[Stoves] 2 Papers: "Burns, scalds and poisonings from household energy..." and "Emissions...Paraffin Thermoelectric Generat

[neiltm at uwclub.net]

On 5 Jul 2016 at 7:46, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott wrote:

> " Paraffin lamps are commonly used as light sources in low-income,
> off-grid households. Pollutant emissions from these appliances are a
> potential health hazard and a cause of material soiling by soot deposits.

and from one of the links:

"The emission of black carbon, a product of incomplete combustion is a 
requirement of a paraffin lamp to produce bright yellow light under 
optimum combustion conditions, the flame would emit a weak illumination, 
mainly in the blue wavelengths."

A point exploited to perfection towards the end of the 19th century, and 
still available commercially as the 'Aladdin lamp'!

This has to be a problem of politics not technology surely?

If you burn paraffin with a blue flame in a chimneyed stove then you have 
a clean cooking stove with a turn down ratio superior to this day to gas 
or electric hobs as my Great Aunt taught me when she moved into a 
bungalow with electricity, but retained her 'oil stove' for its low 
simmering heat she could not achieve with her new electric cooker.  I've 
used them myself - they are excellent stoves, and the most controllable 
of any.

As far as lighting is concerned, why if the political decision is made to 
retain paraffin as an affordable fuel by the poorest in SA, cannot the 
obsolete (in the west) 19th century technology of burning it with a blue 
flame under an incandescent mantle be made available instead of dirty old 
yellow flame wick lamps?!  Candles are paraffin.

For those without first hand experience of the Aladdin lamp (40 candle 
power), or the 'Tilley lamp' (paraffin pressure vapour lamp), (300 candle 
power), or the 'primus stove' (paraffin pressure vapour) - All late 
nineteenth century technologies, they burn cleanly without any smell, 
except perhaps briefly when extinguished.  They prove Crispin's point 
that there is no such thing as a dirty fuel.

What is the matter with a world which having long since abandoned these 
excellent clean burning technologies, underlining this abandonment in the 
west by the political decision to end coal, and to price paraffin way 
above petrol for cars (which attracts two thirds of its price in tax), 
and is about £6 for 4 litres in the UK, whereas a few decades ago its 
cost was a trivial fraction of petrol, none the less makes paraffin 
affordable to the poorest in SA, but then fails to make clean burning 
19th century technology, of no real residual interest to the west, 
available by the same fiat decision?  The answer is provided in one of 
Crispin's links, and reveals that the fate of the poor is of so little 
real interest to the political determiners of markets that they can't 
even be bothered to leave piles of municipal woodchip lying around long 
enough for collection as biomass fuel, but would rather transport it to 
landfill!

Yes, the cost of producing an Aladdin blue flame circular wick burner, 
plus the cost of fabricating a silk mantle will be higher than the 
production of producing a yellow flame flat wick burner, but by how much 
if the third world got given the plant?
How much compared with converting the fraction of a barrel of crude into 
paraffin in a modern refinery, and selling it in a global market such 
that the poorest South Arican can contemplate buying it, while it is 
priced out for all practical purposes in the west?

What is the future of the Aladdin lamp, the sole manufacturer on the 
planet of this type of lamp?  It only survived at all to this day by the 
skin of its teeth.  Yet it seems that there is a whole 'market' out there 
that would be grateful for such a 19th century advance to its living 
standards, and yet we are talking instead of burning the paraffin in 
doubtless much higher tech capital intensive generators to produce 
incomplete spectrum light with LEDs!  Who's agendas are these?  Has 
anyone thought to approach Aladdin to find a way to release its patents 
for third world use?

I greatly admire the work you are all doing to improve biomass 
cookstoves, an 'intermediate technology' the west whizzed past so fast it 
never developed at all, but I sometimes wonder if somewhere there should 
not be some efforts made to at least make the decent burners to go with 
the fuel if they are going to continue to make fuel like paraffin 
available at all.

Neil Taylor (whos Great Grandfather in the19th century made paraffin 
burners apparently superior to anything available to the world's poorest 
today!)