[Stoves] Why not high mass stoves?

[Huck Rorick]

In Aprovecho's very well written paper "Design Principles for Wood Burning
Cook Stoves" they recommend against high mass stoves such as the Lorena
stoves they had worked with many years back.

 

It is obvious to me why you would want an insulated stove to avoid loss of
heat from the fire to the outside as opposed to the pot.  But I am very
puzzled as to why a sheet metal stove would be better than a heavy clay one.
It seems to me that heat from the fire will be transmitted much more quickly
through the thin walls of a metal stove (without thermal insulation such as
ceramic fiber) than through a massive earth wall.  To orient myself I
checked the thermal conductance of a few materials in Watts/meter/degree
Kelvin.  Insulating materials such as ceramic fiber are about .03-.04,
insulating brick .15, dry earth 1.5, stainless steel 16, and carbon steel
43.  Compared to steel the earth is a good insulator.  An interesting aside,
dry sand is similar to insulating brick at .15.

 

The fact that the high mass stove stores the heat in the stove body rather
than immediately transferring to the outside air as a metal stove would do
wouldn't seem to change the heat lost from the fire.

 

Huck

Huck Rorick

Executive Director
Groundwork Institute
2640 Silvercrest Street
Pinole, CA 94564
Phone: 510-222-4111
email:  <mailto:huckrorick at groundwork.org> huckrorick at groundwork.org
Website:  <http://www.groundwork.org> www.groundwork.org 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20141101/59a642db/attachment.html>