[Stoves] News: On-the-ground research reveals true impact of cook-stove emissions in India

[Nikhil Desai]

Ron:

Thank you so much. I will read that paper. I don't have any opinion on
health rationales because what is usually strewn around as "burden of
disease" has no basis in theory or facts.

Why are you so paranoid about criticism of WBT though? WBT is for lab
testing of efficiency and emission rates, with a fixed fuel type and energy
content, and actual emission rates can differ. It would be no different
with other lab test methods; lab is meant to be a controlled environment
and an abstraction from reality.

I brought in "protocols" because just as there stove testing methods for
supposed "performance metrics" (scrupulously eliminating the cook and the
cooking method, so as to promote expert control in support of expert
theories), there are also different methods and equipment for measuring
pollution concentrations.

If I am not mistaken, this is what Graham Ballard-Tremeer did his PhD
thesis on, circa 1998 at the Uni of Wittwatersrand. It was quite a
revelation to me that reported indoor air pollution measurements came from
use of different protocols or no protocols at all.

Kirk Smith also wrote something similar in 1999 - how few actual
measurements had been and not comparable over time and across location.

Most recently, as I may have noted elsewhere today, I discovered that only
one study has measured emission rates for a particular stove using
different fuels and that all other multi-fuel tests have been with the
three-stone fire. (I can't imagine how anybody can simulate a three-stone
fire, which has survived over millennia simply because it is so
fuel-flexible and versatile.)

You may have noticed that it's not the WBT I don't care for - hadn't, in
1983, and see no reason to change my view - but the metrics. They are meant
to rationalize expert research grants. Academia is a different world from
that of budgeting and policy decisions.

Could the Washington University researcher on seeds Bedigian by any chance?
Jatropha seeds have been mentioned as a fuel option - I think direct
burning as well as esterification.

Nikhil

On Sat, Dec 16, 2017 at 3:30 PM, Ronal W. Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net>
wrote:

> Nikhil and list:
>
> The (non-fee) paper is at https://www.atmos-chem-
> phys.net/17/13721/2017/acp-17-13721-2017.pdf
> The supplement at  https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/17/13721/2017/acp-17-
> 13721-2017-supplement.pdf
>
> Looks like a credible paper - but not one I am going to read carefully as
> it is only related to traditional chulas.  Seems to have a somewhat
> different means of monitoring the pollutants - in the field.  I doubt one
> can use this paper to downgrade the WBT.
>
> I am going to guess you won’t like the paper as it is full of health
> rationales (for India).
> Re repeatability, I am working up more on fuel shape, which is a main
> feature of the L’Orange et al paper.  Fuel shape also not covered in the
> TLUD paper I noted with the 10% efficiency that Crispin has since commented
> on.
>
> Twenty years ago we had some fine comments from a Professor at Washington
> University - who (I vaguely recall) was interested in some seeds that
> performed well for cooking because of their high oil content - that had no
> other use, because they were poisonous.
>
> Ron
>
> On Dec 16, 2017, at 9:01 AM, Nikhil Desai <pienergy2008 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On-the-ground research reveals true impact of *cook-stove* emissions in
> India
> <http://indiacsr.in/on-the-ground-research-reveals-true-impact-of-cook-stove-emissions-in-india/>.
> India CSR Network blog, 15 December 2017
>
>   "We conducted real-life cookstove tests and burned a wide variety of
> biofuels, cooked different meals in a number of varying ventilation
> situations, then *recorded the resulting emission levels* using high-tech
> particle measurement devices.
>
> Once the data was crunched back in St. Louis, the results were startling:
>  In some cases, *more than twice the emission levels were detected when
> compared to the previous lab findings*, revising what people thought they
> knew for decades about this pervasive and dangerous problem."
>
>
> I wonder what protocols and fuels were used, and also whether they only
> measured emissions but also concentrations and tried to model the two.
>
> Or whether the alleged "previous lab findings" are comparable or this
> research team is just boasting.
>
> I hope the revisions are not as shoddy as the history. What people thought
> they knew was what they chose to or were instructed to believe.
>
> Related press release at Engineers work to fight pollution at home,
> globally
> <https://source.wustl.edu/2017/08/engineers-work-fight-pollution-home-globally/>, Erika
> Ebsworth-Goold  August 11, 2017. Haven't yet located the full paper.
>
> Nikhil
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20171216/3106251b/attachment.html>