[Stoves] Toward sensible performance metrics (From Irrelevant lab testing - for what purpose?)

[nari phaltan]

Dear Nikhil and others. You might like to read my article on Roadmap for
Rural India. This is in line with your draft and tells how energies should
be provided for rural areas. www.nariphaltan.org/roadmap.pdf

All the best.

Anil

Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI)
Tambmal, Phaltan-Lonand Road
P.O.Box 44
Phaltan-415523, Maharashtra, India
Ph:+91-9168937964
e-mail:nariphaltan at gmail.com
           nariphaltan at nariphaltan.org

http://www.nariphaltan.org

http://nariphaltan.org/about-2/awards/  Awards for NARI staff
http://nariphaltan.org/nari-in-press/  NARI in press


On Sun, Jun 4, 2017 at 11:19 PM, Nikhil Desai <pienergy2008 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Tom:
>
> 1. Thank you so much. I will try. I had met Dean Still in the Fall of
> 2008, and thought of visiting ARC.
>
> You are correct, I have not observed stove testing you describe, just
> learned it from pictures. But I am not sure what I would gain except
> hobnobbing with techies - a favorite pastime of mine - and a privilege to
> boast.
>
> 2. As you know, I have no faith in the performance metrics put forth
> before ISO TC 285. I cannot tell what they can be shown to achieve any time
> soon, and the problem of improved wood stove adoption seems to have been
> neglected.
>
>
>    - Please tell me -- What makes these performance metrics necessary to
>    create a usable stove? Is not "usability" of a stove context-dependent? Are
>    there not large variations across lands and over time in air quality,
>    fuel/food access and price, cooking preferences, baseline nutrition and
>    health care status? (Ron might assert that no such variation is published
>    in peer-reviewed journals, so it must not exist.)
>    - Why didn't we ever ask what a stove is and how it functions, before
>    jumping to conclusion that a Three Stone Fire (TSF) is the baseline for
>    some 600 million households, has been so for 50 or 100 years, and must be
>    replaced by a portable combustion device that pleases physicists boiling
>    water? What about in-situ stoves, commercial stoves, for different kinds of
>    woods and other solid fuels? There is a centuries old tradition in India of
>    building homes and stoves, and Cecil points out such traditions exist
>    around the world. Just what made us think we can come up with miracle
>    portable stoves?
>    - Since you press me - I don't see this list as an appropriate forum
>    to advance my ideas - I attach a piece from December 2012. I haven't
>    re-read it, and may no longer agree with all I said then. At the time, I
>    still thought the Lima Agreement was a good beginning and that a
>    combination of the usual performance metrics and some qualitative
>    indicators could help design usable biomass stoves. I used the term "modern
>    cooking", dismissing the terms "Improved Woodstoves" and "Advanced  Biomass
>    Stoves". (I am always fond of charcoal and was taken in by Gelfuel some 15
>    years back.)
>    - I think the work Crispin and Cecil had been involved in -- the ESMAP
>    project in Indonesia -- has answered most of my questions about how to go
>    about testing and designing biomass stoves appropriate to the context; see
>    here
>    <https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/24257/Toward0univers0ean0stove0initiative.pdf>
>    and here
>    <https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/25129/108734-BRI-PUBLIC-ADD-SERIES-MARK-Virtual-coll-KNOWLEDGE-NOTE.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y>.
>    I don't care for the "results" sought or to be quantified, and I have not
>    read the details of measurements. But this does appear to be the
>    appropriate paradigm to pursue. Who knows, even WHO may learn something.
>
> 3.   I generally like to think of a "cooking problem" or more broadly a
> "household energy" problem. All too often, discussions on "household
> energy" quickly deteriorated into shouting matches about efficient
> woodstoves and saving forests, climate, women, children and blaming men for
> not forking out money. I did make some efforts to get GEF funding for
> "improved stoves" and biogas investments in a Sub-Saharan African country,
> and know some "household energy" projects and multi-fuel household energy
> models (Indonesia, Ethiopia). Stoves for solid fuels interested me for
> charcoal stoves and wood mtads,but I personally won't bother with funding
> for "stoves" projects. Up in Smoke was a good reality check.
>
> 4. As for testing protocols, I first analyzed different approaches back in
> 1983 as a research assistant to Fernando Manibog, whose review of Improved
> Cookstove Programs (Annual Review of Energy 1984) still remains valid.
> Xavier and Crispin have given enough reason to dump WBT, and I don't know
> why ARC claims to "provide an ISO certificate of Tier performance
> ratings." <http://aprovecho.org/portfolio-item/stove-testing/> As far as
> I can tell, ISO tiers are still under development and not incorporated in
> US law or any other law. Maybe Dean can tell us how ARC was designated as
> an ISO stove testing facility in US and by whom.
>
> 5. I am sorry you see my posts as insulting. I thought insults apply to
> persons, not to their work. Otherwise I could as well take offense that
> instead of challenging the substance of my opinions, you insult me by
> calling them rant.
>
> Don't worry. As my dear friend Willem Floor -- from whom I learned much
> about bioenergy generally and also about stoves, and wood/charcoal markets
> in Africa, where I worked later and helped promote some stove projects -
> once told me, "If you meant to give offense, please keep it, for I ain't
> taking any."
>
> If challenging the theology of physicists about doing energy balances to
> save forests, climate, lives, and dignity offends some people, I hope they
> would come forth and admit the bankruptcy of the theory of biomass stoves
> promotion that has been shopped around for decades now, with very little to
> show in return but inflated egos and a pile of published papers.
>
> I put Mr. Jetter's papers in that pile. I too was at first - some 15 years
> ago? - enamored of PCIA approach to reviving "biomass stoves" work. And
> even the origins of GACC. But as I discovered over the past two years, it
> is the same old, same old. If there is no direct causality from emission
> rates to disease incidence, why bother with comparative stove emission
> rates with stoves and fuels already fixed?
>
> I will get around to writing out my suggestions for what more needs to be
> done. You are grossly mistaken in suggesting that I have no respect for
> anything that has been done under the aegis of the "improved woodstoves"
> enterprise.  I happen to respect quite a few people - even if I sharply
> disagree with their work and their views - and you know you are one of
> them.
>
> I do write in a disagreeable style. Forgive me.
>
> Now go ahead and trash my "polished" writing in the attached.
>
> Nikhil
>
>
>
> Nikhil Desai
> +91 909 995 2080 <+91%2090999%2052080>
> Skype: nikhildesai888
>
> On Jun 1, 2017, at 8:37 PM, "Tom Miles" <tmiles at trmiles.com> wrote:
>
> 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 <(541)%20767-0287>
> Email: info at aprovecho.org
>
> http://aprovecho.org/
>
>
>
> Tom
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Nikhil Desai [mailto:pienergy2008 at gmail.com
> <pienergy2008 at gmail.com>]
> *Sent:* Thursday, June 01, 2017 5:39 AM
> *To:* Discussion of biomass cooking stoves <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.o
> rg>
> *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, "Fuel use and emissions performance of fifty cooking stoves
> in the laboratory and related benchmarks of performance
> <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0973082610000311> Energy
> for Sustainable Development, Volume 14, Issue 3, September 2010, Pages
> 161–171. 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, t*he
> 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
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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