[Stoves] Reports from ETHOS meetings: the future of TLUD research

Fri Jan 30 13:16:20 CST 2015

Alex, Julien and all

There is quite a bit of data collected during tests of ND-TLUD’s in Mongolia – maybe 300 tests – that one can look over to see when the idea conditions exist for optimised burning.

Certain ‘truths’ emerge relating to the excess air level, the secondary provision and its placement, the ignition time and so on.

What is missing is a clear description of the architecture for each stove. However it is not without its usefulness. By using the date (which is all real-time) we have been able to make suggestions to the producers that has resulted in a consistent set of ND stoves with >90-99% reduction in CO and PM emissions. 

No one has yet really applied all the lessons – they just build and test and if good enough, that is good enough. There has not been (yet) an optimisation process. 

We should expect that some of the ‘rules’ of stove building are perhaps thought experiments more than rules. Every now and then someone comes with a very different approach (Alex E consistently being one of those people) to combustion that seems to be contrary to ‘rules of experience’.  

I hear from Aprovecho’s stove camp this week that Adrian Padt’s stove did very well in the testing and it is certainly in the category of stoves that ‘don’t follow the rules’ (which always intrigues me).

That stove has been tested in two different labs at different altitudes using two different fuels and different burn cycles and it performs extremely well. It seems that experience has been repeated again at Aprovecho. Congrats to Adrian for a high performance all metal stove. 

Regards

Crispin

Julien,

Agreed. Its been a twenty year wait for basic in depth research on  natural draft TLUDs.

Natural draft mixing was my passion for a while. I think "natural draft" is still too broad a term. There is a dramatic difference in gas mixing potential of  30, 90 cm of buoyancy. 

It will be interesting to see the results shared, but I am inclined to think the money would be better spent putting portable combustion gas analysers in the hands of folks like you and Harris. 

My excess air for today,

Alex

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