[Stoves] Differences in stove testing

[Cecil Cook]

Fellow stovers - Tami, Ron, Crispin, Nikhil, et al,

As a physical science challenged social scientist, I still do not
quite get the difference between assessing the embodied heat content
in a left over mass of charcoal and adding it to the numerator as a
valued output versus subtracting it from ‎the denominator used to
calculate the system efficiency of a cook stove. If the cook values
the charcoal and uses it for some purpose then it constitutes a
legitimate output of a char making stove. It is for me as a layman
unfair to advantage char making stoves by adding char to the numerator
or disadvantage non-char making stoves by subtracting the energy
content from the denominator. These stoves are different and should
not be tested using a standard one size fits all testing protocol.

It is fundamentally foolish to‎ test char making cook stoves using an
efficiency equation that adds the heat value of left over char to the
numerator because it is a waste product. If the char has a current or
even an eventual economic value to the stove user then we can add an
adjustment for the fuel it will purchase and thereby reducing the
amount of fuel needed to cook a meal of a given size (which is the
primary interest of most cooks). The adjustment to my mind is economic
and does not increase the cooking efficiency of a char making stove
per se!

I obviously need intensive tutoring to grasp the intricacies of the
testing culture and conventions of physical scientists. Can a stove
testing cognoscenti someone please help me out of the wilderness.

In search of a practical path to the nirvana of perfect biomass stove tests,

CECook