[Stoves] Example of missed opportunities was Re: is this new?
Cecil Cook
cec1863 at gmail.com
Thu Jan 24 07:04:24 CST 2013
Dear Ron and also Crispin, Kevin, Iwan, and all,
Before I begin, let me say that - if you are the Ron Larson who as a much
younger man worked for SERI in Colorado - then I our paths have crossed a
couple of times back in the mid 1970's when I was helping to get NCAT up
and running and for some reason caught a ride with you - probably in
Denver. As I recall A K Reddy from the Bangalore Institute of S&T was a
passenger and I clearly recall a very interesting discussion with him about
whether the ethnicity and race of a scientist made any difference in India
when it comes to discovering and delivering more AT solutions to the
socio-economic problems of Indian villagers. His answer was (in effect)
the following: *as an essential next step in their own decolonialization,
it was critically important for Indians scientists and AT-ers to visibly
assume leadership roles - and to be seen to be actively taking
responsibility for solving the technology problems of Indian villagers*.
I then remember AK Reddy saying something about: *you are welcome to play a
helping role, but it is important for Indian scientists and technologists
to 'liberate' themselves from old paradigms and take responsibility for
helping Indian villagers arrive at the most appropriate solutions to the
challenges they face *(or words to that effect).
Back on those days of the mid 1970's Black (and Small) were seen as being
so Beautiful that middle class, patriarchal Mid-American 'whiteboys' -
especially privileged well educated young white men - were under attack
from all sides. We were disqualified from holding leadership positions in
the struggle to create a new America by African Americans, Hispanics, women
of any ethnicity and class background, indigenous Americans,
representatives of historically disadvantaged Euro-Americans (poor whites),
and generic Third Worlders. White male professionals had somehow become the
enemy. It was our turn to ride in the back of the bus and let all the
others fight about who was in the drivers seat and what direction to take
to build a better, more inclusive future.
I put up a bit of a counter-argument by recalling something another Indian
associate of the Gandhi Peace Foundation, the director of the Science for
the Villages and also head of the Khadi Village Industries Museum - both in
Wandha - had said to me when I asked him the same question. He said: if
humanity is a single organism, and that organism has an infection in one
finger what happens? I answered by remembering that white blood cells (an
unfortunate reference to color!) congregate in the infected body part to
isolate and fight the invading bacteria. That was his answer. Reflecting
with the wisdom of 40 years of hindsight on my big development disasters
and much smaller development successes, I now realize that I probably
misunderstood Devendra Kumar when he used his infection of the body
metaphor to explain the universalization of responsibility to help Indian
villagers and the developing world learn how to appropriately apply science
and technology to solve the challenge of producing and supplying affordable
and environment friendly energy to power the development of the millions of
impoverished villages everywhere.
I now realize that the* 'first responders'* to any development crisis need
to be those actors and agencies closest to the epi-center of the crisis who
are culturally and linguistically competent to engage with those villagers
or townspeople. The role of the first responders is to ensure that the
indigenous values and ethno-sciences (of stoves, fuels, cooking) are well
enough understood by outside scientists, funding agents, and policy makers
to:
1. create the platforms and bridges necessary for 'western-style'
scientists and technologists to constructively engage with villagers and
townspeople,
2. *accurately translate between* the cultural patterns and perceptions
of indigenous actors to generate the framework of meaning, operator
know-how and multiple role player interactions – on one end of the bridge -
*and* the abstract models and variables used by scientists and engineers
on the other end that are needed by them to create least cost/maximum
benefit stove technology solutions,
3. facilitate feedback from villagers and townspeople that accurately
captures and communicates outward to stove designers, funding agents and
policy makers their preferred technology choices as indicated by in situ
focus groups, demonstrations and market testing, and
4. ensuring that *scientists, technologists, funding agents,
governmental policy makers, NGO helpers*, etc. actually listen to,
correctly read, and then to act in concert to embody the preferences of
rural and urban customers in prototype stoves which combine enough value
added improvements to be perceived as such good value propositions that
stove users want to buy them because of the value they add value to their
lives.
In summary, the role of the first responder is to mediate between science
and culture. Technology is a product of that mediates these two realms of
knowing and doing when it is ‘appropriate' for both. Both science and
culture are needed for progress to take place. Appropriate technology is
the product of the successful marriage and/or cohabitation between these
two strange bedfellows. The challenge to innovate more perfect stove
technologies has everything to do with directing Kevin's village idiot to
draw his circles around a series of different technologically improved
stoves, or their component attributes, so that the stove scientists know
what kinds of stoves to design, build and test.
I have found it useful to refer to culturally, economically, and
environmentally appropriate stove prototypes as improved stove design *
'prescriptions' *or *'agendas for stove innovation'*. Each of these
improved stove prescriptions or targets represents a composite bulls-eye
that directs the stove scientist's attention to cost and desired
performances. The cost is measured by how much the user group spends on
average in money, labour or other resources to purchase and operate the
stove for cooking and other functions. A culturally relevant baseline
assessment of stove performances also documents the habits (skills) and
knowledge of fuels and stove operation that enable the stove using
household to get the functional performance they need from their
traditional stove. Lastly, the baseline assessment identifies the needs and
interests that are fulfilled over the short, medium and long term by the
stove technology and measures the strength of these socio-economic and
cultural indicators of these needs and interests within the larger
socio-economic system. The resulting baseline assessment of the cost and
performance indicators of traditional stoves is done on stoves in
Battambang (Cambodia), or Yogyakarta Priovince in Indonesia or anywhere
else in the world where people burn biomass (increasingly in Greece to keep
from freezing on cold nights).
I agree with Kevin when he says stove designers and enthusiasts often get
lost in the forest when they search for ever more scientifically perfect
stoves - and loose sight of how to simply and concretely test these
abstract stoves. They are forgetting to pay attention to the obvious
socio-economic baseline realities of particular groups of stove users. They
have lost the trees in the forest which provide the socio-economic and
stove technology matrix of choices within which people buy and use
traditional stoves. In most of SEAsia and much of Africa artisan
fabricated traditional stoves retail from $1 to $3 per unit . These cheap
industry standard stoves are typically short lived (6 months or less) and
typically costly to operate. However, the stove users know how to manage
them to get the performance they want from their stoves for cooking food,
purifying water, grilling meat and fish, and other home industrial
functions.
What I am discovering in Central Java is that there are probably
opportunities for the development of several, perhaps as many as a dozen
different types of biomass stoves that are specialized to meet the needs of:
(1) street level food sellers,
(2) big outdoor social functions,
(3to 7) a range of different home industries (more
than 4 different products),
(8 to 9) specialty food preparation,
(10) restaurants,
(11) commercial caterers,
(12) water purification and heating,
(13) rice cooking,
(14 to 15) home cooking for small and large families,
(16 to 20) industrial applications of biomass energy to
brick making, producer gas for internal combustion engines, drying
operations, etc.
Some of these biomass stoves will be the same but many will be designed and
optimized for particular purposes.
What I am trying to do is identify the different biomass stove user groups
in Central Java and understand the culture that mediates the relationship
between each group and their traditional (baseline) stove technologies as a
prerequisite before presuming to introduce an improved stove that can meet
the market test of head to head competition with traditional stoves.
Remember, in Indonesia most traditional stoves are made for less than $.50
(the one pot Keren clay stove) and retailed for $1.
Figuring out how to build an improved stove for - say - $1.50 to $2.50 that
performs all of the tasks currently performed by the baseline stove as well
as reducing emissions and fuel use while improving the efficiency of the
operator+stove+fuel+pot system is a very serious ‘high noon’ mountain to
climb. Stove-slinging experts will have to be at the top of their game if
they are going to hit enough bulls-eyes dawn by particular user groups to
out perform traditional stoves on a level playing field.
How many quick-draw-McGraw's are out there in the 'bio-energy stove'
network who are willing to test their marksmanship by shooting at the
sometimes small and difficult to hit bulls eyes set by spectrum of
different stove using groups and customers? It's the community of
culturally and socially differentiated stove users who will and must decide
whether a stove designer and fabricator have in fact created a stove
product that is superior to the traditional stove products that presently
dominate the market. The new stove has to convincingly outperform the
traditional stove on its home turf. To achieve that market performance a
brave new stove has to so convincingly outperform the old faithful
traditional stove that conservative minded stove users willingly switch to
the new stove product.
Lastly, who is the boss when it comes to choosing the appropriate bull eyes
for improved stove programs? We need to know up front whether the:
- stove buyers and users,
- stove producers,
- stove seller,
- stove funding agents (the World Bank and USAID and the carbon
financiers),
- stove scientists, and
- government officials who make modern energy policies
have equal say and authority over design, performance and cost of the
improved stove while it is under development, or whether the commitment to
democracy by the government and facilitating agencies is simply a charade
and in reality – as George Orwell warned us in Animal Farm - some role
players (remember Mr Pig?) are 'more equal than others' in the confusing
world of Orwellian speak???
What I am proposing is that representatives of all these stakeholders or
constituencies make time to sit down together at the big table at the very
beginning of R&D process to innovate, optimize, transfer/train, produce,
distribute, and institutionalize improved stoves in Indonesia and in other
biomass using countries to openly negotiate about what kinds of stove(s)
make the most sense for particular user groups, producers, vendors, and
regions. All these role players will be assisted to clarify and advocate
for stove functions and performance attributes they want, feel strongly
about, and are willing to buy, produce, invest in and/or support. These
stakeholders will have to reason together, struggle and eventually
compromise until they arrive at enough common ground to agree on a
*prescription
for a specific improved stove design for a specific user group. *Such a
prescription will have to answer the following questions:
1. what will a first generation improved stove will look like (aesthetic
appeal),
2. what functions must it perform?,
3. how it will be fabricated and out of what materials?,
4. where will it be produced and by whom?,
5. What is a fair price for the improved stove?
6. How much are different user groups willing and able to pay for an
improved stove?
7. how will it be distributed and sold and with what mark ups?,
8. how many jobs will the improved stove create or eliminate?,
9. how long will it last?,
10. how much will it cost at the production site, the wholesale and
retail price?,
11. what combustion and system efficiency does it need to achieve?,
12. how much fuel savings in comparison with the traditional stove is
wanted?,
13. how will stove standards be established and maintained?
Once all the above stakeholders have bought into particular prescription
for a first generation improved stove, it becomes possible to tell the
stove scientist, thermodynamic engineer, materials engineer, business man,
banker and government policy maker what the target is that they have all
agreed to. They become collectively responsible to each other for doing
their level best to support and underwrite the development, testing,
optimization and roll out of the first generation improved stove for a
particular user group to which the stakeholders have mutually agreed.
Ultimately we will probably have to work out the spiritual politics of the
relationship between science and culture to get the 6 major stakeholders to
come together and agree on a series of first generation improved stove.
If they cannot agree then I propose we resort to a *stove technology court* in
which a panel of experts representing the interests of all these major
stakeholders is formed and charged with assessing the improved stove
prototypes by holding hearings from all role players who have something to
say about what kind of biomass stoves and fuels will combine together to
give the greatest benefit to the stove using and buying public, stove
producers and stove sellers. There are representatives of 6 different
stakeholders sitting on the technology court. It may be necessary to give
the buyers/users and the producers and the vendors more than one vote when
it comes time to decide between competing prototype stoves.
These stove technology judges may have to witness the ‘mother of all shoot
outs’ at the OK Corral between the ardent (fanatical) proponents of the
different competing stove technologies and camps. But maybe not?:
- These stove technologies will have to give a guaranteed
(unsubsidized) retail sales price over the next 12 months.
- The stoves will be operated by people from the target community who
have been trained by the proponents of each type of stove technology.
- They will cook the same culturally valid meal and perform all the
other functions which the user group expects its stoves to perform.
- After this ‘cooking shoot out’ the judges will review all the data on
performance, including interviews with all the stove operators and follow
up mixed focus groups composed of the operators of all the stoves.
- Finally there will need to be focus groups composed of onlookers from
the target communities to get their votes and the reasons for favouring one
stove more than other stoves.
The panel of stove judges then retire, review all the evidence before them
and decide which improved stove gets the highest score within the fit for
purpose’ and appropriate assessment matrix. There is a reference to the
idea of an environmental court – borrowed from idea of a science court that
arrives at decisions about what is wort while to investigate - in a book
written many years ago (1974) by Elting E Morrison, a historian of
technology at MIT, *No-how to Nowhere: the development of American
technology. *Morison was addressing the interface between S&T and culture
where modern society is figuring out how to manage new technological
powers, responsibilities and potentialities for disaster but there are as
yet no agreed upon standards for managing these technologies or agreed upon
principles to govern the distribution of responsibility for solving the
environmental problems created the new technological powers.
My thought is that unless the stove community wises up it runs a serious of
polarization, breakdown, and paralysis. It could quickly degenerate into a
repeat of the Climategate fiasco with scientists behaving badly and the
looming threat of a destructive Hobbesian war of all against all while the
glaciers melt away to nothing or advance into the next ice age, depending
on your ideological and scientific predilection. I think most participants
on the bio-energy list will agree that as passionate as things sometimes
get we do not want to descend into the non-science of 'stove-gate'. We
need to hold the center and make sure that stove science, testing, and the
customers in need of low cost high performance biomass stoves get the
benefit of the best stoves that our collective genius and ingenuity can
create!
Morison recommended that we should radically decentralize the management of
the application of western S&T to real world problems by creating a series
of bio-regional environmental courts which would correspond to the major
watersheds and river systems of each region, country and continent. These
environmental courts would use the well established English common law
tradition which gradually builds up precedents as judges and panels of
wise, science literate men and women arrive at well thought out decisions
about the best way to resolve particular conflicts between interested
parties, long established standards and precedents when confronted by the
opportunities and the potential threats posed by new science and forms of
technology. English common law encourages a bottom up process – in
contrast to the Dutch-Roman law which is universal, therefore centralized,
and tends to empower government officials and dis-empower citizens. .
Over time, if there are learned, independent minded, and public service
oriented men and women in charge of the *regionalized stove technology
courts* in the extremely diverse regional and cultural environments of –
for example - Indonesia, it is very likely over time that these regional
technology courts or panels will begin to accumulate evidence based
knowledge about biomass energy systems and technologies through:
(i.) testimony by interested stakeholders and invited experts
(ii.) studies of socio-economic and environmental impacts of different
stoves and biomass fuels,
(iii.) examination of the the social and economic costs and benefits of
alternative stoves-fuel combinations ,
(iv.) the positives and negative consequences of different fuel supply
chains, and
(v.) the health and environmental problems caused by biomass burning
under different household and urban settlement conditions.
The judges will apply use this evidence of cause and effect to decide on
the balance of the evidence presented what they agree will be the most
reasonable, fair, and majority serving way for the biomass stove industry
to evolve in a particular bio-region. The stove technology court becomes
the focus for helping polarized interest groups transcend their
differences, explore latent commonalities, and discover cooperative
solutions to what seemed at the outset to be a completely non-negotiable
conflict of science, approach and interest. The challenge is to define,
measure, and discover how to guide competing combustion technologies,
different fuel supply chains, and even different assessment methodologies
toward complementary outcomes that will create new synergies that serve the
greater good of the community. Competition between different biomass
energy technologies, fuels, and systems can often be converted into
complementarity (what Bucky Fuller liked to call synergy) by increasing the
internal complexity and richness of the biomass energy economy.
Initially, there are likely to be winners and losers, but as stove S&T
matures and ,earns how to more perfectly serve the public good, all the
citizens and residents of a bio-region will benefit eventually be helped to
prosper collectively and to thrive as individuals and families. This
constructive process takes place when the S&T adjudication procedures and
the criteria used to decide what stoves perform best in a given part of the
world, or for a specific user groups, ensure that the bull-eyes mandated by
the citizenry and particular stove using groups are validated and
strengthened. How do we get the stove scientists, stove producers, stove
funding agents, and stove policy making government officials to all aim at
the same bull-eyes? It should be obvious that different stove using and
biomass consuming publics benefits from cooperative stove R&D. The costs
of biomass energy will tend over time to decrease and the benefits increase
as the stove science becomes more sophisticated, holistic, and powerful. If
the major stakeholders and protagonists involved in the application of
stove science and social science do not agree to cooperate and agree to
collectively take aim at the same targets, what is the alternative? They
will divide and conqueror themselves and end up taking potshots at one
another. The village idiot will be put in charge of the stove technology
assessment process which might well mean he will now busy himself painting
circles on everybody's backside and wait to see who shoot first. It is in
our interest as a network of potentially aristocratic and even virtuous men
and women of S&T to choose the high road, and to avoid High Noon shoot outs
at all costs.
So, if you can’t take the heat I strongly recommend that you do the
honourable thing and get out of kitchen and let all the other sweating
stove scientists and producers get on with creating their second and third
generation improved stoves. However, there is such a diversity of
different kinds of stove using groups and communities in the developing
world I am confident that as we go forward there will be more than enough
commercial niches for each and every one of the major different types of
biomass combustors.
So be it!
In service,
Cecil Cook
On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 12:24 PM, <rongretlarson at comcast.net> wrote:
> Cecil (with ccs):
>
>
> 1. Thanks for bringing in an anthropologist's view on stove
> development. I find all of them below valuable. I will probably follow
> up with some more questions after thinking a bit more first on the 65 pp
> report you have recommended in your final sentence (and reading more of
> their literature. You said:
>
> *
> "It may also useful to review the Genes led Global Stove Program <
> http://www.geres.eu/en/geres-cambodia> which lays out a 5 year strategy
> to share the lessons learned by the Cambodian Improved Cookstove Program
> with other national stove initiatives in SEAsia and French speaking West
> Africa"
>
> 2. *This report was new to me, and does seem well done. It wouldn't
> surprise me that the GERES effort might have been behind the choice of
> Cambodia for the March GACC meeting. The report is directly downloadable
> at:
> http://www.geres.eu/images/stories/publis/publi-nls-en.pdf
>
> 3. As I am very concerned about the huge waste that accompanies most
> char production, I was disappointed in finding this (emphasis added) at
> the top of p 27, near the end of the first section:*
> "Again in Cambodia, GERES is also working in
> partership with a forest community in Takeo on
> charcoal manufacture. Officially illegal, this is an
> intensive practice on the fringes of natural forests
> and largely responsible for their degradation.:"*
>
> I can support their ignoring the legality issue if the resulting char
> were really produced with efficient use of the pyrolysis gases. My guess
> is it was probably only a little better and couldn't compete with the costs
> associated with illegal production. Do you or anyone know if most
> Cambodian char is still mostly illegal? How do anthropologists suggest
> handling this sort of issue?
>
> 4. On p 50, we read (emphasis added):
> *"Biomass is generally considered to be a renewable
> fuel. When it is burnt any CO2 released is
> assumed to be reabsorbed through re-growth of
> biomass. If biomass is not re-grown, then the
> emissions from biomass can be considered to be
> a non-renewable fuel. Therefore, cooking stove
> projects can only generate emission reductions
> where it can be shown that the biomass used is
> non-renewable."
>
> *This final, quite lengthy section is valuable in explaining the
> importance of carbon credits to advancing cleaner stoves in GERES (and my)
> opinion. But they have to accept less than a reasonable amount for this
> asinine rationale here. I would appreciate hearing if any changes in this
> arena have been possible in the three years since this report came out.
> Is this problem possibly solved with char-making stoves?
>
> 5. Earlier there is a good bit of interesting survey data of all
> types. The author apologizes for it being a hurried four-month survey. I
> wonder if there has been another more recent version?
>
> 6. I am not very interested in most of the numerical material as I am
> so down on charcoal-using stoves, even when the source is legal. But on
> p38, we read some data that is surprisingly hard to obtain (2009 prices,
> when 1 dollar was worth on the order of 4250 riels)
> *"The average charcoal price is 970 riel (US$0.23) per
> kilo, while the average firewood price is 300 riel (US$0.07) per kilo.*"
>
> a. Suppose we have a char-making stove and we want to sell a kilo of
> char (worth 23 cents) that we have made on our char-making stove.
>
> b. Assuming 50% of the wood initially is carbon and we can get 25% of
> the initial wood (50% of the initial carbon) out as char, then we need to
> buy 4 kilos of wood (28 cents) to produce the 1 kilo of char worth 23
> cents. Sounds like a loss of 5 cents. Bummer.
>
> c. But we got a fair amount of cooking out of that 28 cent
> investment. We started out with about 4 kg * 18 MJ/kg = 72 MJ, and ended
> up with 1 kg * 30 MJ /kg in char - a difference of 42 MJ.
>
> d. If we had done the same amount of cooking with the same
> efficiency with char, we would have needed to start with 42 MJ/(30 MJ/kg) =
> 1.4 kg of char, worth 1.4 * 23 = 32.2 cents.
>
> e. So the "loss" (expense) on the char-using side is 32.2 cents
> while on the wood side was 5 cents - a difference of 27.2 cents in favor of
> the wood user. This number is very close to the initial wood expenses of
> 28 cents - so the wood user essentially cooked for free. The char-user
> spent (lost) 42 cents for the same cooking service
>
> f. Since char-making stoves are reported by EPA (and others) to be
> the highest efficiency reported (in part because the power level is
> controllable), maybe the economic argument is even more in favor of the
> char-maker.
>
> g. But there is a fair amount in this report on time savings for the
> report's improved stove (called an "nls"), we should add that in. I bet
> the charcoal-maker saves time over the nls.
>
> h. So what might the payback be? Assume that the family size is
> such that 1 kg of char is produced per day (the argument above was for a
> one time sale of 1 kg, not per day), and that this char-maker sold for $23
> (4-5 times more than the nls). The simple payback would be
> $23/($0.23/day) = 100 days. Probably much less when the value of time
> saved is include.
>
> i. My question to Cecil (or anyone else free to chime also of course)l,
> as a stove-anthropologist is whether this might be worth a rural or urban
> home-maker looking more closely at the char-making stove option (say
> including the stove-life guarantee, etc) - in your survey experience in
> countries like Cambodia? The issue is discount rate.
>
> j. I am not as interested in this answer - but we should also compare
> to just an ordinary wood-burning stove equivalent. The amount of wood to
> supply just the same daily 42 MJ of cooking would be 42 MJ / (18 MJ/kg) =
> 2.33 kg, worth 2.33 kg*$.07/kg = 16.3 cents. Not as good as 23 cents per
> day, and maybe the user would stop here if the char-maker had a lot of
> other problems (such as being batch mode). But maybe the time savings and
> cleaner kitchen with a char-making stove will make the difference in favor
> of making char - despite having to spend time to deal with a char-buyer.
>
> k. Oh yes- we can't forget the value of the appreciably larger carbon
> credits that could go with biochar and presumably would be supported by
> Geres. None of the above was based on credits. I need to read more..
>
> Ron
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From: *"Cecil Cook" <cec1863 at gmail.com>
> *To: *"Discussion of biomass cooking stoves" <
> stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>, "Paul Anderson" <psanders at ilstu.edu>
> *Cc: *"Iwan BASKORO" <i.baskoro at geres.eu>, "Hugh McLaughlin" <
> wastemin1 at verizon.net>, "Bob Fairchild" <solarbobky at yahoo.com>
> *Sent: *Tuesday, January 22, 2013 2:49:51 AM
> *Subject: *Re: [Stoves] Example of missed opportunities was Re: is this
> new?
>
>
> Dear Pual, Kevin, Crispin, Marc, and kindred stovers,
>
>
>
> I am a much backslid applied anthropologists who took a 30 year side trip
> into appropriate technology in South Africa at the instigation of Crispin.
> Now a days Crispin is still misleading me by asking me to assist him and
> the World Bank design, test, produce, and market ever more perfect low cost
> biomass stoves in places like Ulaanbataar in Mongolia, Yogyakarta in Java,
> and most recently Battambang in Cambodia. With fiendish friends like
> Crispin, who needs enemies?
>
>
>
> Kevin's comic stories about the idiot savant who is very good at drawing
> circles around bullet holes is unfortunately a hilarious metaphor for the
> multiple problems and predicaments that stove scientists, inventors and
> enthusiasts typically create for themselves when they (we?) try to innovate
> ever more perfect biomass burning stoves for imagined and therefore
> voiceless stove customers.
>
>
>
> I recently discovered there is a significant market in Central Java for
> big portable charcoal stoves so that neighbours can come together to
> prepare food in a sequence of 7 memorials for deceased family members (the
> last feast or party comes 1000 days after a loved one dies). As an act of
> solidarity, families, neighbours and friends get together outside in
> courtyards and alleyways to cook big pots of food that is eaten by the
> living in honour of the recently deceased. I have not observed one of
> these memorial services but many families in the city informed me they have
> a big charcoal or wood burning stove that mainly gets used for these
> parties for the dead and for weddings, or by small food vendors who prepare
> food for sale to passersby or also by caterers and in the kitchens of
> restaurants ... otherwise these big stoves are simply stored in a corner.
> Families estimated they use their big stoves about one to two times a
> month.
>
>
>
> It would theoretically be possible to figure out what percentage of the
> biomass fuels entering the urban economy of Yogyakarta city in Central Java
> are devoted to staying on good terms of with spirits of the deceased and
> the in-laws. Who but an inquisitive anthropologist would bother to isolate
> large portable biomass stoves used for these important social ceremonies to
> memorialize the dead and celebrate weddings as a potential market segment
> of the stove buying public that needs be studied, understood, and perhaps
> is important enough to merit the design of a biomass stove that meets their
> socio-economic needs.
>
>
>
> In the case of cooking for the dead and the in-laws, we are talking here
> about millions of biomass stoves that are mostly, but not exclusively, used
> for big social ceremonies in Indonesia where there are perhaps a 100
> million biomass stoves in used with a replacement rate of perhaps 100
> million stoves a year at a cost of $1 to $2 each which is the going market
> value of a traditional artisan made stove). The traditional stove economy
> of Indonesia is vast and highly differentiated between a number of
> different - somewhat specialized - market segments with different needs,
> interests and amounts of money to spend.
>
>
>
> The informal approach that Crispin and I have used for many years is for
> us to spend a day or two together with a typical low income family and go
> through a cooking day together. While Crispin is focused on stoves, the
> pots used, the sequencing of tasks and cooking cycles, I take time to walk
> around the village or neighbourhood meeting the fuel sellers and stove
> vendors in the nearby markets to get an idea about the stove and fuel
> supply chains, the mark ups added to the retail value by the time a stove
> or 1 kg bag or charcoal or a small bundle of wood is purchased by a low
> income household. One thing we have discovered in Malawi, DRC, Mozambique,
> Zambia, and now Mongolia, Indonesia, and Cambodia that the bottom 1/3 to
> 1/2 of these households survive on tiny daily cash flows of less than a
> couple of dollars. The difference in cost between a $1 to $2 stove and a
> $4 stove is huge. Think about your response to a doubling of the cost of
> any big ticket durable consumer item that you have come to depend on in
> your daily life like a car, or refrigerator or a gas stove!
>
>
>
> What normally happens when Crispin and I come face to face with the social
> and economic reality of an urban or village household is that Crispin's
> inventive mind is stimulated when it confronts the 'otherness' of a
> particular culture of stove-fuel use which includes the traditional ways
> that people, both men and women, operate their stoves and combine different
> types of biomass fuels to get the performances they want from their stoves.
> They know a lot about economizing scarce fuels when they are running out of
> money and/or fuel. He can’t help himself. Crispin has an uncontrollable
> urge to innovate improvement in stove products as he encounters them in
> their cultural contexts. This same process continues when Crispin sits
> down with a traditional stove maker and comes to terms with his knowhow and
> his or her technical, resource and financial constraints. It is human,
> engaged, and face to face!
>
>
>
> This is beginning of a real, culturally contextualized AT design process:
> Crispin as stove scientist is challenged by me and indigenous stove users
> and stove makers to reconfigure himself into a practical engineer who
> accepts responsibility for converting his universal knowledge about
> combustion, heat transfer, and biomass energy into forms that will be
> understood and used by a semi-literate and pre-scientific artisan stove
> maker. The blessing of AT is the democratization of the power and the
> benefits of an increasingly planetary system of science and technology that
> comes about when we succeed in translating this S&T into de-mystified forms
> that can be understood and creatively applied by artisan stove makers, who
> know how to produce a very cheap $1 to $2 stove (which the stove scientist
> does not know how to pull off!). But, the indigenous stove producer does
> not know much about PM, the role of primary and secondary air flows and
> finding the right balance, how to get the right amount of Excess Air
> flowing through a stove, and how to maximize heat transfer between the fire
> and the pot. Crispin needs to learn from the indigenous stove makers how
> he earns a living making his traditional stove for 1 to 2 dollars and in
> that way dominates the stove market and how the household stove users
> operates a traditional stove to get the performance wanted out of it. It is
> Crispin’s and mostly my job as a stove anthropologist to learn enough so
> that we can read and begin operating within the cultural (ethno-science),
> behavioural and organizational system of traditional stoves and therefore
> figure out where the best places are to begin introducing changes into the
> traditional operator-stove-stove maker/vendor-fuel producer economy.
>
>
>
> I agree totally with you that idiot stove scientists are drawing circles
> around their shots into the dark unknown of the traditional
> operator-stove-fuel economy. If we continue to privilege the stove
> scientist and the imagined brave new stoves he hopes will liberate humanity
> from pollution (PM), asthma, and the daily grind of gathering firewood, and
> persist in using his western style 'ethno-science' to test the performance
> of ‘improved’ stoves to identify the best performers by his stove science
> centered criteria we will simply continue to fail in our mission to bring
> the multiple benefits of science to the villagers and urban survivalists
> struggling at the Bottom of the Pryamid This approach is hopelessly
> techno-centric and technocratic in perspective and ultimately doomed to
> failure because justifies the imposition by the World Bank and USAID and
> well meaning national government of improved stoves costing $10 to $30 each
> on villagers and urban residents who survive on less than $1 per person per
> day.
>
> We can do better, much better than this, and I believe that Crispin and I
> have done and continue to do better by helping stove scientists enter the
> mind and heart of indigenous stove users and producers and discovering how
> to practically empower stove producers with a fundamental grasp of the
> applied science of high performance stoves. When that happens, indigenous
> stove producers and vendors gain the practical knowledge they need to
> produce a much improved $3 or $4 stove. A stove that costs two times more
> than the industry standard is still within the reach of most stove buyers
> the world over. A Chinese manufactured StoveTec rocket stove that sells
> for about $30 here in South Africa is ridiculously out of reach to local
> users of biomass stove, including the three stoned fire.
>
>
>
> The last point I will share before I totter and totally fall off my soap
> box is that we must develop our stove performance testing protocols around
> the culturally and economically appropriate performance criteria that
> presently guide the behaviours and economic choices of stove buyers in
> particular market segments. It is also necessity to penetrate the
> cultural, social and economic worlds of the stove makers and stove vendors
> to full understand why the existing stove-fuel economy is dominated by $1
> to $2 stoves and how these value chains operate. The traditional
> operator-stove-fuel system must be allowed to sit in judgement of the mad
> hatter stove designer who are beginning to control of hundreds of millions
> of development funds for the improvement of traditional stoves... not the
> reverse.
>
>
>
> When it is possible for stove scientists - who passionately debate on the
> bio-energy discussion list - to innovate Improved Stoves with superior
> emissions and system efficiency performances that only cost $3 to $4
> biomass and that continue to meet all of the critical socio-cultural
> performance requirements of the existing traditional stove then I will be
> doing back flips with Father William to celebrate their accomplishments.
> As an engineer shy anthropologist who has waited patiently off stage for
> the stove scientists and hardware experts to recognize the short coming of
> the technology centered approach, I am eager to participate with them to
> create an inclusive multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder approach to
> the in situ design and development of improved stoves.
>
>
>
> I am eager to take my hat off and salute stove scientists and engineers
> for rededicating themselves to the transcendental objectives of humanity
> serving appropriate science and technology: what did Fuller call it? Ah
> yes, I remember, it is his more-for-less principle which enables a mature
> technology to become ever more spirit like. Bucky called it the
> 'ephemeralization' of science whereby a mature technology requires less and
> less energy and material to perform a given function like computing,
> communicating, or cooking.
>
>
>
> May I recommend that stovers take a good look at what Geres/Cambodia has
> accomplished to date over 16 years with a stove improvement strategy that
> concentrates on gradually improving the designs, materials, and production
> methods of the producers and distributional methods of the vendors of
> traditional stoves, and not on the primary stove buyer, the stove
> technology itself, and certainly not the stove scientists.
>
>
>
> Here is the url <http://www.geres.eu/en/studies/122-publi-etude-nls> for
> an important review of the process that Geres went through in its capacity
> as a facilitator of baseline research and institution builder that
> transformed the traditional Lao bucket charcoal burning stove into the 'new
> Lao' improved cookstove which is today produced and distributed by 35 small
> stove making enterprises who between them produce and sell more than 25 000
> NL stoves every month. There are many useful lessons in this *in situ* stove
> development strategy which the Geres team systematically followed in
> Cambodia. They decided to maximize the use of the the:
>
> 1. traditional stove technologies,
>
> 2. stove operating skills and knowledge base of particular groups of
> stove users,
>
> 3. indigenous know how and business of producers of the traditional
> Lao stove, and
>
> 4. existing network of wholesalers and retailers of stoves.
>
>
>
> They have also minimized any disruption to this pre-existing traditional
> system of producing, distributing and selling the Lao bucket charcoal stove
> by incrementally improving the design, materials, production, training, and
> distribution of the various 'traditional' role players in the
> stove+operator+producer+vendor+fuel supply chain economy.
>
>
>
> I think we stove scientists, social science facilitators, funding agents,
> and development policy makers, stove producers, etc. need to carefully
> assess the relevance of the Geres Improved Cookstove Program for how to
> incrementally develop improved 'traditional' stoves that are able to
> compete with $1 to $2 stoves that dominate the stove markets of most
> developing countries.
>
>
>
> It may also useful to review the Genes led Global Stove Program <
> http://www.geres.eu/en/geres-cambodia> which lays out a 5 year strategy
> to share the lessons learned by the Cambodian Improved Cookstove Program
> with other national stove initiatives in SEAsia and French speaking West
> Africa.
>
>
>
> In service,
>
> Cecil Cook
>
> TechnoShare
>
> South Africa
>
> On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 2:41 AM, Kevin <kchisholm at ca.inter.net> wrote:
>
>> 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 <psanders at ilstu.edu>
>> *To:* Discussion of biomass cooking stoves<stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
>> *Cc:* Hugh McLaughlin <wastemin1 at verizon.net> ; Bob Fairchild<solarbobky at yahoo.com>
>> *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.com
>>
>> On 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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