[Stoves] A call to stop using the WBT

[Andrew Heggie]

On 27 January 2018 at 16:14, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott
<crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:
> Dear Andrew
>
> Show me a cook who worries about the amount of energy released from a solid
> fuel when cooking, and not the amount of fuel. Just one.

I don't know anyone who cooks with solid fuel any more, when my mother
cooked on a coal fired range  the amount of coal used was incidental
as the range also provided space heating. Similarly I cook with
electricity and being far more affluent than people that cook with
biomass the cost of the electricity  never features in my mind when
deciding on a meal.

I can see where the fuel cost  is a significant part of income then it
will be a factor in a cook's decision but it will be cost not energy
that will be important.

> The amazing things about the WBT are the incompetence with which it was
> created and later, defended, and the effort put into not correcting it, but
> preserving it as a monument to...what exactly?

Pass, I haven't got past whether any of the protocols are relevant to
a cooking stove user
>
> Ron doesn't really want to preserve the WBT, he wants to rate stoves that
> have a fuel efficiency of 20% to be reported to be 40%.

Not so he just wants the portion of fuel used to be accounted, in the
same way the lpg used is calculated from what is left in the canister.
You appear to want all the energy available in the initial fuel to be
attributed to the cooking task.
>
> That fuel efficiency metric will be used to calculate the ‎reduction in the
> harvesting of unsustainably harvested forests by improved stoves accessing
> CDM funding. A stove that reduces fuel cutting by 1/2, Ron wants to be rated
> as reducing it by 3/4.

This is a non sequitur, I don't know what fuel wood harvesting is
likely to be unsustainable
>
> Do you, Andrew, think that making such a misrepresentation of consumption
> would be mischievous, or fair, to the funder of the avoidance unsustainable
> deforestation?

I think this is the nub, this testing is about attracting funding and
char making stoves feature in that, whether wood  harvesting is
sustainable or not is a separate matter. It's a simple matter to
calculate the costs in using a char making stove in that the wood
input results in managing the cooking task and producing the char
which may or may not have a value, this is separate from the  energy
consideration.

A similar argument raged in UK in the 60s over the use of linear
motors in maglev (magnetic levitation) trains, in fact the technology
is only now becoming mature but then  the argument was whether the
extra current required to raise the train was to be attributed to the
economy of the train or to the comfort and speed of the journey, it is
a pointless argument. Char making stoves are sui generis, it's up to
the cook to decide whether they prefer to use them for their low
particulate pollution, the residual char for its value or both. I
don't think this argument on testing protocols should be used  to
persuade some quango or charity to foist one sort of stove or the
other on users.

Whilst Xavier's argument  persuades me these protocols need addressing
your dwelling on the  negative energy in the retained char makes me
wonder that the existing test is in fact good enough.

Andrew