[Stoves] Chimenys not the answer thus far. Re: LPG Watch - Update 2017-07-03 (Paul on Kirk Smith Comments on the India LPG)

[Nikhil Desai]

Crispin, Paul:

I submit the Khandelwal et al piece is ludicrous in arguing "chimneys were
exotic to India and imposed their own costs and mechanical difficulties." Too
sweeping a generalization. But hardly surprising coming from US academics.
After all, Meena Khandelwal is a "feminist anthropologist" of the
"post-colonial" ideological tract. (See her piece "Cooking with Firewood:
Deep Meaning and Environmental Materialities in a Globalized World" (Lewin
and Silverstein eds., Mapping Feminist Anthropology in Twenty First
Century".

Sometimes ideologues just do not make any practical sense. Sure, they may
provide insights and entertainment. But they are into cooking their
careers, not poor people's meals.

Even casual observation may suggest that there are many types of stoves
with many uses and many means of ventilation and reducing exposures. I have
heard some tales of badly functioning chimneys in the Indian "improved
cookstoves" (ICS) programs, but I don't know if the stove/chimney
combination was poorly designed - not matching the fuel quantity and
quality over a long enough period, or requiring operations the cook wasn't
used to. Dr. Karve or Anil here may have an opinion on that history.

The "issues" that need to be considered by those with responsibility for
design and implementation of contextual biomass stoves projects are not
just some aDALY quiche baked in Berkeley and winning claps and dollars from
those who know no better. Rather, they have to do with the overall "human
environment".

Human lungs are not oxidation machines, nor are cookstoves. The GBD/BAMG
crowd have not yet met my threshold of intellectual credibility.

I am far more attracted to the UIUC notion of collaborative action on Human
Environments <http://publish.illinois.edu/humanenvironments/>. Health is
not divisible. Air is not divisible. The entire notion of PM2.5 average
hourly emission rates having to do anything precise and specific on disease
incidence -- as BAMG folks pretend -- does not pass laugh test.

In the Indian context, I doubt it makes any sense for Berkeley academics to
rule out stoves with chimneys simply because a) various kinds of chimneys
have been used in India for decades, including under various stove
promotion programs, and b) physicists don't control residential design or
town planning.

Read Biomass Cookstoves: Opportunities for Learning and Collaboration
<http://www.inspirenetwork.org/mnre/home.htm> (MNRE), and an old FAO report
- Indian Improved Cookstoves: A compendium
<http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/AD585E/ad585e00.pdf>. Also see
GACC-commissioned India Cookstoves and Fuels Market Assessment
<http://cleancookstoves.org/resources_files/india-cookstove-and-fuels-market-assessment.pdf>
(2013),
which gives (for reasons  unclear to me) a ISO Tier 0-2 ratings for some
basic "improved cookstoves" with chimneys (slide 63).

The Dalberg report for GACC also estimated that "Within the ICS market,
estimated to be 9 million – 13 million stoves, nearly all are basic
improved chimney chulha stoves" (slide 67).

I think Crispin has a realistic view -- "A chulha with a chimney is hardly
a decent solution. What is odd however is that this approach is not sought
first, foremost and consistently."  In fact, that was the approach the
Indian stove designers seem to hve sought first, foremost and consistently.
These Berkeley latter-day saints are worshipping false gods.

I can imagine all kinds of "agenda", and I am glad that in offering
"incompetence" as an explanation, you are in tune with the dictum
attributed to Napoleon -- "Do not rush to ascribe to conspiracy that which
mere stupidity would suffice to explain."

One possibility is that in dictating "no stacking", "no chimneys", they are
acting like shills for sellers of stoves without chimneys or simply
stoves/fuel combination that have proven in many cases to lead to complete
disawoval of solid fuel use (e.g., LPG and electricity). Why would they
want to be so obsessed against "solid fuels"? The answer is simple -- Kirk
Smith used "solid fuels" as a convenient proxy for "dirty cooking". Once
you assume something to be evil, your research will naturally give you all
the results to confirm your assumptions.

It makes no sense, on scientific first principles, to rule out chimneys.
Unless you are maniacally opposed to "solid fuels". (Back 30 years ago I
researched on bans and "tall chimneys' as some of the policy options to
deal with SO2 emissions from power plants. I have some familiarity with air
dispersion models and design and implementation of air quality plans.)

Nikhil



On Jul 20, 2017, at 3:46 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

Dear Paul



I am interested in this comment:



>And simply putting chimneys onto plancha stoves (rocket or otherwise) has
not resolved the issues.

Which ‘issues’?



In Kenya there was an effort on tea estates to add chimneys to space
heating fires and they blocked completely in as little as two months due to
the terrible combustion efficiency. They didn’t have ‘combustion chambers’
in any real sense of the word. I describe such stoves as ‘a box with a
chimney’, borrowed from John Davies in Secunda.



A chulha with a chimney is hardly a decent solution. What is odd however is
that this approach is not sought first, foremost and consistently.



It smacks of incompetence or ‘an agenda’ where there shouldn’t be one. Dung
is a very good, clean-burning fuel when it is in the right combustion
environment. This is hardly a mystery or trade secret.



Regards

Crispin
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