[Stoves] Fine Particulates from a Selection of Cookstoves

Sun Jun 4 11:56:20 CDT 2017

Quantifying improvements in the complicated environments of households is clearly a challenge but stovers on this list see improvements from their efforts which is why we keep working at it.      

If you weren’t around Europe and the US in the 1970s you wouldn’t appreciate how much wood stove and industrial emissions regulation has helped air quality and public health. Ask any asthmatic.  

We can blog all day but where are the suggestions for a path forward? What do you propose? Where is the data? What is the expected outcome? 

How can existing forums be used to raise the issues and propose solutions? Who are the peers who should review the process? If you were to pick a team who would they be? How are the peers different than those intimately involved in design, development, testing and policy who we see here, at Ethos, or in Warsaw?  

Crispin has made a start below.

Tom 

From: Stoves [mailto:stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Crispin Pemberton-Pigott
Sent: Thursday, June 01, 2017 1:18 PM
To: Stoves <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Fine Particulates from a Selection of Cookstoves

Dear Nikhil

I think the idea of a webinar on the subject is a great idea. What has been emerging on this list over the past few months is a much more professional look at what is needed in the servicing of the domestic energy sector. 

It is important to get straight what the problems and opportunities are, and what solutions can be implemented on what time scale. 

While you have made repeated mention of the health angle and the current hubris being based on the suspect work and methods of people you have personally know for years. That makes your perspective invaluable because no one else here has that, or chooses to remain silent. 

You were absent when I was making a very loud fuss about the sophomoric conceptual errors in the WBT and the refusal of Aprovecho and Berkeley (they were de facto in charge of it at the time. The result was resistance from the EPA (PCIA at the time) and the authors of course. After a purpose-convened conference in Seattle, the EPA relented, basically on the say-so of Kirk Smith who used as an escape route the fact that the WBT 3.1 had never been peer reviewed. That led to the development of WBT4.

It took a long time and WBT4.x has most of the original errors buried in the WBT sine 1985 so that cannot be called a success. 

You have had a lot more authority to challenge the IHME and aDALY (wild) estimates because you worked with this crowd and know that they themselves laugh‎ and chortle about how ridiculous the numbers are. 

Suppose we took a different tack this time: lay out the basic lessons in a series of topics and ‎post them here. Get volunteers to agree to provide input sections. 

Ask the EPA to host them under the Winrock label but require that you chair the events, or Harold Annegarn or someone with equal experience in the world of physical testing. 

If that doesn't appeal to them, ask the WB to host them. The C4D website can host the outputs. ‎With a proper review of how to get the health-related metrics identified, and what does and does not constitute a valid calculated number, we will save a lot of time and money. 

I think there has been enough demonstration that there are things seriously wrong with the concatenated steps that lead to the IMHE numbers to point to this need. 

I am not saying we‎ can cure the witchcraft of the aDALY business, but consider the alternative, using the WBT as an example. 

The WBT had irreproducible results and anointed stoves that failed to perform in the field anything ‎like they were claimed to have in the lab. No surprise there. 

The WBT4 process started off well, then a group from Aprovecho and Berkeley and the University of Colorado ‎went off on their own and produce a slightly updated version retaining nearly all the systematic errors of v3.1. Significantly, Kirk doesn't use it, presumably because it has not been peer reviewed and/or he did, and it is not fixed. Either way after all the shouting and rewriting was done, we as a stove community were no better off. Five years later Xavier is still trying to get the GACC to forswear it and admit that all the past test results were defective. 

Now what will happen if the health angle is not corrected on the first major repair job in a decade? We have very successfully brought large amounts of money into the domestic cooking and heating sector, internationally. How is it going to look if expert reviewers start digging into the swamp of aDALYs and IHME before we have a chance to drain it?

‎Surely there are legitimate ways of applying performance and stats to budgets legitimising stove programmes without just making things up? Of course there are. At present there is so much institutional risk in stove projects many of the big-ups shy away with vigour. They know the aDALY numbers are cooked up like a boiled ham. 

If we have to reconstruct the justifications from scratch and first principles, so be it. A good place to start is within our community of enthusiasts and servicing personnel. 

How about some more ideas? You should think about how you could train field investigators using webinars. 

Reg

Crispin 

‎

Crispin: 

I lecture you all the time "Do not rush to ascribe to conspiracy that which mere stupidity would suffice to explain." 

But in this instance, I smell a rat. There seems to be a disconnect between EPA stove testing and cooking. Because there is nobody from the "cooking" business that is engaged. 

This is so unlike anything I have ever observed in the past - from power plant and industrial boiler emissions regulations to even the residential wood heater regulations. As a regulator, EPA has to engage the industry it affects, understand the economic context of technology, evaluate control options that meet the basic "service standard" (certain type of steam, say) and justify them in terms of specific objective -- compliance with ambient air quality standards. 

Here what has happened is that a small junket has been started up by EPA for cookstove testing when it has no jurisdiction over cookstove regulation in its own country - US - leave alone the rest of the world. Nobody has required it to engage the stove designers and users around the world. There is no service standard - there cannot be one for some "integrated" cooking solution. (There can be some for rice cooker, tortilla maker, griddle, grill, whatever; you have those for gas and electric appliances, which are NOT regulated by EPA by the way.) 

Yes, a research junket with no sensible oversight. 

But not without a purpose. The purpose is to acquire -- or pretend to acquire -- enough emissions data to go on justifying the preference for LPG and electricity. First begin by condemning solid fuels as "dirty fuels", then keep testing new biomass stoves so they can be dismissed as "not truly health protective" (Kirk Smith's mantra). 

Of course, nobody is going to admit in public that this is the intent. Perhaps it is not, it is only the impact. 

I too favor expansion of access to gas and electricity - and solar, biogas, as also biomass combustion devices that are "clean enough" and USABLE - but I don't need this raft of irrelevant data on particle size. 

EPA and its contractor can go on doing what they wish, but we should recognize this drama for what it is -- a research junket. 

Not everything that goes on in the name of science qualifies to be treated as such. And certainly not something that pretends to be science in service of public. I would be hard pressed to accept that EPA research junket - in collaboration with its contractors in Berkeley and in Approvecho - has done much for the 5 billion poor (cohorts past and future) that have subjected to IHME's Killing by Assumption. 

If this is too opaque for people to understand, you and I need to design a webinar on designing new clothes for the emperor and the queens. 

Nikhil

------------------------

Nikhil Desai

(India +91)909 995 2080
Skype: nikhildesai888

On Thu, Jun 1, 2017 at 10:59 AM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com <mailto:crispinpigott at outlook.com> > wrote:

Dear Paul

I generally concur with your comments about the selection. Jim, I have a suggestion: how about asking the stovers for recommendations for models and then do another set of tests?

I am particularly pleased to see some parallel tests using far more realistic fuel moisture choices. I don't believe anything about emissions from a stove using fuel with 5% a moisture content. ‎Fuel moisture has a powerful influence on emissions of PM and VOC's. 

I would recommend stoves that have had at least 1000 sales on a commercial basis (excludes stoves bought by an org and given away) and those which are seen by 'us' to be representative of the state of the art. 

Included in that category are the TLUD made by Sujatha and one or more models from Prime and Dr Nurhuda. 

Regards 

Crispin 

Stovers,

I previously asked:
On 5/31/2017 11:22 AM, Paul Anderson wrote:

11 fuel-stove combinations covering a variety of fuels and different stoves are investigated for UFP emissions and PNSD. 

I am interested in knowing if those 11 included what I consider to be the better versions of TLUD stoves, both natural draft and forced air.  

I have now seen the article, and provide comments ABOUT THE STOVES SELECTED.   This is NOT about the quality of measurements, etc.

1.  For purposes of review comments, I am allowed to provide some selected information from  the publication:

**********************************
Of interest (to me) are numbers 4, 6, 10, and 11.   
 #4.  Stove Tec Prototype.  Lousy choice to be representing TLUD-FA stoves.  This is old by TLUD standards.
It was tested years ago with great results.   Only one unit ever made, as far as I know..   

#6.  Belonio TLUD-FA (or FD) with rice husk fuel.  Poor choice.  Again, an older stove that did not go into 
[much] production, and using a non-woody fuel when all other comparisons of solid fuels are wood.

#10.  Although Philips, it is a rocket stove, and not of main interest.
#12.   The Philips high-turbulance fan-jet stove.   This is NOT designed for nor used in TLUD fashion.   

Net result:  This research tells us information that is of very little use and is not representative of the state of 
the art of TLUD stoves, whether FA or ND.

***************************************
Crispin also guided me to another study by essentially the same group:
"Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Fine Particulate Matter Emitted
from Burning Kerosene, Liquid Petroleum Gas, and Wood Fuels in
Household Cookstoves"
Guofeng Shen,† William Preston,‡ Seth M. Ebersviller,§ Craig Williams,‡ Jerroll W. Faircloth,∥
James J. Jetter,*,⊥ and Michael D. Hays⊥

The solid-fuel (wood) stoves in this study were
"(iii) wood (10 and 30% moisture content on a wet basis) in a forced-draft fan stove, and (iv) wood
in a natural-draft rocket cookstove."

Rockets did not do well (and not an issue with me).   But the "forced-draft fan stove" that also was not optimal is 
of interest to me.   What TLUD-FA stove did they choose?   An "Eco-chula XXL" which is seen at:
http://www.ecochula.co.in/xxl.html

I my opinion, that was a terrible choice, (large diameter gives worse emissions, and is not representative of household cooking) and therefore the TLUD-FA  results of this study are not representative.   From the TLUD perspective, this study only contributed to the PERCEPTION (erroneous in my opinion) that TLUD-FA stoves are not very good.   

The Mimi Moto TLUD-FA has been available since 2015.   That would have been a much better choice.   
And certainly the Champion TLUD-ND  (available since about 2008) is the best choice for that category stove, but is never included.   

FYI, Except for the BEIA project in Uganda with the Mwoto TLUD-ND, I have never been asked about what TLUD stoves might best be include in testing or in research projects.    Never.      Not by EPA or CSU or Aprovecho or Berkeley or D-Lab or anyone else.    

Paul

Doc  /  Dr TLUD  /  Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD
Email:  psanders at ilstu.edu <mailto:psanders at ilstu.edu> 
Skype:   paultlud    Phone: +1-309-452-7072 <tel:(309)%20452-7072> 
Website:  www.drtlud.com <http://www.drtlud.com> 

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