what The Market wants, and then build The Product around it."

The Patent Literature abounds with brilliant solutions to problems that the World does not want solved. They "help the Little Old Lady to cross the street, when she does not want to cross the street." Many of the Inventors of such products end up broke and disillusioned. 

As it relates to stoves, what does Fatima in Egypt, Michelle in Haiti, Joe Pattagoniak's Wife in an Inuktatuck Igloo or Mohammed's Wife in a Grass Hut in Timbuktu want in a stove? Obviously, different stoves are required for different applications. 

So, we can configure clever stoves that turn our creative cranks and are fun to make, and we can develop our own testing procedures that show how clever our clever stoves are, and with such carefully structured tests, we can prove that "My clever stove is more clever than your clever stove." How does that tie in with what Fatima et al, AKA "The Market", wants? 

If the test is based on the time to boil a covered pot, but the Customer uses an uncovered pot... fail. If the Customer uses a covered pot, but the test uses an open pot... fail. If the Customer wants heat loss to the living space, and the test penalizes stove shell loss... fail. 

Some forms of "Improved Stove" represent the kind of progress one gets when one moves the outhouse closer to the back door in the Winter, and further away in the summer. We can build a stove venting into the living space that has "an 80% reduction in CO, Tars, BC, and ash emissions" and call it an "Improved stove." Such stoves will kill people living in Homes built to First World standards. Certainly, there are Markets for which such stoves are appropriate, but when tests are structured to require ALL stoves to meet the requirements of a small section of the total stove market, then progress in the remainder of the Market is seriously retarded.

A stove producing char is fabulous when the Customer wants char, but when the Customer does not want char, it is a fail. A stove that boils water quickly is great if one wants to sterilize water, but it is a fail if the Customer wants to bake bread, or to simmer a stew for 2 hours without having to attend the stove every 10-15 minutes.  What is the purpose of a "Stove"? What does the Customer want it to do? Perhaps the Customer wants an "Improved 3 stone fire that burns 5/7 as much wood, so that she doesn't have to find wood on the weekend? The main requirements of a stove are:
1: It cooks food and/or heats the living space
2: It is fuel efficient.
3: Products of combustion do not harm the Occupants of the living space.

Why aren't stoves rated on the basis of:
1: ... grams of fuel to cook the food or foods for which the stove was designed?
2: ... stove heat loss to the living space?
3: ... whether or not the level of products of combustion within the living space were acceptable or not. 

Certainly, other "stove factors" are important, such as initial cost, life, expected life, etc, but dealing with the above factors in a way that was meaningful to the Customer would certainly be helpful. 

There is a Classic Story about the Drunk crawling along in the gutter one night,  under a streetlight. 
The Cop asks "What are you doing"? 
Drunk says:  "I lost my cell phone and am looking for it." 
Cop asks: "Where did you lose it?"
Drunk says: "On the other side of the street."
Cop asks: "Why are you looking here?"
Drunk says: "Because there is more light here." 

I see interesting parallels in stove testing... the tests seem to be set up to give results that are easy to attain in "The Lab", but which are not necessarily reflective of conditions that are important to the Customer in "The Field".

In theory, it is very easy to get Grant Money... all the Applicant has to do is show the Donor that he is the best person to do what the Donor wants done. If a Donor favours a particular Technology, then that particular technology gets favoured. If the Donor favours a business at a particular state of development, then that is the "business state" that will be favoured. Donors don't so much support a given technology, or a state of business development, but rather, they support a "total situation that is most likely to get done what the donor wants done." Clearly, if the Donor wants "Job ABC" done, and the Applicant is superb at "Job XYZ", then the Applicant will not get funded. 

Best wishes,

Kevin

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Paul Anderson 
  To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves 
  Cc: Hugh McLaughlin ; Bob Fairchild 
  Sent: Monday, January 21, 2013 9:51 AM
  Subject: [Stoves] Example of missed opportunities was Re: is this new?


  Crispin and all,

  Good comments by Alex and Marc and Crispin are below about air flows in TLUDs.

  All should note that Paal Wendelbo's Peko Pe TLUD has had some side-holes in the fuel chamber wall for 2 decades.  Not as much "early secondary air" as Crispin's Vesto.   And Paul Wever has them in his "stove pipe stove".  

  My experiments with them were not conclusive about any advantage, so I have opted to not use them, partly to have less work in fabrication (no extra holes to make) and partly because the entering air enters as PRIMARY AIR when the fuel bed is above the level of each hole, which translates into less control.   I will probably re-visit this topic when time and funds permit.

  MAIN POINT:  This is a great example of missed opportunities because there has never been seriously funded research on the multitude of controllable variables in TLUD stoves!!!   We can see the possible variations.  But we cannot prove them one way or the other simply by funding them out of the pocketbooks of Paal, Paul, Crispin and others.  YEARS AGO we should have resolved the issues of the Vesto stove being operated as a TLUD, or as a different type of stove.   The Peko Pe features should be better understood.   As should the issues of Nurhuda's stove, and Belonio's, and Anderson's and others.  Even people who have resisted TLUD technology for years are becoming involved and still there is nearly zero coordination.  And any financial support seems to be by-passing the people with experience with micro-gasifiers, and instead is seeking isolated academic modelling that (I suspect) will take years to have academic results.  So be it, but let's also give some funds to the practitioners. 

  With all due respect for the need for proper "technology neutral" distribution of funding, I am getting very tired of "technology neutral" that gives equal (or more) weight to giving money (big money) to "business-ready" operations that can start cranking out stoves to be counted toward the 100 million by 2020.  Instead, the leading technology for lowest emissions from solid-fuel cookstoves is TLUD (and other micro-gasification), and it is not yet getting BASIC support that is needed.  

  This is how it looks from my vantage point.  I hope that the above is a "reasoned statement", not a "rant."  And I am forever an optimist and have hopes that the  situation will improve.

  I look forward to seeing many of you at ETHOS in Seattle and/or at the GACC Forum in Cambodia.

  Paul

  *************
  Alex English wrote:

    Crispin,
    Its been a while since I saw the Vesto. It looks from the pictures like there are secondary air holes all the way up the central tube. Is that current?
    Seems like the top rows would just be adding tramp air (unemployed air).

    Alex



Paul S. Anderson, PhD  aka "Dr TLUD"
Email:  psanders at ilstu.edu   Skype: paultlud  Phone: +1-309-452-7072
Website:  www.drtlud.comOn 1/20/2013 9:06 PM, Marc Pare wrote:

    That cutaway is beautiful! Great example of "let the product speak for itself" 


    Since seeing counterflow in action, I understand exactly what you're describing with the air flows. 


    I didn't understand your emphasis on keeping the flame near the bed with a "descending burner" until this paragraph: 


      The secondary air is send across the surface to keep a deck of flame going at the height of the holes. This obviates the need for adding a circular disk at the top to 'keep the flame going'. Adding a 'concentrator' as Paul calls it takes more material and moves the fire too far away from the heat of the pyrolysis bed leading to unwanted flame-outs from time to time. 


    I've seen these instabilities quite often in small-scale pyrolyzers. Great to see a practical measure to prevent their tendency to "smoke bomb".


    What's on the "to-do" list for this class of design, Crispin? Are you looking to push it into other applications? Apply the principles to improve existing design? (like you mentioned with advancing the Anglo SupraNova)


    Marc Paré
    B.S. Mechanical Engineering
    Georgia Institute of Technology | Université de Technologie de Compiègne

    my cv, etc. | http://notwandering.com



    On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 9:42 AM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at gmail.com> wrote:

      Dear Marc and Ron and All interested in air flows



      This is a response to questions about air and Marc's tube.



      Here is an old photo of secondary air entering the combustion chamber of a Vesto pushing the flame to the centre. This accomplishes the following:



      Keeps the fire away from the wall, reducing the temperature it has to survive (a lot)

      Keeps the flame going

      Not allowing it to spread to one side away from the smoke on the other side that might otherwise 'get away'.

      Provides turbulent mixing of flame, hot secondary air and smoke

      Allows for preheating to a significant degree (250-500 C)


  See Crispin's message at the Stoves Listserv archives.



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