[Stoves] Burning homes, children, and spewing smokes from stoves (Frank Shields)

[Frank Shields]

Dear Nikhil, Stovers, 





> On Oct 30, 2016, at 8:11 PM, Traveller <miata98 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Frank: 
> 
> Thank you. It is the "cooking food" part where demographic and economic changes imply that stoves as well as cooking patterns need to change. They have changed in the 50-odd years I have observed cooking around the world - at homes, just outside the built dwellings, and also in restaurant kitchens and water  heaters. 
But until they do change to more modern and controlled stoves we need to work with the small individual biomass devices for the poorest of the poor. 
> 
> In my more reflective moments, I do accept the argument that stove testing and certification will help. My views are simply that 
> 
> i) International standards are worthless; testing and stove design go hand-in-hand at the local level, depending on the resource context and users’ priorities.
Does that also apply to automobiles? kerosene lanterns, space heaters and the like? I don’t think so. Our stoves are a solid, fixed structured item. It should be able to have international standards applied just like the other things mentioned. The problem we have is the variable fuel composition and physical properties that make standardization so difficult. Standardizing biomass fuels or graphing their properties from low to high and relating that to stoves performance is where we need to spend our time. Until that is done (if it even can be) we continue to go nowhere with getting an international standard for our stoves. If we can get control over the biomass fuel there is no reason we cannot get standards set up. 
>  
> ii) Claims of computing causal links from stove emission rates in labs to health benefits are “Blowing Smoke". 
Only because the biomass fuel is not controlled enough to accurately predict the emissions that will be released. If using controlled fuel (pellets, dried lumber fixed shape sticks,) one can determine the emissions released and is done all the time. But send that stove into the real World with different fuels and the game changes. 


> iii) There needs to be region-specific (i.e., larger than community, smaller than the whole country in most areas) strategies for promoting modern cooking as well as air quality management initiatives and biomass waste management as needed.
The only reason to need region specific strategies is because of the different fuels available. Send out bags of pellets out to all the regions for them to use in the same stove design and all will become predictable. 
>  
> 
> I write this from "policy and planning" perspective, not technical aspects of such approaches. The database of “global household air pollution" is fictional and the claimed links to "Global Burden of Disease" is a super-human effort to pollute the air. 
Like any good science experiment we need to get control over the variables. That is starting with the fuel. What fuel are available to people is what they will use so we will not change that. We need to know more about the characteristics and physical properties of that available fuel. Then measure those properties against specific stoves to see how they perform. Match those properties to a stove that can handle them resulting in less pollution. 

International Testing consists of stoves tested using biomass fuels containing known characteristics and seeing how they perform. Matching stoves to the local with that type of fuel. 

Is the way it should be done according to Frank Shields. : )

thanks

Frank




> 
> Nikhil
> 
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> --------- 
> (US +1) 202-568-5831
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> 
> On Sun, Oct 30, 2016 at 12:39 PM, Frank Shields <franke at cruzio.com <mailto:franke at cruzio.com>> wrote:
> Nikhil and Stovers,
> 
> For water; streams, lakes etc. The definition of Clean Enough is ‘upstream & downstream; Downstream of the introduction of possible contaminants cannot be higher than that found in background or upstream of the source. I worked with a company that introduced discharge into a sewer and because of the ‘high’ concentrations were about to be forced to shutdown. The amount was less than drinking water standards but still higher than upstream.  
> 
> You write:
>> I just don't believe that by itself, boiling water does anything but feed the researchers. 
> 
> 
> This is ALL important. Boiling water and cooking food. Thats because that is the entire purpose of the stoves we are working on. Cooking food. Nothing to do with cleaning air. To re-direct the purpose to cleaning air is just Blowing Smoke. Now you know the definition of Smoke. 
> 
> Regards
> 
> Frank
> 
> 
> 
>> On Oct 30, 2016, at 1:28 AM, Traveller <miata98 at gmail.com <mailto:miata98 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> Anil: 
>> 
>> Let me throw some questions at you. I hope you reply, because then I will respond accordingly. 
>> 
>> 1. What is "smoke"? 
>> 
>> 2. What is the proper measure of "clean"? Who decides, why and how? Why does it matter if some stove is "clean", to whom and traded off against what other criteria to choose to purchase or use? 
>> 
>> --
>> 
>> As for ethanol stoves, why aren't ethanol stoves "clean enough"? Because they have high 15-minute emission rates for CO? 
>> 
>> It's exposures that matter, not emissions. Or emission rates. This is why the ISO IWA exercise is "fundamental folly" without a context. I do agree with the principle of testing and ranking stoves in terms of desired qualities. I just don't believe that by itself, boiling water does anything but feed the researchers. 
>> 
>> --
>> I hope someone else tells me what "smoke" means. There is too much of blowing rings about stoves and smoke. 
>> 
>> 
>> Nikhil 
> 

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