[Stoves] Annular Crosscurrent Burner for ND-TLUD (Paul Means)

Julien Winter winter.julien at gmail.com
Tue Mar 31 15:29:23 CDT 2015


Hi Paul;

Thanks for your interest and support.  I am sure that there will be a lot
of good results coming out of the Colorado State University before long,
that should help to fill in the gaps in our knowledge.

With caution, one can use temperature as an indicator of the heat flux that
caused it, but it is certainly better to measure heat flux directly when
you can.  So, I think that my conclusions that "the AB burner works OK, so
far", and "the heat output from a TLUD declines over time at high
gasification rates" are reasonable.

Indicator properties are useful for (1) preliminary observations, (2) when
the logistics or cost of direct measurements are an obstacle, or (3) when
direct observations are not accessible to us (and probably other reasons I
have not thought of, and I don't want to get into the metaphysics of
whether everything for us is an indicator).  My use of temperature is an
example of the first, ecology experiences a lot of the second case,
and soil biology the third.

Our sense of vision is an indicator for electromagnetic radiation, and our
sense of touch and pain is an indicator for heat.  Fortunately, natural
selection has given us reflexes, so we don't reflect on 'hotness' if our
hand is surrounded by flame.  We yank our hand away, then compose several
paragraphs of cussing.  Our indications seem to give us some connection
with reality.  As Dan Dennett once put it: a monkey doesn't leap from one
tree to the next, on a mere hypothesis a branch may be forthcoming ...
she knows it is there.

What we need now, is to design a sensor (with a fairly quick response
time) for continuously measuring the flow of heat into a pot, so we can
estimate the change in efficiency of energy transfer over time.  I think
that building energy-transfer • time • gasification-rate response curves on
select fuels would be more useful for a ND-TLUD than a water-boiling test.

Cheers,
Julien.

-- 
Julien Winter
Cobourg, ON, CANADA
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