[Stoves] A user-centered, iterative engineering approach for advanced biomass cookstove design and development

[Nikhil Desai]

Frank:

Presumably the larger research plan behind this China paper is to address
the issues of fuel quality and cost, reliability of supplies, AFTER some
stoves are shown to be used six months after installation.

This would be the opposite way of matching fuels and stoves; instead of
"fix the fuel, optimize the stove", it amounts to "confirm a stove's
utility if the fuel can be processed in order to optimize the stove
usability."

My question is, do the funders of this study have a strategic vision for
such research that can be policy-relevant?

Interviews with 10 households in China can cook the researchers' meals, but
the ultimate challenge is not of publishing papers.

Star is over. GACC is nearly over. What is the theory of progress that
leads to more than just publications of papers and holding webinars?

Is anybody accountable for anything? Does anybody have the responsibility
other than spend research budgets?

This is something this List could contribute to - how to plan a research
budget for cookstove and fuel supplies development that can be implemented
in real contexts with real cooks in mind.

Say I propose to reformulate Kirk Smith's challenge to the biomass stove
community for South Asia:

"Devise a user-centered, iterative engineering approach for the cooking and
heating market for all users who are not entitled to subsidized LPG
distribution in such a way that a billion people and their living/working
environments may be reached by 2030."


This would include definition of contexts, contextual analysis of
preferences and fuel/feedstock types, and a diagram of iterative sequences.

If not a billion people, how about half a billion people?

Is anybody game to work on this? For free, of course.



Nikhil Desai


On Nov 29, 2017, at 2:59 PM, Frank Shields <franke at cruzio.com> wrote:

Dear stovers,

It looks like these are all Pellet stoves. And the pellets are supplied for
the duration of the testing to reduce variability. A good test as long as
you are ready to supply pellets. Otherwise I'm thinking a waste of time and
money.

"These prototype stoves were introduced on a trial basis to obtain feedback
on user experiences and evaluate whether the stove was robust to 'real
life' usage conditions. Pelletized biomass fuel produced from a nearby
village-scale factory was supplied to homes at no cost to remove barriers
to stove use. Selected homes were already enrolled in a household energy
study. A detailed description of the study site and homes' energy practices
are provided elsewhere (Ni *et al* 2016
<http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa804f/meta#erlaa804fr37>
)."

If they determined (and reported) the range of different characteristics
for the optimum biomass fuel then it would be something we could use.

Regards


Frank





Frank Shields
444 Main Street Apt. 4205
Watsonville, CA  95076
(831) 246-0417 cellfranke at cruzio.com

<franke.vcf>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20171204/3517a58b/attachment.html>