[Stoves] Why is it still so difficult to design cookstoves for 3 billion people?

[Anand Karve]

As far as India is concerned, our government is planning to give
electricity to all households in the next 5 years. Induction stoves are
being used even in villages, where electricity has become available. The
programme of giving LPG to poor householders has also already been started.
Availability of electricity and LPG, and the rapid pace of urbanization
would soon spell the end of biomass based cooking.  Because of easy
availability of agricultural waste and waste urban biomass, the biomass
based fuel would not go out of fashion but these items will no longer be
burned directly in a stove. They would be converted into value added fuels,
which may be used by industries rather than by householders.
Yours
A.D.Karve

***
Dr. A.D. Karve

Chairman, Samuchit Enviro Tech Pvt Ltd (www.samuchit.com)

Trustee & Founder President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)

On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 12:28 AM, Dr.-Ing. Dieter Seifert <
doseifert at googlemail.com> wrote:

> Dear Xavier Brandao,
>
>
>
> Thank you for your informative posting. I agree with your proposals
>
> and I would like to draw your attention to documents about open source
> cooking technologies (OSAT) which you find on the website of SCI (
> <http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Dieter_Seifert>
> http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Dieter_Seifert)
>
>
>
> a) some remarks on stove-technologies:
>
>
> <http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/solarcooking/images/8/8f/Remarks_on_Stove_Technologies_-_Seifert_February_2016.pdf/revision/latest?cb=20160519171524>
> http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/solarcooking/images/8/8f/Remarks_on_Stove_Technologies_-_Seifert_February_2016.pdf/revision/latest?cb=20160519171524
>
>
>
> b) about Ben firewood stoves:
>
> <http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Ben_2_and_Ben_3_Firewood_Stoves>
> http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Ben_2_and_Ben_3_Firewood_Stoves
>
> The whole documentation is dedicated to poor households. Only standard
> material is needed. The documentation (including Annexes A … E) contains
> also the devices for production in simple workshops, so that the cost of a
> stove will be below 10 USD.
>
>
>
> c) about cooking with retained heat (a totally underestimated technology)
>
> <http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Heat-retention_cooker>
> http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Heat-retention_cooker
>
>
>
> I hope this open source technologies may be so helpful, as you described
> it.
>
>
>
> Kind regards
>
> Dieter Seifert
>
>
> Am 14.06.2016 um 08:16 schrieb Xavier Brandao:
>
> Hello Stovers!
>
> I haven't posted for a long time, but reading the Stovelist is still a
> real pleasure to me: lively debates, breakthrough stove science, many
> people working on many initiatives, with a lot of energy, that's great to
> see, that's emulating!
> Sorry for the long email, but there are here a few ideas I wanted to
> develop.
>
> It's been some time since I wanted to share this article from the
> Guardian, it was sent to me by Minh, a previous colleague of mine, who also
> worked on the GERES project in Cambodia. I don't think it has been shared
> on this list, but I think it talks about just the most fundamental of our
> problems:
>
>
> http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/cookstoves-design-poor-communities-refugees-unhcr-ikea
>
> "*With all the knowledge and technology we have at our disposal, why is it
> proving so difficult to design and create simple and efficient cookstoves
> for the three billion people who use them in the developing world?*"
> is the question asked by T. Alexander Aleinikoff, the United Nations
> deputy high commissioner for refugees.
>
> The question I would have is more the following: "why don't we know why it
> is proving so difficult?"
> I mean, after decades of stove development and dissemination, there's at
> least one thing we should know, it's where our difficulties come from!
>
> But here's a tentative answer to Mr Aleinikoff question: the principles
> behind biomass combustion make it extremely difficult to do stoves that are
> both cheap and practical, and very clean. But, like anything, I believe
> this is not impossible, and this is a problem we are working on tackling.
> And for now, when a stove developer decides to make a stove, he/she
> chooses almost systematically the latter aspect: clean combustion. You know
> the rest of the story: the stove is expensive and impractical to use,
> barely good enough to boil water for tea, and users don't buy it or use it.
> I'm being caricatural but this is what happens too often.
>
>
> /*Stove science is lagging behind, not stove marketing*/
>
> I have done a great deal of reading since I've started working on stoves,
> years ago. Reports are piling in our digital library at Prakti. We will
> keep reading and piling them, for sure. At the same time I have been trying
> to extract the very nectar of these reports, and try to get an
> understanding of what really matters.
>
> In my opinion the stove sector knows what works in terms of dissemination,
> distribution and marketing. Most of the reports are about marketing and
> business models. Marketing to the BOP is very well documented. It seems to
> me that every new edition of Boiling Point from HEDON talks about this or
> that project: involve women vendors, demonstrate the stoves, pay attention
> to early adopters and opinion leaders, use mobile phone technologies,
> listen to the feedback, find financing solutions, etc. I think we know all
> that. And some projects are working great. You do good marketing, you make
> a lot of efforts, you reap the rewards.
> But all agree it starts with one thing, it starts with a great product.
>
> This is where the stove sector is lagging behind. No offense meant to all
> the great researchers working on stoves.
> Stove marketing is currently waiting for stove science. Stove science is
> lagging behind, because as I mentioned stove science is so complex. Many
> challenges come with clean combustion. Marketers wait for scientists to
> sort a few things out: scientifically correct, and scientifically relevant
> protocols first. Then A LOT of testing will be necessary, a lot of data, to
> understand combustion, to understand variables, to understand stoves. Then,
> good design, good engineering, great products. Once the great products are
> there, salers and marketers and project implementers are reading to pick
> them up, and to sell them to the BOP.
> A side note: I'd love to see HEDON and similar publications focus more on
> the hard science, and how to help it, to accelerate it. These are questions
> worth writing about.
>
> So what I call a great stove is not a Tier-4 stove that works perfectly in
> controlled testing settings. I am gonna be again very caricatural: Tier-4
> is accessory, it is bonus.
> A great product is simply product a customer loves, buys and uses. A great
> stove is a stove that is used.
>
> Some of you certainly experienced that: you give one day your new
> prototype to a woman user. Skeptical at first, she agrees to leave her
> traditional stove for a week, and start using your new stove. You come back
> one week later. She is using it every day, for lunch and dinner. She loves
> it. She put her ceramic stove on the side, actually, it is nowhere to be
> seen. Your new stove has become the kitchen stove.
> It's only for experiencing this kind of feeling that I work so hard. This
> is when this happen to you that you know you have a great stove. Adoption.
>
>
> /*Cookstoves: super practical vs super clean */
>
> I picture the stove sector as a large mountain, with 2 camps on its two
> feet. The 2 camps are separated by the mountain in the middle.
> •    In one camp the infamous smoky traditional stoves, and very next to
> them, the vast majority of users, using them every day
> •    In the other camp, stove developers and manufacturers, reaching
> Tier-4 in their expensive labs, with complex technologies and expensive
> stoves. And their very limited dissemination numbers.
>
> The 2 camps don't communicate much with each other. What happens is that
> often a new recruit joins the stove developer camp. He/she chooses the
> techno-push approach. The new comer comes up with a slick design, cool
> materials, excellent lab results. But many restrictions are imposed to the
> product use, it should take this fuel, not this fuel, be lit this way, be
> tended this way, etc. And as Crispin was mentioning in one of his last
> posts, so many important things are left during the development process.
> Great disappointment is the reward of so much of work when the users don't
> accept the new product.
>
> Priya Karve rightly emphasizes the importance of delivering a cooking
> service, not a cooking stove. At Prakti we work on the "cookstove system"
> (stove + fuel + cooking vessel + operator + burn cycle). Traditional stoves
> give an excellent cooking service! They are great cooking tools! They are
> just awfully dangerous for health.
>
>
> /*Next actions: a few ideas*/
>
> I believe both camps can meet together, on top of this mountain. There'll
> be extremely clean and usable stoves, hopefully soon. There is some good
> progress happening already.
>
> But to be sure to succeed, I would start my climb at the basecamp where
> all users already are.
>
> What I think stove developers should do:
>
> •    Change your perspective: consider that traditional stoves are great.
> That they are fantastic. Because people have been using them for thousand
> of years. They must have something special, right? Start by not judging
> them.
> •    Spend a lot of time with the users. See them cooking. Cook yourself,
> cook on the traditional stove. See how easy it is with the traditional
> stove.
> •    Then build your own stove based on the traditional stove. Big stove,
> easy to use, sturdy, large opening, easy to tend, large combustion chamber,
> lot of power, fast to cook. Give it to users. Have them use it, have them
> like it.
> •    Your stove is being used everyday, it is being adopted.
> Congratulations! Additionally, you might have seen by now, and your future
> customers remarked it too, that the new stove, even if it's far from being
> Tier 4, is actually much less smoky than the traditional stove..
> •    You've reached your usability baseline, that's your prerequisite, the
> bar has been set. Don't cross it now. Always keep the stove as usable.
> •    Set a bar also for price. Keep the stove cheap. Its production must
> be affordable. This is a prerequisite too.
> •    From there: work on improving performance: emissions and wood
> savings. It will be difficult. But you can improve it, by a lot.
> •    If you are working on a breakthrough technology, see how you can
> introduce it to your usable cheap stove, without lowering the bar you set.
> •    Work on the breakthrough technology in isolation, if necessary. If
> the technology is not ready to be engineered into a good stove, so be it.
>
> At Prakti, this is what we are currently doing, working both on
> incremental progress, and breakthrough technologies. Both are difficult,
> but both hold promises. I was saying previously that stove marketing was
> waiting for stove science. In fact, it's not. It cannot wait. Stove are
> being sold, marketed, for better of for worse. Funders, programme managers,
> private companies, want to see stoves in the field, they want to see
> numbers.
>
> Now, in my picture, I didn't mention that great projects, not only in
> humanitarian context, are on the other side of the mountain, they have
> chosen to improve traditional cookstoves, with simple design changes.
> GERES, GIZ, SNV among others have worked on such projects. Materials must
> be found locally, price must be cheap. Local artisans must be the
> manufacturers of the stove. They have had great success, large numbers
> disseminated.
>
> This is a proven approach, but what I advocate is to go even further, and
> businesses and manufacturers are part of that.
> It is not to improve a traditional stove, but to develop a new stove, that
> has the same qualities as this traditional stove. This is a small nuance.
> And work on making this stove clean.
> The approach is to use much more science, much more engineering. To think
> in business terms. Make a product which can be mass-manufactured, which can
> be scalable. Our customers love the portability of our stoves, this is for
> example something we want to keep.
>
> It is said there is not one-size-fits all. That's debatable. Have you seen
> how similar mud stoves in Africa, in Asia look like? Close to the ground,
> big front opening. Why is the Jiko such a hit, all over Africa? Isn't the 3
> stone fire the world's most successful one-size-fits all model?
>
> We need funding to go to R&D. This is something I advocated at the Clean
> Cooking Forum in Delhi last October 2015, and is still very actual to me.
> At Prakti we've been very lucky to have funding from the GACC and other
> funders for our R&D work. It helped a lot. This needs to continue, and on a
> much larger scale.
> Radha Muthiah rightly says in the article that, these are the article
> words, "the market is fragmented, with a lot of small and medium-sized
> entrepreneurs who may not have the appropriate design and manufacturing
> skills". I fully agree with that. A possible way to address this issue is
> to fund work that can benefit to the whole sector, especially R&D work.
> Besides testing and protocols, works on materials, work on design, work on
> combustion. Crispin said in the volume 69, issue 8, that the long term
> future of stove materials is glass and ceramic, and more investment should
> go in the research on those. There are several areas that research can
> explore.
>
> Companies sell shampoo to the BOP, they sell soft drinks. Here in India,
> cheap smartphones are everywhere. A lot of R&D money has been spent so
> these products could be made, and now successful technologies and
> successful marketing go hand-in-hand.
> There is no reason that we cannot achieve that soon as well with
> cookstoves.
>
> Xavier Brandao
>
>
>
>
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