[Stoves] Kyrgyzstan stove pilot - update on air quality.

Crispin Pemberton-Pigott crispinpigott at outlook.com
Sun Apr 2 11:38:41 CDT 2017


Dear Cecil the Provoking Today

First some housekeeping‎. Gosia, who is copied because I am pretty sure is not subscribed, has her name scrambled. It is Gosia (Malgorzata) Biczyk, meaning Malgorzata is her real first name. 

Mine has the letters scrambled, being Pigott‎, not otherwise, from the French 'Picot' (pike). It was scrambled on the MSNBC piece too: they wrote Пиггот. 
‎
For the others: Gosia is a new stove anthropologist and leads in the most part, the contractor activities in Kyrgyzstan on the WB pilot. ‎Cecil is advising her on his own nickel and the traffic is a heady mix of high energy verbiage and pan-BoP philosophizing.  As you will have learned so far, these stoves are quite highly contextualized to Central Asia. That requires an understanding of the diverse micro-climates at various elevations and strong cultural preferences. The fuels available are highly variable in kind and cost. A perfect mix for producing serial failures!

‎Cecil, your main question is relevant to all paradigm shifting technologies. Remember the guy who said no one would ever want a computer in their home. Vested interests are often bested interests, driven into the ground by better ideas rapidly adopted. 

So consider what is the game changer here: fuel consumption down 40-60%, air quality that meets the current extraordinarily low WHO long term targets, a cost slightly under the perceived market value, greatly enhanced cooking performance, dual duty (heating water while cooking the meal), multi-fuel, and very low outdoor emissions (subject to verification).

This threatens fuel suppliers, air filter vendors, materials suppliers, electric hot plate and LPG vendors, electric kettle makers, electricity providers, air quality monitors, radical emission reductions schemes like closing roads, imposing ‎expensive, transport alternatives and of course, heating product vendors. 

The fuel savings, fully rolled out, will be something short of $200m per year for about 1m homes, or could be. What people will do is build a lot more saunas. They are wildly popular. Those who don't have one go to a neighbourhood one. What I hope happens is that the coal will packaged into pellets of predictable size and quality, the cost being much less than semi-coking. Additives can be incorporated to absorb sulphur, and there is possibility for some de-ashing before pelletizing. 

Tests show that, as we found in Mongolia, semi-coked briquettes emit more smoke than raw coal of the right size. Wood stoves made with brick linings are far to be preferred, giving a two-stage burn (I will explain later how that works). The emissions are well down even with a wide range of fuels. For dung burning the improvement is provoking astonished comments. 

This afternoon we received reports from the Naryn‎ area ‎as the Model 2.5's were installed yesterday. The lady called and demanded of Ulan, "Why have you sent us such a hot stove??!"

His immediate response was shocked worry that we had caused a lot of burned hands or some other disaster. ‎She continued saying that they were burning dung only and no one had even seen with a hot stove. The cooking heat was unprecedented. Further, the users had already found that the elevated back deck (called the top deck) was so hot, in spite of having 4mm thick sacrificial plates under the top plate, they are able to boil substantial amounts of water while cooking on the big single hole. 

They are raving about them. The heat output we have already shown is adequate at -30 so the sizing was about right. Burning dung it is about 10 kW with a heating efficiency of about 85%.

The performance of the top deck is important because it is doing something that could be done with all smoky stoves. It has a flame tube which collects all the smoke and gases and flames, running them through the tube, exiting and blasting at the underside of the top deck on the side opposite the chimney. For smouldering dund this is critical. 

Lodoysamba and I tried this in about 2011 in Ulaanbaatar and it was successful. The innovation with the Model 2.5 is that the tube is tilted upwards at 20 degrees. This makes it easy to ignite without smoke in the room. None. The chimney does not connect to the top deck, but to a draft tube that reaches well into the heat exchanger, with a permanent 'bleeder' cut into it to ensure low power CO is drained into the chimney, removing one oof the main dangers of downdrafting gas paths. 

I do not expect the metal to last. So we are going to have cast iron top decks made without a pot hole, just a cooking station. The chimney connection can be cast onto it or as a separate part. We well have to added a flyash clean-out as well. ‎

The stove is big, with a price tag of Som7800, about $110. It is considered to be a very good deal. ‎As a coal stove it is not bad at all, if the grate is flipped and elevated to the upper position at the back. It puts out an average of 6.3 kW for 9 hrs on a large bucket of coal (10 kg). That is enough for two gers or a small house. 

As for your first question, the big deal seems to be indoor air quality. As you know, in South Africa people are embarrassed to be on public transport and smell of kerosene from cheap wick stoves. Ditto coal or wood or dung stove smoke. The smokeless chimney confer social equity, something I will report at the DUE conference. We are collecting stories. If you have no smoke from the chimney it is assumed you are heating with electricity. That is a high class action. Delivering a high level of what Nikhil calls the 'service factor' is very influential. In the early days, before the rich work out how to look down on people in new ways, it is an equalizer. A social mobility tool. An unhumbling experience, if you will. 

I expect the Model 2.5's features to become the norm. It is simply so much better than what went before, there is no point continuing to make what doesn't work. So your task is to work out with Gosia how to reach the masses in a way that contexualizes the fundamentals and tunes the product to the opinions of the diverse populations in this diverse country. 
‎
Everyone stay well and breathe easy
Crispin ‎

‎

Dear stove optimist Piggot,

May I suggest other indicators of whether people are at home or out and about....perhaps you can turn this defect into a marketing virtue by giving a banner or flag on a pole‎ that announces the home is occupied even though there is little or no smoke coming out of the chimney. 

Turn smokeless stoves into a virtue‎ by advertising the added security provided by improved smokeless stoves; with a Piggot stove it is impossible to know whether a house is occupied ....therefore it is risky to assume a smokeless house is vacant when there is no obvious smoke. Therefore smokeless households are more secure because burglers can not assume it is empty and vulnerable to robbers simply by observing there is no smoke.

Maybe there is no house burglary in Kyrkyzstan?? 

Any other suggestions about ways to capitalize upon smokelessness??

What - if anything - do the gossiping nay sayers state in opposition to these low smoke stoves? There is always opposition from interest groups who perceive themselves to be disempowered by smokeless chimneys and unpolluted indoor air?    ‎

Who are the enemies of the Crispin crossdraft gassifier low smoke stoves in rural Kyrgyzstan? such as:  gov't officials, merchants, LPG stove proponents, bankers, environmentalists, women's rights activists, fuel suppliers and miners, fabricators of traditional high smoke
stoves, etc.

Hope this is a multiple win stove breakthru??

Is it? How do we know this locally fabricated low smoke higher efficiency stove is a run away winner? Is it a stove technology "beauty contest" or are there other sinister players and stove competitors who will contest for market dominance?

In search,

Cecil the curious 


Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.
  Original Message  
From: Crispin Pemberton-Pigott
Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2017 4:27 PM
To: 'Stoves (stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org)'
Reply To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
Subject: [Stoves] Kyrgyzstan stove pilot - update on air quality.

Dear Friends

Dr Talant, the Kyrgyzstan government's head cardiologist, is about to release his report on measured exposures to PM2.5 taken this winter in more than 50 rural homes. These measurements were made before, after and side by side with homes receiving an advanced combustion stove, either for wood, dung, cotton stalks, coal or a combination. There are 4 stove models involved.

His preliminary numbers are very encouraging. Today he told us that they recorded exposures as high as 7000 µg/m3 indoors prior to changing the stove. That is 35 times higher than a Red Alert day in Beijing.

The impact produced by the advanced combustion Model KG4.2 coal stove (a refuellable crossdraft gasifier) was to reduce the PM2.5 level to the range of 10-40 µg/m3, a reduction of 99%. He reports that elderly people have noticeably better health, fewer headaches (caused by high CO) and better lung function. Users report they simply 'feel better'. They are testing pulmonary function as part of the monitoring which will be expanded this year.

As the stoves do not cost more than conventional stoves of similar quality, it is expected that uptake by the market will be strong. Something unexpected was the very high level of CO in many homes. It is also highly variable, often rising above 100 ppm. With the new stoves, Dr Talan reports that there is a very low level that is steady. People exhale CO so we do expect that it is not reduced to zero.

The uprated Model 2.5's mentioned in the last update were delivered to Naryn on Monday and probably installed today. There are a total of 10. It is still snowing heavily and very cold up there. We will be getting repots in the coming weeks about how they are received in the villages. A complaint is that people no longer can see if there is someone 'home' because there is nothing visible coming from the chimney. One report said someone burned their hand by placing it on a stove thinking, arriving home 4 hours after loading it with dung, that because of the time they had been away and the lack of smoke, that the fire was out. Wrong assumption.

When the health impact report is available, I will post a link. It contains multiple, clear evidences that improving IAQ has specific, positive medical impact.

Regards
Crispin


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