[Stoves] Classifying biomass fuels - topic change

Rebecca A. Vermeer ravermeer at telus.net
Sun May 31 23:59:12 CDT 2015


Hi Cecil, 
Please indulge us with an encore as described by Crispin below.   Sounds most exciting! 
  
Rebecca Vermeer 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Crispin Pemberton-Pigott" <crispinpigott at outlook.com> 
To: "Discussion of biomass cooking stoves" <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org> 
Sent: Saturday, May 30, 2015 8:04:38 AM 
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Classifying biomass fuels - topic change 



Dear Rebecca 

  

If you ask, Cecil might be induced to tell us a bit about what he found in Central Java during the CSI pilot investigation with respect to the use of fire during periods when there was no cooking going on. 

  

Note that he already mentioned the selection from a wide variety of species and how they were transformed into appropriate fuels. The specialised blending of fuels for different tasks was complex and demonstrated a wide knowledge (and experience) of how to make a fire do what people wanted. 

  

The stove needed for such a broad range of activities may be quite different from the design expectations of us, the backyard mechanics wishing to help the world. 

  

Regards 

Crispin 

  

  


  


  

"A careful cook in a poor household will achieve wonders with a 3 stone fire which will be hard to impossible for an improved stove to compete with including emissions inhaled if the kitchen is under a tree or in a separate kitchen shelter. " 

  

BRAVO, CECIL!!   Thank you for speaking for the poor. 

Rebecca Vermeer 

Eco-Kalan Project in the Philippines 
----- Original Message -----



From: cec1863 at gmail.com 
To: "Frank Shields" < stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org >, "Discussion of biomass cooking stoves" < stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org > 
Sent: Saturday, May 30, 2015 7:14:22 AM 
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Classifying biomass fuels - topic change 


  


Dear Frank and anybody else, 


  


What I struggle with is why get so precise about the different types of fuel going into the stove when the human factors of how the stove operator prepares the biomass fuel before ‎and how they habitually operate the stove have more influence on the efficiency and emissions and cooking performance than the characteristics of the biomass fed into the stove. The fuel is a cultural product which is constructed by drying and chopping and mixing and then their is the rate at which this fuel is fed into the fire. The variation in the human factors is huge when the stove's fuel supply does not lend itself to standardization because it has to be humanly constructed from nature and the nearby environment..... and the operation of the stove cannot be  automated as is the case with electric kettles and rice cookers and gas stoves and ovens with thermostat controlled automatic fuel feeds and timer switches.  


  


Cooking with a 3 stone fire stove is a culturally constructed performance where the stove operator acts exactly like the conductor of a symphony orchestra who knows what cooking experience (qua sounds) he or she wants their  stove (qua orchestra) to produce.  ‎The fuels are operated culturally by the cook to get the performance (qua cooking experience) wanted by selecting and combining the different fuels on hand in real time.....thinking about this process again it is more like improvised music such as a jazz quartet or sextet where the melody gets played by spontaneously combining ‎and modulating the different instruments (fuels) available at a particular session (cooking episode). All unautomated cooking is a free syle performance....ever been in a kitchen in a Chinese restaurant? There cooking is a masterful performance in time because mostly the power is on high and the cook varies only the time, ingredients, the stirring of the ingredients and the moisture content of the dish being "blow torched"! 


  


Returning to the topic of how to characterize the different fuels and the role played by the fuel preparer as highly variable cultural performances in its own right (how long it dries, the size of the pieces into which larger pieces of biomass are split or chopped) in a hugely more variable culturally constructed stove operator\stove\fuel\pot performance....to my feeble mind the variability in the human factors seems to over power the technologically automated part of basic stove operation and cooking with natural draft stoves by which I mean the following: the way the stove is operated or misoperated by the stove user has more influence on its emission and efficiency performance than the stove technology itself does.  


  


If my proposition is true that small household stoves are inherently operator dependent technologies then it follows that operator training and the culure of stove operation are probably inherently more powerful determants of emission and efficiency proformance ‎than the automated effects of the stove technology itself.A careful cook in a poor household will achieve wonders with a 3 stone fire which will be hard to impossible for an improved stove to compete with including emissions inhaled if the kitchen is under a tree or in a separate kitchen shelter.  


  


So give culture and human factors the respect they deserve - say 50% of the variability. That part of the variability is the responsibility of the stove operator although in some stoves it is no doubt much less! My beef is that the variable and learned human factors responsible for - say - up to half of the performance variation deserve as much attention as the automatable parts of simple domestic stoves. Why? Because mostly the techno fixes are expensive, finneky, and - you heard it from me - still highly dependent on the stove operator learning how to operate a technologically fixed and "improved" stove properly. Ultimately all new technos must learned and mastered to operate it properly. 


  


So give learning and the cultured ethno-science of solid fuel domestic stoves it's due! All said it may be useful to test stoves by spcifying fuels and then operating them differently on purpse to establish the positive to negative variation in performance: (1.) expertly operated  (2.) expertly misoperated, (3.) average operated (not too hot and not too cold but just right). That becomes a test of a stove's technological limits and to quantify the human role of operator in stove performance. What are the mimimum skill that an operator must master to even get the stove to function (to turn it on\light it)? What are the skill levels reqired to get the stove to deliver 30% of its potential efficiency and emission benefits? 60% of potential benefits? 90% of potential benefits. Now it becomes possible to compare new improved stoves in terms of how easy or difficult the are to master to get "x" absolute improvement in efficiency and emissions! 


  


Now it is perhaps possible to see where I am going with my walk about. Hope it was useful. 


  


In search and service, 


Cecil Cook 


TechnoShare SA 


  

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