[Stoves] The need to continue the discussion: simmer efficiency

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Dean

 

All this is good and true:

 

You take a standard pot of water.

You boil the water and see how much fuel was used and how many emissions were made.

You simmer water for 45 minutes.

You then try to make a stove that uses less wood and makes fewer emissions to do the same task.

Eventually you evolve a much better stove.

When I started experimenting with stoves they used around 550 grams of wood to boil 5 liters of water.

Now stoves routinely use around 300 grams. 

 

Stoves used to make lots of PM and CO.

Now stoves make much less because stoves evolved using testing with emissions equipment.

There are now biomass stoves that meet the WHO indoor air quality guidelines. This seemed almost impossible a few years ago.

For example, some TLUDs are now really great stoves. They are clean burning at high and low power. The newer Tom Reed type fan stove doesn't put soot on pots! The Rocket stove is better. There's lots of better stoves now including side feed fan stoves. Folks cooked on them at ETHOS, etc.

 

That is all well and good. Now, expressing these results in a usable, scientific format that accommodates other sizes of pots, other fuels, other burn cycles is an absolute pre-requisite for creating a national or internationally accepted test method and performance rating system.

 

I am not disagreeing with the achievements of the many actors in the stoves field. It is enthusiasm for success that dives us. When it comes to product selection, however, we must sue valid comparisons of measurable performance.  At issue is not that improved stoves are not improved. It is that claims for relative performance are not being fairly represented by the WBT which has been held up for years as ‘the way’ to test stoves. It is a way that favours certain products and disfavours others. It misreports performance to the extent that large amounts of money have been lost for no gain and this must stop. 

 

That’s all. We have to have something that works, and many people have produced alternatives over the years. At present there is no acceptable internationally workable test method.

 

The development of workable methods requires consultation and review. Whatever the ISO committee does, it will still have to be externally reviewed. There is a public comment process for this, which may or may not suffice. It depends on who shows up.

 

I am assuming nothing. There are so many ‘agendas’ in play it is too early to know which way the cookie will crumble.  Let’s all just keep plugging along doing the best we can.

 

In appreciation,

Crispin

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20150221/d295082f/attachment.html>