[Stoves] Energy efficiency value

Mon Feb 6 22:41:53 CST 2017

Dear Crispin,

I understand what you are trying to do regarding taking the lab into the field. I work with compost. I can test in detail about the compost and make detailed interpretation then they add that product into the field and the water chemistry, irrigation type and amount, weather, disease and all types of things make it really impossible to interpretive as to crop yield based on a compost test. But with testing along the compost process I can make sure the compost is stable and has a high AgIndex. It is the best it can be. 
As to the field test they will add increasing amounts from left to right and see how the crop does. OK so that is a good ‘lab’ test the same if it was in the lab. BUT we learn little about what is really going on (the limiting factor making one concentration grow crops better than another) so we end up with every farmer on every field he owns needing to add compost at increasing rates to find the best. Change a crop and it starts all over again.  

This is what you will be dealing with in the field testing of stoves. We go nowhere (again) except for the one village that was lucky enough to have the stoves they use being accessed by our scientist. One house is making more smoke than another house - so please clean up your act. The village gets cleaner. Lets move over to the next town. How many are there?

The inside lab needs to go through the Box system. Variables in each Box is controlled. We end up with something we can use anywhere at any time and any place. It doesn’t matter if the family do not like what we tell them they must do if they want clean air. At least not to the inside lab. They need to decide if they want clean air or not. At least we are able to give them a choice where as it is now we give them stoves, tell them it will clean the air but end up making it more polluted - because we didn’t to the testing that was needed. We need to get out of the villages and re-visit after we get the testing finished and have something we can present to them we know will work. 

With stove testing it started with the purpose of improving the stove by study with a very controlled fuel (pellets or kiln dried cut wood).  Once that was done it was just taken into the field with no change. Its so frustrating because it should have been obvious that a different fuel and circumstances would not give the same results. And the years go by.

As for the Box system: I don’t know how well it will work and there are a few things i am still not clear as to how they can be done but i do feel certain that this is the only approach that has a chance of working. 
As for Box 1 (fuel) I am thinking we need to know what the chemical and physical characteristics biomass has that affect the combustion. I have the test methods down but we need to work with different stoves to determine what we need to test for (will make a difference). If we start with particle size distribution we have a bell curve of some shape. Then we need particle shape (tongue depressor flat >>> sphere). We have carbon density in the particles. Bulk carbon densities when packed. Resins if pine burns differently than oak. Volatile carbon fraction vs fixed carbon fraction, Ash content, - perhaps not much more. But somehow we need to take a stove and determine the range of each of the above. Then the fun part of determining the optimum value for each of the above list for a stove and plot on XYZ graph with all the optimums in the center. That will be the formula for that stove and other stoves will have their own formula. We find a source of fuel, test it and determine the best stove to use. Easy Sneezy. 

Box 2) Best method and rate the fuel is added to the stove. 

What do you think….

Regards

Frank

> On Feb 6, 2017, at 7:35 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear Frank
> 
> Let's examine the box concept for a while. It is not something we evaluated though you have used the concept for a while. I would add a few move boxes but don't want to limit the list so I am suggesting we ask everyone here for a suggested list of 'the variables' classed into boxes. 
> 
> Cecil will have input for sure. It may not work but it is worth a try. What should the list include, and why are we making it?
> 
> On the 'separation between the lab and field' I think you are still making assumptions that a lab test is somehow fundamentally different in the sense that the result is not expected to represent performance in the field on average.
> 
> I fully expect it to do exactly that! So do tests of bridge columns and glass windows and bolts. There is nothing so special about stoves that we can't make predictions. Particularly about average performance. 
> 
> The oddity about stove testing has been the idea that you can preselect stoves for checking in the field using a test that does not represent use in the field. THEN go to the field 'to see how they really perform'. The concept is erroneous. If you perfect a stove using gasoline in the lab and test it in the field with diesel the lab result is meaningless and the preselection pointless. 
> 
> No one does that with other products, why do it with stoves?
> 
> Regards 
> Crispin
> 
> 
>> On Feb 6, 2017, at 3:03 AM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com <mailto:crispinpigott at outlook.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> Dear Frank
>> 
>> Efficiency is one of the most highly reproducible metrics if measured and calculated properly. Getting a good result requires having a good conceptual framework. 
>> 
> Agree
> 
>> James Robinson and I have tested stoves with 5 point each at high, medium and low power‎. In some cases the dots on the chart overlapped. Those were small stoves so size is not the issue. 
>> 
> 
> Using biomass or coal? If biomass (or coal for that matter) we need to know the properties of that fuel and place them on the chart.  That stove is sent along with the fuel properties that it works best. Nice also to establish some limits of those properties for that stove. 
> So a few questions: Was the curve for the three points linear or predicted curve? What was the fuel? What was the properties of the fuel (moisture, size range, shape etc)? Likely you will not have all the info i would like but this is good news that it can work. 
> 
>> There is no good reason to assume that a stove tested in a lab will now, on average, perform the same as in the field.
> Correct
>> To accomplish that requires knowing what people do in the field. What we do is get Cecil' observations and replicate the rural cooking beside the lab.
> 
> Yes - No need to re-research what people do in the field, Hasn’t a lot of money been put in this direction already?  Thats all we’ve been doing. 
> 
> Replicating the cooking done in the field to in the lab is doing nothing. So we are able to take a stove and fuel into the lab along with the cook and he whips us up a good lunch. That is the only benefit. The purpose of the lab is to monitor and improve the process. Improve being cleaner and quicker, tasty-er food etc.. Nice to know what they do in the field so we have some sort of chance of getting what we learn in the lab into the field to make improvements. 
> 
>> Focus groups discuss if that is how people cook and operate the stove(s). The overall performance is captured by the lab equipment so we get the performance during different cooking cycles. 
>> 
> Box 1) Fuel used
> Box 2) how the fuel is placed into the stove
> Box 3) The combustion chamber
> Box 4) Cooking utensils 
> Box 5) Cooking manipulating (stir frequency, flipping, covered or not)
> Box 6) Task completion 
> 
> Something like that? 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> We are all aware that WBT results are quite variable. There are several reasons, some conceptual and some mathematical and some operational. This has been confirmed by Marcello Gorritty in his 2014 review of more than 600 tests, and by Fabio Riva in 2016 who looked at the results and the statistical treatment of three test sets vs five. 
> 
> Agree  Agree - all so obvious from day one
> 
> 
>> 
>> >From what I hear on this list and other discussions, there seems to be a general feeling that stove tests are not reproducible‎ the way other device tests are. There is a low expectation that lab tests will match field performance. Strange.
> 
> Strange - I agree
> Control the variables….
> 
> 
> 
>> Why is the lab test not replicating what people do in the field? What is the point of a test that doesn’t? 
> 
> The lab only goes so far as to try to replicate what is done in the field. Then it is on its own to make things better than in the field. It it does not work on its own to find out what is needed to make a possible improvement to what is happening in the field - nothing changes. The lab is meaningless. We just waste more (donated) money - and time! 
> 
> Cecil and you are on the right tract IMO but we need to put the pieces together. Direct the money to the places where it is needed. Not to repeat studies.  
> 
> 
> Thanks
> Frank
> 
> 
> 
>> 
>> Regards 
>> Crispin
>> 
>> 
>> Dear Crispin,
>> 
>> I understand what you are saying but can that be done with these small ever changing little stoves? I can see it working for large systems with controlled fuel, controlled insulation for holding in the heat, controlled air intake etc. You can dial in the efficiency from calculations. But these small stoves have so many uncontrolled variables and we need a predicted curve as the flame goes from hot to smoldering etc. If we can’t get predictable efficiencies as the combustion goes through changes and are able to plot them and average under the curve - then we can’t use efficiencies. And it must be reproducible within limits if we want to be able to assign a stove a value. And with just the fuels being different (moisture, particle size, carbon densities etc) I don’t see that being done. Isn’t that the real problem we have been having for years? Trying to assign efficiency values when it can’t be done because of all the uncontrolled variables? 
>> 
>> And just putting stoves in the field and seeing what people like is no better. Thats what they have been doing for years already. If you find some dirty ones do you say they can’t use them? They need be replaced with clean ones - without having a system to list the clean ones they can pick from? 
>> 
>> I would be very surprised if we find a biomass that when tested in two stoves and one is shown to be twice as efficient to actually use half the fuel. We are talking the heat calculated from the fuel that goes into the water - correct? 
>> 
>> I’m thinking of a graph like below where we test many parameters of the biomass and plot them. Fixed carbon, moisture, carbon density, particle size, ash, particle shape, lipids & resins and a few more. The stove is fitted on the square where it works best. i have no idea how to do it but I am sure you and others do. The needed test data and method i have a lot figured out. We need a new approach. Regards
>> 
>> Frank
>> 
>> 
>> <iu.jpeg>
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Feb 5, 2017, at 10:47 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com <mailto:crispinpigott at outlook.com>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Dear Frank
>>> 
>>> Efficiency is important because it is related to the consumption of fuel. If a stove is twice as efficient it will use half the fuel.
>>> 
>>> In Bishkek at the moment the stove being field tested is three times as efficient as the baseline stove. Therefore it uses 1/3 of the fuel to deliver the same amount of energy (heat).
>>> 
>>> If two stoves with the same efficiency are rated differently, that will mislead the public. If a defective method used rates ten stoves as different when in fact they are the same, ‎the method has to go, not the mis-rated stoves.
>>> 
>>> Regards
>>> Crispin
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Dear Stovers,
>>> 
>>> Why is knowing the energy efficiency so important?
>>> 
>>> If we were to take a tin metal stove and provide a controlled heat source (oxygen-acetaline) and measure the energy efficiency at different, steady powers (say 1/4th, 1/2, 3/4 and full power) using the WBT as indicator this would not likely be a straight line - I am thinking. Then take a well insulated clay stove and the four points would likely be more of a straight line but all stoves would have a different curve.
>>> 
>>> Now add a controlled fuel like propane (with no O2 source) and now you add to the variables primary air and secondary air. Then switch the test to using biomass and more variables are added.
>>> 
>>> I’m thinking without a straight (or at least predicted) curve for the four power settings regarding energy efficiency that the test is meaningless. There is no good value for a stove for energy efficiency. No reason to go all out for that value.
>>> 
>>> I’m thinking a better approach is Fuel Classification vs Heat into the Pot. I think using a single type of biomass fuel we can predict the time it takes to boil the water. Use another type of fuel and it takes a little longer - every time.  The difference is not the energy in the biomass but more the Classification we give to the biomass. (still needing development). We test success using Cecil approach to find out how well it works - but know from lab study the biomass properties so to be able to compare and predict success in different locations.
>>> 
>>> Regards
>>> 
>>> Frank
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 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 <mailto:fShields at keithdaycompany.com>
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> franke at cruzio.com <mailto:franke at cruzio.com>
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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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 <mailto:fShields at keithdaycompany.com>
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> franke at cruzio.com <mailto:franke at cruzio.com>
>> 
>> 
>> 
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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 <mailto:fShields at keithdaycompany.com>
> 
> 
> 
> franke at cruzio.com <mailto:franke at cruzio.com>
> 
> 
> 
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> Stoves mailing list
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> for more Biomass Cooking Stoves,  News and Information see our web site:
> http://stoves.bioenergylists.org/
> 

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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