[Stoves] Revisiting WBT and performance metrics - revisiting history

Tue Aug 15 22:01:35 CDT 2017

Frank:

I could not respond to this sooner. I fully agree "The PM 2.5 metric has
wasted more years and falsely put more stoves at the top for marketing."

Perhaps marketing only Berkeley and related careers at WHO or GACC. (A
fresh PhD on the Chicago study in pregnant women in Nigeria is said to have
been hired by GACC.)

Wasting time in search of holy grails and wandering into every ally that
common sense sees to be blind serves one and only one purpose --
affirmation of Kirk Smith's definition of "solid fuels" as "dirty cooking"
and LPG/electricity as "clean cooking". If you think about it, however, oil
companies and electric utilities are not primarily in the business of
reducing cooking fuel hourly emissions no matter what the fuel, what the
home, what the cook and what the meal. What appears to be marketing for
LPG/electricity as "clean cookstoves" is a facade; the real marketing is
careers and consultancies.

Yes, the hourly average PM2.5 emission rate is a red herring, with no
identifiable benefit other than cooked up "indoor concentrations" via BAMG
model with ridiculous assumptions.

With no basis in theory or evidence, these manufactured estimates of
concentrations, netted for ambient air concentrations from other sources (I
don't know about "indoor" sources of PM2.5 other than a cookstove, such as
cigarette or dust or foods), mean precisely NOTHING.

So long as gullibility trounces reason, the circus will continue.

It is time to take another look at the last seven years of re-inventing the
wheel.

Your emphasis on fuel and cooking tasks should wake up those merrily
dreaming fuel-free, cook-free "science". Yes, many egos are at stake, and
it is hard for the grant-makers to admit the errors of their ways. So good
money is thrown after bad money year after year, as a new generation gets
hypnotized into thinking that the problem at hand is publishing new pal-
and boss- approved cite-o-logy, not to cultivate the capacity to design a
series of good stoves and testing them in actual use.

I hope to find some rocket scientist - at least, s/he would know hydrogen
and other fuels suited to various tasks - and a robotics engineer for my
iCook stovers. You have already given a picture of defining "contexts".

Nikhil

On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 11:54 AM, Frank Shields <franke at cruzio.com> wrote:

> Dear Nikhil,
>
> Well said.
>
> The PM 2.5 metric has wasted more years and falsely put more stoves at the
> top for marketing.
>
> The WBT was well designed going from Fuel >> completed Task but fails for
> three reasons:
> 1) The test for fuel was poorly designed. Stopping a fire in seconds and
> sorting the char from ash and wood not reproducible.
> 2) The fuel test had no connection to the fuel at the location the stove
> was planned to be used.
> 3) Too many matrices that were just stated and not actually tested.
>
> The fuel (processed) for the WBT was chosen to produce the *best*
> results. Not chosen to give *reproducible* results. Best results are for
> the purpose of improving combustion chamber measurements etc. Collecting
> wild biomass from around a location, chopping, cutting, splitting and
> drying to produce a homogenous mix would give reproducible results and be
> more like what might be used.
>
> What needs to be done:
> Fuel needs to be based on matrices that cross all biomass fuels. I suggest
> fixed and volatile matter.
> Its the fixed and volatile matter that is used to compare from site to
> site (along with other data like shape, size, etc).
> The fuel tested and compared is done using very dry fuel. The effects of
> increasing moisture can be determined and plotted later.
>
> We need more Completed Tasks in addition to boiling water to be used when
> comparing stoves.
>
>  Also; The testing does not consider the goal intended because the goal is
> different for each area. Saving wood, faster cooking, less 2.5 pollution,
> less fuel preparation time, etc are all different goals. Some more
> important than others depending on the location. The testing just reports
> the matrices that are needed to determine these goals. The end user decides
> the goals more important.
>
> We need a list of suitable stoves for an area. That where the fuel on site
> can be used in a stove to complete a task. The requirements (fuel prep.)
> and matrices (fuel used, time, 2.5PM) during completion are reported.
> Individual decisions are made to determine the stove they want to purchase.
> Stoves that are not suitable (cannot complete a specific task) are not on
> the list.
>
>
>
> Regards
>
> Frank
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Aug 6, 2017, at 9:06 AM, Nikhil Desai <ndesai at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>
> Xavier:
>
> I don't know about Ecostove performing badly with the WBT and still being
> superior to the traditional stoves. As you know, I don't think much of the
> efficiency metric -- no tree needs to be "saved" if its use has a higher
> value - and PM2.5 is only a recent fad thanks to Kirk Smith and WHO. I
> don't think much of mg/min emission rates cooked into the cake of annual
> average concentrations irrespective of fuel and cooking practices.
>
> But if Ecostove is found to be usable and used, that is a success, no
> matter what lab tests say. Maybe only a success of marketing and delivery
> chains, but that - as Kirk Smith says after his second epiphany - is more
> important than mere science.
>
> Science and marketing merge in product engineering. Let's see who
> succeeds. Do you think the ISO TC-285 exercise is less about science and
> more about marketing, by fooling people about "health benefits" or specific
> mg/min Emission Rate ranges for different Tiers?
>
> Nikhil
>
> ------------------------
> Nikhil Desai
> (US +1) 202 568 5831 <(202)%20568-5831>
> *Skype: nikhildesai888*
>
> On Sun, Aug 6, 2017 at 10:24 AM, Xavier Brandao <xvr.brandao at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear Nikhil,
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks for sharing these 2 papers. They really nailed it, and that was
>> already back in 2011.
>>
>>
>>
>> The Aprovecho Research Center has been pushing for years the WBT and
>> rocket stove designs with their golden rules without the expected success.
>>
>> The example of the Ecostove is really interesting. It performs badly with
>> the WBT but probably still is a great stove compared to the traditional
>> stoves. It shows how much relying on the WBT has been problematic.
>>
>>
>>
>> Paul,
>>
>>
>>
>> I have to look more into detail this new handbook by the GACC and MIT.
>>
>> I think I'll post about it next week.
>>
>>
>> Best,
>>
>>
>>
>> Xavier
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *De :* Nikhil Desai [mailto:pienergy2008 at gmail.com]
>> *Envoyé :* mardi 1 août 2017 20:28
>> *À :* Xavier Brandao
>> *Cc :* Crispin Pemberton-Pigott; Cecil Cook; Tami Bond; Robert van der
>> Plas; Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
>> *Objet :* Revisiting WBT and performance metrics - revisiting history
>>
>>
>>
>> List, Xavier:
>>
>> I stumbled upon paper a few months ago - Sustaining Culture with
>> Sustainable Stoves:The Role of Tradition in Providing Clean-BurningStoves
>> to Developing Countries
>> <http://www.consiliencejournal.org/index.php/consilience/article/viewFile/157/67>,
>>  Consilience, The Journal of Sustainable Development Vol. 5, Iss. 1 (2011),
>> Pp. 71-95. Britta Victor Department of Anthropology Princeton University,
>> Princeton, NJ  .
>>
>>
>> It is relevant to the earlier discussion on the tensions between physical
>> and social scientists or students of cultures and foods, and the pursuit of
>> energy efficiency as the sole metric.
>>
>> There is another 2011 paper - A Review of Global Cookstoves Programs
>> <https://mlgifford.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/cookstove-programs_berkeley-thesis.pdf>,
>> by Mary Louise Gifford - that cites some of the same material that is cited
>> by Britta Victor, and reaches similar, though less strong conclusions,
>> namely that global technologists alone are likely to fail.
>>
>> Nikhil
>>
>>
>>
>> -----------------------------------
>>
>> Excerpt from Britta Victor's Sustaining Culture with Sustainable
>> Stoves:The Role of Tradition in Providing Clean-Burning Stoves to
>> Developing Countries
>> <http://www.consiliencejournal.org/index.php/consilience/article/viewFile/157/67>,
>> Consilience
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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> Thanks
>
> Frank
> Frank Shields
> Gabilan Laboratory
> Keith Day Company, Inc.
> 1091 Madison Lane
> Salinas, CA  93907
> (831) 246-0417 cell
> (831) 771-0126 office
> fShields at keithdaycompany.com
>
>
>
> franke at cruzio.com
>
>
>
>
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