[Stoves] Shields E450c as a way totest char-making stoves(attn: GACC testers)

[Frank Shields]

Stovers, 

 

The goal is to develop a method to be used in a lab for comparing stoves. 

 

Let say you receive 10 stoves and a small sample (or description and report)
of fuel that represents a specific location and your job is to rate the
stoves such that you can pick the best one. Boiling water is the task. You
have two months to do it.   

 

If you do the tests in triplicate that's 30 runs. If a test consists of 3+
runs because the method requires you to take into account the left over fuel
to be added to the next run - you now have 90 runs. So we should try to come
up with a procedure that gives us the info we need in a single run. For
-any- stove that has a secondary burner I suggest that a method that ends
when the secondary flame goes out and the energy value is the E450c will
work.

 

Fuel; What is the best info that we can use to find a similar fuel (to the
planned location) for testing the ten stoves? I suggest the E450c to be the
most important as that value is sure to be used in the secondary and, I'm
thinking, consists of a large percent of the energy for the secondary. Then
we have size, shape, bark, split, moisture etc.   And we need all the
additional info in the six box system that needs be added to the report.

 

I do think we need more than Fuel Usage as a measure because to get that
value it requires many, many runs and not very appropriate for a single
task.  We still need Energy Usage to normalize similar fuels (using E450c)
and give us our single energy value for the task. We would do three runs and
average for the final report. We can always calculate the Fuel Usage (for
the actual fuel used on location) from the Energy Usage.  

 

And for the final step we need to collect all the char and send it in to a
good lab for testing. 

 

 

There are many variables in this type of lab test. If we can't control them
it is a waste of time and we should not continue doing them. All testing
should then be done on site under real conditions as I think Dean may
already be doing. 

 

That's how I'm thinking today.

 

Thanks

 

Frank

 

 

Frank Shields

Control Laboratories; Inc.

42 Hangar Way

Watsonville, CA  95076

(831) 724-5422 tel

(831) 724-3188 fax

frank at biocharlab.com

www.controllabs.com

 

 

 

 

 

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