[Stoves] Irrelevant lab testing - for what purpose?

[Tom Miles]

Nikhil,

 

The best way for you to show us all how you would develop clean, efficient, stoves is to attend the Aprovecho Stove Camp, which is usually held the second week of August. This year’s camp hasn’t been announced yet but it would be Aug 14-18 this year. You can select your fuels, use their equipment to set up your own test apparatus, and learn how they simulate cooking. (You don’t appear to be familiar with the controlled cooking tests or the kitchen performance tests.) You can use their emission monitoring equipment. Engineers and technicians from all over the world would help you conduct your tests. Then you can compare the results of your -  yet undisclosed – methods with the water boiling and controlled cooking tests that they conduct, or show us why lab tests are not useful. Before you go, study the methods they use, and compare notes with Crispin and others on alternative methods. You could have a “bake off” comparing methods.   

 

For several months my discussion list has tolerated your insults and your whining and complaining about what we have done in the past. Now it is your opportunity to show us what you would do differently, how, and with what desired outcome.  

 

Contact Dean Still at: 

Aprovecho Research Center

PO Box 1175
Cottage Grove, OR 97424, USA
Administration: 541-767-0287
Email: info at aprovecho.org <mailto:info at aprovecho.org> 

http://aprovecho.org/

 

Tom

 

 

From: Nikhil Desai [mailto:pienergy2008 at gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, June 01, 2017 5:39 AM
To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Cc: Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com>; Paul Anderson <psanders at ilstu.edu>; Jim Jetter <jetter.jim at epa.gov>; Tom Miles <tmiles at trmiles.com>
Subject: Irrelevant lab testing - for what purpose?

 

To continue in my criticism of WBT and energy efficiency as a performance metric.... 

I discovered a paper by Aprovecho folks - Nordica MacCarty, Dean Still and Damon Ogle,  <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0973082610000311> "Fuel use and emissions performance of fifty cooking stoves in the laboratory and related benchmarks of performance Energy for Sustainable Development, Volume 14, Issue 3, September 2010, Pages 161–171.  <http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.esd.2010.06.002> http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.esd.2010.06.002.

 

.. The authors claim in the Abstract: 

 

Performance of 50 different stove designs was investigated using the 2003 University of California-Berkeley (UCB) revised Water Boiling Test (WBT) Version 3.0 to compare the fuel use, carbon monoxide (CO) and particulate matter (PM) emissions produced. While these laboratory tests do not necessarily predict field performance for actual cooking, the elimination of variables such as fuel, tending, and moisture content, helps to isolate and compare the technical properties of stove design.

 

It stretches credulity that stove designs are tested on the basis of excluding fuel, tending, and moisture content. 

This is engineering madness. Standard fuel, standard pots, standard water.  No cook, just the theologians of thermodynamics.  I am surprised Tom Miles thinks I am crazy to call that the dominant paradigm of stovers needs to be shaken from the root to the skies. What there is to protect will stay, but WBT not only must go, all past results of WBT must be dumped as "technical error". 

It has been a technical terror. 

I can understand Aprovecho engineers' vested interests in a certain kind of "stoves ideology" but I wonder if they realize just how laughable they are to the world with statements like 

"From this data, it was possible to recommend benchmarks of improved cookstove performance. " and that 

 

'Five of the stoves presented here were also tested at the US EPA, with results agreeing within 20% or better on all fuel and emissions measures, suggesting standard evaluation at various locations is possible.

 

Probably doesn't matter. So long as EPA and Approvecho results coincide, their interests and ideological agenda will also coincide. All in the name of fact-free, cook-free science of cookstoves. 

Boil blood, not water. This whole storm of "standards" is a nightmare or a pleasant dream, take your pick. Emission rates and efficiency ratios have little to do with usefulness of a cookstove. 

Nikhil

 

 

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nikhil Desai

(India +91) 909 995 2080 <tel:+91%2090999%2052080> 
Skype: nikhildesai888

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