[Stoves] List of woods for TLUDs?

[Nikhil Desai]

Frank:

"It's past time we need to quantify the statements."

"If we don't quantify the statements it is all just years and years of more chitchat."

"But the first step is testing the parameters  of the fuel."

Amen. 

I think it was Cecil who complained about the cacophony back last August. 

My complaints about the dominant ideology of EPA, Berkeley, Gates gang at IHME, WHO, or Liverpool, Amory parade of epidemiologists go nowhere. But my primary point was the same as yours - it's past time we start quantifying the statements. With minimal assumptions needed to advance a hypothesis, a theory, a model; not to set out making a bang that media would propagate and funders will drop bigger grants for, then make all assumptions needed to prove a lie. 

Some of us relish concocted, utterly spurious and irrelevant pseudo-quantification inherent in this dominant ideology. That too only generates more chitchat and money from the masters of development aid. 

Other sources of money are now needed unless the dominant ideology of cocktail conversations and White House dinners with Leonard DeCarpio is forced to be oriented toward pleasing the cooks, not just making money in their name. 

Face it, we make money and need money too but we have been servile to this dominant ideology, having to please the paymasters so that real work gets done. 

Chitchat is absolutely necessary. We need to use different vocabulary - say, "modern cooking and heating" (should be clean and of any fuels, but not along the lines of what Kirk Smith may bless as "truly health protective," and certainly not as determined by hourly emission rates).

I have been dismissive of the obsessions with irrelevant performance metrics but I am inspired by some of you to judge that an alternative paradigm for what passes as "stove science" (though painfully too often as water boiling science) is possible. 

Stove science in and of or by itself is ineffective without the economics of fuels and cooking. Toward that end, may I describe your suggestion to quantify the statements, and determining the parameters if the fuel as "Fuel Characterization Studies"?

Such are needed for testing and quantifying different types stoves for user-relevant metrics. For specific geographic and demographic contexts. Enough of context-free, user-independent pronouncements that we have been waiting for five years or 35 years. 

Fuels first, stoves second, for the "specific cooking desired" (Todd) 

Nikhil

> On May 2, 2017, at 2:16 AM, Frank Shields <franke at cruzio.com> wrote:
> 
> Neil,q
> My point has always been that talk about ‘types of wood’, ‘low density materials’, ‘oily materials’, 'size of primary and secondary holes', 'requirement of fans', 'high ash' etc, etc are all a waste of time as it has been for years with us getting nowhere.  
> 
> Its past time we need to quantify the statements. Oily wood - mg oil per kg of wood; density in g/cc, size distribution and shape to determine void space for air movement. Volatile and fixed components, ash, moisture, etc. etc. 
> 
> Determining the above is the Test Package I talk about being used on different biomasses. I have done these type of tests for years.  It is about $150 for the package to get the results on a fuel.  I can also teach others how I suggest the testing is done. But that is just the beginning.
> 
> Then we work on a specific packed fuels. We need air flow and that is a combination of heat developed in the stove body and void space for air movement. That involves size and shape of fuels and carbon densities and packing densities (for batch systems). This part can get complicated. This I’m thinking can be done in a test chamber that all labs use to ‘compare’ packed fuels. 
> 
> Then we work on stoves and determine the best type of fuels for that stove and see what results they give in the test chamber. That so you can go into an area and test the available fuel in the test chamber and see what stoves can use that fuel. Something like that. But first step is testing the parameters of the fuel. 
> 
> All the talk of adjusting air holes and what size they should be seems to me to be pointless without a discussion of fuel packing and void space and other information regarding the fuel being used. If we don’t quantify the statements it is all just years and years of more chit-chat. 
> 
> Frank