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

Mon Jun 27 02:08:11 CDT 2016

Dear Nikhil Desai,

Thank you for mentioning my „Remarks on Stove Technologies“, which are 
intended for discussion (also the sections D to E).

Concerning deforestation and CO2-emission you may find information in my 
article “Traditional Charcoal in Africa and Need for African Institutes 
ARTIS”, published since yesterday at: 
http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Charcoal

With kind regards,

Dieter Seifert

Am 27.06.2016 um 03:09 schrieb Traveller:
> This is Nikhil Desai again. I am writing in response to Xavier Brandao's
> original 14 June post. I have read Dieter Seifert's reply and agree with
> all of his points in Sections A through C of his 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>
> .
>
> I have no expertise in designing cookstoves, so I have no idea why it is
> STILL so difficult to design cookstoves for 3 billion people. Some of
> Xavier's observations are on-the-mark, except that they are all about
> stoves, not fuels. Biomass is not a uniform fuel and the variability in
> quality across regions and seasons, not to speak of the variability in
> cooking preferences, make me uncomfortable with his sweeping
> generalizations about "stoves". I may come back to that point in a later
> post.
>
> I think the main reason is that some fundamental questions have gone
> unattended. Stoves or fuels in and of themselves are neither dirty nor
> clean, and when the market for stoves and fuels is properly identified - in
> terms of cooking habits and preferences, geographic factors, and fuel and
> stove costs - some stove designers have indeed made some progress in
> changing cooks' behaviors. "Cheap", "practical" and "very clean" are in the
> eyes of the user; these perceptions can change and can be changed.
>
> Let me pose some questions; they are addressed to the proponents of
> "biomass stoves for rural poor households in developing countries".
>
> a) Who are you designing the stove for?
>
> b) What do you know about her and how do you know that is enough knowledge
> to determine the stove marketability)? (Keep in mind that in the last 50
> years, young women have become grandmothers or died, and that roughly 3
> billion children have passed through the age group 10-25, where biomass
> cooking has subjected them to the drudgery and smoke while keeping them
> away from education, play, and taking care of children.)
>
> c) Why are you designing the stove - in particular, to please the cook or
> experts in donor organizations (God forbid, pass the RCTs of Remy Hanna,
> Esther Duflo, and Michael Greenstone?)
>
> d) When will you want these stoves to be used and how?
>
> and, finally,
>
> e) What has 50 years of failure taught you? (You are free to define failure
> and success in terms of your answers to a) to d).
>
> If the intent was to design a stove for only 50,000 cooks for a 10-year
> period so they prepared better meals that their menfolk liked and beat them
> less often - or any other desired result - that is fine by me. I would like
> to see some evidence that this intent has been met ten times.
>
> I am skeptical. I think proponents of biomass have forgotten the fuel(s)
> and looked only at stoves, as an engineering design challenge, sometimes
> not even from an industrial product designer's perspective. (By comparison,
> a large number of products for solar LED lanterns flooded the market very
> quickly, between 2009 and 2012, when I stopped marveling at the
> design/marketing pushes.) Implicitly or explicitly, the biomass stovers
> were driven by "efficiency" and efficiency alone. To what end - for a
> supposedly renewable and "freely available" fuel, I could never understand.
> (With solar lanterns, the conversion technology became more reliable and
> cheaper; with solid biomass, I have seen no evidence that fuel supplies or
> stoves and paraphernelia of fuel management became more reliable and
> cheaper.)
>
> Now there is a drive for miracle biomass stoves - the test being in labs
> for boiling waters. The test wouldn't offer any metrics other than
> efficiency and emission rates and under lab conditions.
>
> There is a presumption here that ultra-efficient and/or ultra-clean miracle
> stoves used exclusively will save the trees and/or lives. Not only are
> definitions and metrics of efficiency and cleanliness unknown or arguable,
> it is unknown or arguable that even 10% of the current households will use
> such miracle stoves exclusively, and it is also unknown or arguable that
> such use will save trees or lives.
>
> Some ten years ago I had argued on the Hedon discussion group something
> like "Maggis noodles has saved more trees than all the improved cookstove
> programs combined." I know nobody in stove design business ever seeks to
> deliver on his promises, so I doubt I would be challenged on this.
> "Anything goes" is the experts' prerogative when messing with poor people,
> no?
>
> "Avoided woodfuel use" does not translate into actual "avoided
> deforestation". I hear a lot of deforestation is for purposes other than
> meeting the fuel demands - though once cut, trees can be used for fuel or
> making charcoal - and that when people own land and trees, they grow trees.
> Evidence is spotty, but surely the question is not why people cut trees but
> why they do not grow trees back. In any case, biomass combustion is most
> definitely not "GHG-neutral", and "GHG-neutrality" of a village, a
> district, a state, or even a whole country matters not a hoot.
>
> Similarly, "avoided woodfuel emissions" - whether or not proportionate to
> avoided woodfuel use - do not translate into "avoided pre-mature mortality"
> and certainly not into "avoided deaths". If emission reductions lead to
> lower pollutant exposures - a big if, for no reason other than that there
> are no measurements of pollution exposures of these 3 billion (or all 7+
> billion) people, nor  - and further if such lower exposures lead to lower
> incidence of corresponding diseases - another big if, since the avoided HAP
> pollutants could be negated by same or similar pollutants from other
> sources, including natural - we might see some health improvements. Whether
> that raises life expectancies, or quality of health, and increases or
> reduces pre-mature mortality, is anybody's guess. We have no evidence that
> clean fuels/stoves for some 3 billion cooks (at home or in food preparation
> for them outside the home) has reduced pre-mature mortality in any
> quantified manner. (I would be glad to be proven wrong.)
>
> Xavier asks a very pointed question - "why don't we know why it is proving
> so difficult?" I suspect many people know, but do not want to admit it. It
> is not just that "stove science is so complex", the cook is a complex
> mammal with different ideas, preferences, habits. If you don't understand
> the cook, and don't deliver a product that matches her desires and
> aspirations for cooking experience, you can do as much "stove science" as
> you want. Maybe that is indeed what biomass stovers have wanted to do for
> some 50 years I have seen the experiments with stoves, er, people's lives.
> Failures to deliver what the cook wants means some 500 million children
> pass through the age group 5-15 (i.e., about 50 million a year) caught in
> the same old rut; over 50 years, this means some 2.5 billion people (or
> 1.25 billion new cooks, if exclusively female), while nearly as many have
> passed on to the next world, having suffered the "wrong" fuel/stove
> syndrome. (I am assuming that something is wrong, otherwise stovers
> wouldn't be hammering away at this problem for 50 years.)
>
> Nikhil Desai
> (US) +1 202 568 5831
>
>>
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2016 20:58:45 +0200
>> From: "Dr.-Ing. Dieter Seifert" <doseifert at googlemail.com>
>> To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
>>          <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
>> Subject: Re: [Stoves] Why is it still so difficult to design
>>          cookstoves for 3 billion people?
>> Message-ID: <cbbd28ce-63e0-88da-98d5-26c90585cf12 at googlemail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
>>
>> 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)
>>
>> 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
>>
>> b) about Ben 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
>>
>> 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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