[Stoves] cook stoves for Cameroon

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Philip

 

"I said that stoves which were intended to be used for cooking that then
wasted a lot of the fuel as char would probably be thrown away."

 

Observation has it that they make good stools and food storage containers.
The Rocketworx stove from Durban has a dished bottom for exactly that
purpose. When it is not in use it is a good stool.

 

>Perhaps you can change people's habits enough for them to want to make
char.  

 

People practicing slash and burn agriculture already produce masses of char
which is created by burning stumps. They char well into the ground. No
digging , far more char than a stove will ever produce and it is part of the
current indigenous practice.

 

Giving up slash and burn agriculture will produce starvation. The soils are
poor as the nutrients are all in the canopy. Slash and burn created the
terra preta soils along the Amazon river over a period of 20,000 years -
about 0.1mm per year. Cecil Cook, who studied one of the Amerindian tribes
in Brazil, says the soil patches which were used for slash and burn are the
most productive because they were already the most productive - not that
they were unproductive and then made productive by adding charcoal. The char
is a consequence of slash and burn. Whether it helps or not is highly
debatable which is why there are so many claims and so little evidence. We
all, verily, wait patiently for proof of concept - that stove can improve
the soil. 

 

>Perhaps they will want to sell the residue as fuel, or add it to their land
to improve the soil. But these are big 'perhaps', and, given the effort most
users of fuelwood have to go to in both rural and urban settings to acquire
fuel, I have grave reservations - backed up by some experience.

 

It is more likely that people will try a new wood burning stove than that
they will transform their living and farming systems to accommodate stoves
that require more fuel than their open fire. I have fortunately seen
recently two stoves that both make char and outperform, on a mass consumed
basis, open fires. That is indeed progress.

 

It is also good to note that there are a few stoves around (not all TLUD's
and not all chopped fuel burners) that are as clean as fan stoves, with good
power control and CSI 3-Star performance for PM and CO. There has been a lot
of progress in the past three years. 

 

Regards

Crispin in Auroville (what an amazing place)

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