[Stoves] scoping out a practical solid fuel stove igniter

[Richard Stanley]

Crispin et all of the igniting discussion, 
Re the aacell gum wrapper battery idea what few clips of it i saw howed not just a puff and a spark but ignited paper which then burned for several seconds over the length of the wrapper foil, seems sufficiently widely diffused and of sufficient duration to obviate the need for an added liquid fuel--at least for igniting a small front of biomass .  Your suggested capacity of 150 such lites per battery which could be recharged by ?? a thermo-photovoltaic cell integral to igniter unit or the hand cranked generator but then we are moving to just use such with a capacitor as mentioned earlier --and a dramatically reduced level of access/consumer/consumption..

At what level doeth one choose to fly one's development airplane eh ?
Richard



Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 8, 2014, at 16:29, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

Dear Richard

It would be good to look at the system at the same time, not just the sparker I say that ‎because yesterday the YDD Lab staff were practising lighting a TLUD and said it took 11 minutes to get going well. I out a relatively small diameter lighting con on it and it roared into a fully lit condition in less than a minute. It was three to four times faster. 

So if the goal is speed and lowest cost, we should consider the "lighting" as accomplishing  the ‎task of bringing a solid fuel fire to a fully lit condition (as defined by the manufacturer). 

I don't anticipate a big improvement over the cost of matches or BIC Lighters which are really cheap and effective at getting things going, but some combination of getting the fire ready to cook - that could be a major improvement in convenience and emissions reduction.

In the early 80's I was fortunate to have a close look at how matches are made. It is not so easy to produce vast quantities of very similar matches that all perform the same but making matches is not (chemically) difficult. In India it was one of the more than 800 protected small industries for home scale production. How that was done is worth taking a peek. 

For the battery powered version the 2500 milliamp-hour‎ (mAh) battery plus candy wrapper is interesting. I don't think it will use a small enough power to compete with a piezioelectric spark because basically it is a sparker, not a fuel. 

It may surprise some that metals can burn so well. ‎When I worked for IMAX the oily titanium shavings were sometimes set on fire at the end of the day because it was just so cool to watch metal burn. 

The energy needed to light up a foil wrapper is likely to be more than a camera flash which puts the number per charge at maybe 150. What might change that is a move from a flash of fire to a spark equivalent meaning cutting a strip of that foil and using it to light a volatile liquid such as the oil that a spray out of a orange peel if you fold it backwards and squeeze. 

So my igniter-du-jour choice is a thin strip on foil, maybe 2mm wide in the centre where it gets narrowest, and a capacitor charged by a solar cells or battery or hand-cranked generator/charger. 

Place that in the kindling and spray ‎some orange peel oil over it and push the button. That will outperform a battery and foil as a lighter because the energy will come from the oil, not the wrapper or battery. 

I presume everyone has tried spray
David crispin et al . Anybody ever watch the series Orang is the new Black... In episode 10 or 11 last night i saw the use of a foil gum wrapper usd to short out a everyday double A  battery . It heated up instantly burns up the foil  in a puff of smoke at a temperature which then instantly ignites the sugar dusted paper backing in the foil, providing a perfect cigarette lighter in that igniter fuel less environment... Hmm...
Sure bits of liquid fuel ignited by piezoelectric spark or Franz's solution are great too but in terms of replicability for reaching a really widespread audience with an easily replicated, locally produced solution, the gum wrapper & AAbattery cell igniter has got to move up as a front runner in the list of options. Questions arise as to energy consumed as against battery capacity of what 2000-2500uA. And cost . What are the numbers ? 
Richard

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