[Stoves] The "50 stoves" report and methods of testing.

[Nikhil Desai]

Paul:

Thank  you so much. I need to read more and digest this. You have
wonderfully expressed rebellious thoughts, whatever your intent.

1. Please let us know if you can find this "50-stove" report.  From your
comment "until results are released, in this case a book," looks like there
was a book. The two things I know are GACC's Clean Cooking Catalog
<http://catalog.cleancookstoves.org/pages/about> with 351 stoves (seems
like an ongoing work) and the Stove Performance Inventory Report
<http://berkeleyair.com/wp-content/publications/SPT_Inventory_Report_v3_0.pdf>
(or SPTI, BAMG for GACC 2012). This SPTI's Conclusions and Recommendations
(p. 23), and Inventory Next Steps (p. 24) are quite remarkable. The
question is, whose responsibility was it to follow up? If it was GACC, what
have GACC done about it?

2. Is the D-Lab report an adequate "next step"? What you call "story behind
the half-decade between 2003 and 2010" might not have been captured by the
BAMG SPTI at the end of 2012. (I am not qualified to make any judgment
about the evolution of WBT. All I say is that "fuel-free", "cook-free"
boiling water makes my blood boil.)

-------------

Whoever "we" are, there seems to be a presumption that, following GACC
vocabulary, there is a "stove sector" and that GACC Secretariat are leaders
voicing this "stove sector". It is time to disabuse the readers of this
List or the world at large that GACC speaks for anybody but itself, and
that there is even a "stove sector".

And those of "us" who have concluded, at this stage, that stove testing is
"Nothing at all like the realities in the kitchens." need to write up
narratives of "realities in the kitchen" instead of D-Lab holy book.

The "stove-study community" needs to assert to GACC - via posts or open
letters - that we are "moving away from those former practices," and that
we are advocating that those former practices be abandoned publicly by
GACC.

I trust GACC has the courage to at least acknowledge the dissatisfaction
within the "stove-study community", and transmit the dissatisfaction to ISO
TC-285. It is obligatory upon ISO to recognize persistent doubts about WBT
(acknowledged in Fernando Manibog's paper in 1984 all the way to BAMG SPTI
in October 2012) and all "fuel-free", "cook-free" stove performance testing
and lab-created metrics.

ANSI presentation at IWA (by Sally Seitz, cc'd here) on the ISO process
emphasized the power of consensus: ""consensus: General agreement,
characterized by the absence of sustained opposition to substantial issues
by any important part of the concerned interests and by a process that
involves seeking to take into account the views of all parties concerned
and to reconcile any conflicting arguments. "

Elise Owen of ANSI also said at IWA: "The ISO International Workshop
Agreement (IWA) was identified as a mechanism t*o help codify an “interim”
cookstove* standard."

WBT was an interim protocoal for a *temporary rating system* adopted in
Lima and the methods for IWA Tiers and specific numbers as well as WHO
emission targets are *disputable and have no legal authority* behind them.

As for the TC 285 process, the Hague IWA that was review due in 2015 should
begin immediately. And if an interim standard - one that is locally
adaptable using reliable testing methods and ISO-certified test
laboratories -  cannot be issued for debate by the end of next month, an
audit of the TC work over the past five years should also  be initiated by
the ISO senior management.

Pending re-authorization of the TC 285 calendar and any audits, it could
begin looking into actual exposures from portable and in situ (built in)
biomass stoves, and compare such to the WHO database on emissions and
exposures at a community level. (Warning: WHO DOES NOT have any database
and exposures at any community level. There is no use pretending that WHO
is not fooling us.)

Science alone cannot render any usable standards for usable stoves.
Efficiency and PM testing is fine, but there ought to be five other
metrics, some of them not in the realm of physical sciences, not even
social sciences. And the Tiers with some hourly target that purports to
protect health must be dumped. I think public health modelers need to be
brought in to justify their assumptions and methods.

Yes, time for me to announce my rebellion against the glibness we - the
global public - have been served over the last five years.


Nikhil


On Aug 2, 2017, at 9:46 AM, Paul Anderson <psanders at ilstu.edu> wrote:

Stovers,

Nikhil wrote today 2 August 2017:


Let me quote a paper "Fuel use and emissions performance of fifty cooking
stoves in the laboratory and related benchmarks of performance
<http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0973082610000311> Energy
for Sustainable Development, Volume 14, Issue 3, September 2010, Pages
161–171. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.esd.2010.06.002.

.. The authors claim in the Abstract:


Performance of 50 different stove designs was investigated using the 2003
University of California-Berkeley (UCB) revised Water Boiling Test (WBT)
Version 3.0 to compare the fuel use, carbon monoxide (CO) and particulate
matter (PM) emissions produced. While these laboratory tests do not
necessarily predict field performance for actual cooking, t*he elimination
of variables such as fuel, tending, and moisture content, helps to isolate
and compare the technical properties of stove design*.


It stretches credulity that stove designs are tested on the basis of
excluding fuel, tending, and moisture content. This is engineering madness.
Standard fuel, standard pots, standard water, standard field conditions
(wind, humidity, temperature, ventilation). Not cook.

Let's look at the timeline of that report:
1.  Publication in 2010.  ---  In modern-era cookstove chronology, that is
now rather old.

2.  Did you notice that the WBT version was from 2003?   (that would now be
called "ancient").  There is a story behind the half-decade between 2003
and 2010.

3.  From my memory (so others can correct me with documentation and
rememberances, if needed), the 50 stove study was conducted in about 2004 -
05 (maybe in to 2006??).   It was conducted by Aprovecho, with funding from
EPA or PCIA (or ???).  I saw and read a draft (nearly final, I think) back
around 2005 or 06.   But there were delays.   Maybe questions about funds
for pubishing??   Anyway, in these types of reasearch with grant money, the
project file is not closed until results are released, in this case a
book.   By 2010, the results were already old.  I have a copy somewhere,
filed away.  It has historical value to show the thinking of the early
times (2005, not 2010).  And that is what Nikhil pointed out with his
comments about:

[Quote from 2010 report]:   While these laboratory tests do not necessarily
predict field performance for actual cooking, t*he elimination of variables
such as fuel, tending, and moisture content, helps to isolate and compare
the technical properties of stove design*.

[Nikhil's 2017 comment]:  It stretches credulity that stove designs are
tested on the basis of excluding fuel, tending, and moisture content. This
is engineering madness. Standard fuel, standard pots, standard water,
standard field conditions (wind, humidity, temperature, ventilation). Not
cook.

Perhaps in 2017, we (the "stove-study community") are moving away from
those former practices.  The testing proceedures today are  certainly not
as rigid as in the past (even pellet fuels can be allowed in testing :-)),
but much of the old ways still remain.  One example is the allowance of
"stove tending" to the extreme of the Rocket-stove practice of spacing sawn
wood that is advanced inch by inch (maybe cm by cm?) to keep just the tips
burning.  Stove testers were (and are) trained and then sit there for the
entire test (with the stove conveniently positioned at eye-level), nursing
the fuel supply into the fire zone.  Nothing at all like the realities in
the kitchens.

Paul

Doc  /  Dr TLUD  /  Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD
Email:  psanders at ilstu.edu
Skype:   paultlud    Phone: +1-309-452-7072 <(309)%20452-7072>
Website:  www.drtlud.com
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