[Stoves] Chinese stove photo sequence

[neiltm at uwclub.net]

On 28 Jan 2017 at 12:02, Todd Albi 
wrote:

> Neil is using an in-insulated TLUD, it appears he places fuel in horizontal
> layers, rather than inserting it vertically as design intention.  

Please can you reference 'design 
intention'?  These stoves came with no 
instructions as to how to use them 
whatsoever, and do not have to be used 
as TLUDs and therefore only will be if a 
stove user realises they can be.  I have 
tried stacking fuel vertically, but it is 
not how the fuel naturally wants to lie 
unless you cut pieces more or less the 
length of the depth of the pot.  If you 
chuck or place handfuls of short pieces 
into the stove and shake it to make it 
pack down, you get horizontal layering 
automatically with maybe the odd piece 
vertically alligned.

> Vertical
> insertion should not require reloading fuel bed for the minimalist cooking
> that stove was designed for (trekking stove).  We find stove operates more
> efficiently when loaded vertically.  

I'll revisit this then to see if I can bear 
this out.  How do you prepare found fuel 
for loading the trecking stove this way?

> Obviously the higher the moisture
> content of fuel, or humidity levels are going to impact combustion
> outcomes.
> 
> Generally speaking, an insulated natural draft TLUD will handle damper fuel
> more efficiently than an uninsulated TLUD.  As well as an insulated fan
> TLUD is going to produce less char than a natural draft TLUD, due to
> greater secondary mixing.  Our stoves with identical sized combustion
> chambers that produce more char are less efficient transferring heat to pot.
> 
> All of our low mass insulated gasifier models can be used with damper fuel,
> however the higher the moisture content, impurities in fuel, or humidity
> are going to all impact emissions escaping from stack or combustion
> chamber.  We can cook with green fuel, however now we have smoke.  That is
> unpreventable when using high moisture content fuel in a simple cook stove
> design.
> 

Except I would claim with my bottom 
wet layer.  If you look at my photos of 
that stage, the flame was so invisible in 
ambient light I had to shield the light 
for the camera to pick it up, suggesting 
a very clean burn.  There was no visible 
smoke from that part of the burn.  Nor 
when inserting some wet wood in with 
the dry higher up in the batch loading.  
In fact the most smoke I get is with 
completely dry wood, straight from the 
top of our CH boiler. It only tended to 
be the fan stoves that would smoke like 
crazy on wet wood while maintaining a 
flame, whereas the ND simply turns 
down and only really smokes if it goes 
out altogether of course.

Neil Taylor