[Stoves] Fuel qualities as the limiting factor, and getting rid of WBT (Was: Frank on helium surrogate)

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Ron

You trip yourself before the journey begins. You will have to ask a better question.

>What reason would a person promoting char-making stoves go to these two (who you aver are “on the right track” )

Industrial designers are trained and/or experienced n bringing together vast arrays of information and creating out of it a new, desirable product. They are generalists.  The same company that designed the Apple II and the mouse also designed stoves.

>… for guidance on a stove that is based on income generation and climate protection

Those are metrics that a customer may be interested. I believe that income can be generated creating charcoal while ‘doing something useful’ especially for small industrial applications of heat. I don not believe your plan for ‘climate protection’ is more than virtue signalling. I have already provided you the number twice so I won’t repeat it.

>…(as well as high Tier ratings for fuel savings and cleanliness, and possibly zero time in fuel preparation)?

Tiers should be created and maintained by the interested parties involved – meaning producers and consumers. The error being made is to put tiers into test methods and product standards (like the IWA). It is going to be a slow-moving disaster. Such tiers are never placed into the methods used to assess performance. Energy Star is one example. There are lots of others. Tiers are political decisions, test methods are scientific assessments methods.

Tier ratings for fuel efficiency and cleanliness are desirable. The test has the be created after the targets are established so a performance report is given with reasonable confidence. So far, that assurance is lacking. I am working on a proposal that considers the differences between labs (skills, equipment) and provides a result with a high confidence.

>More specifically, do you believe they have the first hand knowledge

No. They have to learn it. I once or twice to give an annual course in stove design to the Industrial Design students at the University of Johannesburg. A lot came out of it – largely that it is a lot harder to design a good stove than people guess it will be.

>…and are unbiased toward the char-making stove concept for which I need an Industrial designer?

There is no reason for someone to be ‘biased’ about char – report what you want as a product. Define the objectives.

What you seek, all these years, is something quote separate from a good char making design: you want a fictitious report of the stove’s cooking performance are will not consider that under-reporting the fuel consumption will be understood by the customer as misrepresentation.

The main mechanism for this misrepresentation is the WBT which does not report a number reflecting its fuel consumption. Until you address this squarely, you will be continuously frustrated by the gap between a WBT claim for fuel consumption and the actual consumption.

Let’s be clear – you want to consider char to be unburned fuel, giving the stove a ‘higher rating’, something also stated by the EPA, and then to bury the char in the ground. Well, you cannot credit a stove for ‘not using fuel’ because there is some char and then burying it because it will never be used as fuel. If it is buried it is not fuel. It is a waste of fuel. That waste has to be attached to the stove that wasted it.

Hiring an industrial designer will not change this.

If you want something to think about, consider a test method for Nurhuda’s new stove that both creates and burns char. I am interested how the char makers wish the fuel consumption to be calculated for the two sections of a contiguous test of both fuels.

Regards
Crispin

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