[Stoves] News 31 October 2016: Cleaner, Healthier Cookstoves May -- At Long Last -- Be Catching On.p

Sun Nov 6 23:58:22 CST 2016

Hi Crispin and Dieter,

Very true about the need for people to have a quick option of cooking in
various 'context of use' scenarios. We have found particular interest in
our small kilns from customers that are farmers who have waste maize cobs
and also are regular buyers of charcoal -  (http://kenyacharcoal.
blogspot.co.ke/2012/10/make-and-use-maize-cob-charcoal.html). As one lady
told me the other day, she stopped buying charcoal (still makes and uses it
for certain dishes) and thus saved up enough money to buy an LPG gas
cylinder.

Other interesting feedback I have had from customers about the need for a
'V-Power' type of charcoal (fast lighting and burning, very hot) is from
hotels who have a brief but fast lunch rush - you can mix maize cobs or
other light density charcoal with hardwood charcoal to tweak the speed of
cooking - and also from quite a few home cooks. They mostly say having a
light density charcoal that goes out after 20mins for small dishes like
eggs or tea is much better than the hassle of lighting hardwood charcoal
that burns for another 20mins after you have finished cooking.

Teddy

*Cookswell Jikos*
www.cookswell.co.ke
www.facebook.com/CookswellJikos
www.kenyacharcoal.blogspot.com
Mobile: +254 700 380 009
Mobile: +254 700 905 913
P.O. Box 1433, Nairobi 00606, Kenya

Save trees - think twice before printing.

On Sun, Nov 6, 2016 at 5:52 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

> Dear Dieter
>
> This optimisation can be seen in the study of cooking habits in Central
> Java done by Cecil Cook. ‎The initial assumption that there were 'LPG using
> cooks' and 'wood burning cooks' turned out to be incorrect.
>
> Seventy per cent of LPG users use wood to heat water. Another 70% of wood
> users use LPG to cook. Cecil identified two particular tasks well suited to
> gas cookers: reheating food and making a quick cup of tea in the same room
> as guests. And that is exactly what even 'really poor' people do with LPG,
> if they can get it.
>
> So, those not using any LPG at all, which is 30% of the lower income 40%
> of the general population, either cannot afford any or cannot access it.
>
> There are two opportunities in that market which are not being addressed:
> dedicated, clean burning and efficient water heaters, then a biomass-fueled
> stove with very fast ignition, a short burn time and quick extinction. So
> far, neither has been addressed well.
>
> Perhaps a quick cooker should be using charcoal pellets or powder.
>
> Regards
> Crispin
>
>
>
> Dear Crispin and All,
> I believe that we all accept that there are optimal combinations of
> cooking technologies. LPG-stoves may be appropriate for tasks with short
> processes and low heat consumption. In community kitchens e.g school
> kitchens, social restaurants as proposed by Anil, the combination with
> several options (integrated cooking) is easy.
> Best wishes. Dieter
>
>
>
> ‎Dear Dieter
>
> Exactly. That is an example of making a 'contextual' calculation. Actual
> exposure is dependent upon the context of use.
>
> Regards
> Crispin
>
>
> Dear Crispin,
> The exposure time you mention can be effectively shortened  (e.g. from
> 3...4 hours to half an hour when cooking beans) trough cooking  with
> retained heat. An average cook should not waste health, time, and money by
> simmering.
> Kind regards, Dieter
>
>
>
> Dear Nikhil
>
> The WHO has 'emission rates' which they model into exposures. As was
> pointed out on this list already, the exposure, modeled or measured, has to
> consider the duration of the exposure, not just the concentration.
>
> The metrics of the IWA, for example, which are claimed to have been
> created using the same or a similar dispersion model, do not account for
> the amount of time the exposure is endured. There is no context.
>
> There is no meaningful way to rate a stove 'according to the WHO' that
> protects human health without stating a context.
>
> An average emissions rate in an average kitchen with average ventilation
> must also consider the average time the average cook of average health with
> an average diet living in an average city/village/community is exposed to
> that PM averaged over a single (or triple) box of average air.
>
> If someone in that average house smokes‎ an average number of average
> cigarettes the average exposure number goes out the average window.
>
> Regards
> Crispin toking above average Turkish coffee
>
>
>
> News 31 October 2016: Cleaner, Healthier Cookstoves May -- At Long Last
> -- Be Catching On. <http://ensia.com/features/cleaner-cookstoves/>
>
> He wrote another opinion piece These cheap, clean stoves were supposed to
> save millions of lives. What happened?
> <https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/these-cheap-clean-stoves-were-supposed-to-save-millions-of-lives-what-happened/2015/10/29/c0b98f38-77fa-11e5-a958-d889faf561dc_story.html> a
> year ago (Washington Post, 29 Oct 2015).
>
> Good to see someone keeping tabs on charities and their promises, if not
> premises.
>
> I will write on last year's piece later. Like that one, this piece is good
> but employs a lot of old men's and infantile fancies.
>
> "Household air pollution from cooking fires is thought to be the world’s
> leading environmental cause
> <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3672215/> of death and
> disability."
>
> ** An unverifiable allegation. Not a CAUSE, simply an attribution to a
> risk factor, based on fictional data, and dubious methods. **
>
> "The problems with cookstoves are legion. The vast majority of stoves
> fail to meet strict World Health Organization standards that are set to
> protect human health. (Designing a stove that works effectively for fuels
> that vary in their moisture content or chemical composition is difficult.)"
>
> **Who gave WHO jurisdiction to put "standards"? (They are only guidelines,
> and their provenance is so far a mystery to me. If the IAQ guidelines are
> based on GBD gobbledy-gook, I suspect there is a fundamental failure.) What
> does WHO know about combustion or cooking? Did it set IAQ Guidelines
> decidedly so low as to drive most of stove-makers or solid fuels out of
> business? **
>
> "With the exception of a massive government-financed program in China in
> the 1990s, no government, philanthropic or commercial cookstove program has
> been shown to deliver large-scale, measurable health or environmental
> benefits. Up in Smoke <http://www.nber.org/papers/w18033>, a 2012 field
> study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers, found no
> long-term health or environmental benefits in households in India that had
> been given a clean stove, mostly because the stoves weren’t properly
> maintained or were discarded."
>
> ** This is repetition of lies by citation. The MIT cons did no "long-term"
> study and used a stove design that had long been abandoned by its original
> creators. These e-cons know nothing about cooking, or health, and would be
> dismissed anywhere if they weren't ensconced in Cambridge, MA. It was a
> poorly designed research project with a ridiculous mania; what is worse, in
> the Working Paper draft I reviewed, their conclusions were contrary to
> their findings detailed at the back. What a fraud. **
>
> "Whatever one thinks about carbon credits for cookstoves — and they are
> controversial — they distort the market by providing subsidies and cannot
> be relied upon as a long-term revenue source."
>
> ** Subsidies to the poor or to new technologies have been accepted as a
> legitimate purpose of public expenditure for decades. This nonsense of
> "distort the market" only means subsidies are for the rich, punitive and
> failed markets for the poor. **
>
> "What’s more, most experts think that local manufacturers, who sell
> lower-quality stoves at lower prices, outsell the U.S.-based companies. “I
> can name 20 different entrepreneurs across Africa who sells 350 to 500
> stoves a month, or more, and the numbers add up,” says Elisha Moore Delate,
> an independent consultant and cookstove expert based in Nairobi. These
> cheaper stoves may not deliver the health or environmental benefits of
> higher quality ones, but they do save poor people money, which is no small
> thing."
>
> ** Another set of unverifiable allegations. The cheaper stoves may well be
> more usable. Obviously they are used more. **
>
> "More importantly, will cleaner efficient cookstoves improve the health
> of customers and state of the global environment? That’s also hard to know
> because reliable data on their real-life performance is scarce
> <http://cleancookstoves.org/technology-and-fuels/standards/defining-clean-and-efficient.html>
> ."
>
> ** Oh, data is not a problem. GBD has cooked up the health impacts with
> pitiful "data", mostly assumptions and computed estimates.
>
> Make merry in the South Lawn and the Imperial Hotel. With Leonardo
> DeCaprio. And excuse GACC's premises and promises. **
>
> Nikhil
>
>
>
>
>
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