[Stoves] A Laboratory Assessment of 120 Air Pollutant Emissions from Biomass and Fossil Fuel Cookstoves

[neiltm at uwclub.net]

On 10 Jun 2019 at 8:32, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott wrote:  

> I noticed that immediately. 
> 
> 
> 
> This helps kill the notion that kerosene is a "dirty fuel".  The
> root of the idea is a claim from a study in India where people use
> kerosene in a glass tumbler with a cloth wick hanging out of it, as
> a lamp. 
> 

I just read a lovely book entitled 'The boy who harnessed the wind' by 
William Kamkwamba about a lad, an autodidact at his local 'library' such 
as it was, who after his family nearly dying of famine in Malawi in 2001 
to 2002, successfully constructed a wind generator to light his family 
home out of what he found in an abandoned scrap yard, and with virtually 
no tools, and went on to construct a wind pump for irrigation, allowing 
for 2 maize crops per year for food security in the future.  The wind 
generator was his solution to the rag in a jar or tin of kero choking 
them in the dark evenings, making study after dark virtually impossible.  
Yet the book reveals his father, before becoming a farmer, as a trader 
used to enjoy the lager somewhat.  Which left me bewildered at the 
comparative price of western canned lager and hurricane lamps or basic 
chimneyed wick oil lamps!  There's something about the apparent 
impossibility of such relatively cheap old tech as this not being 
available, or considered unaffordable.  It is not as if his father, who 
made immense sacrifices (way beyond no lager) to try to afford his son 
schooling, and generally do his best to provide for his family was 
irresponsible or uncaring.  What am I not understanding?

> 
> 
> Incidentally, the pressure head made by our Stove List reader
> Sujatha is better than the Indian Roarer Head by some measure. It is
> not just the stove and the fuel that can be varied. Sujatha's burner
> head is the work of her father and it out-performs all competition.
> It is a carefully balanced piece of work. Installing that head on
> anyone's pressure stove improves the performance and reduces needed
> maintenance, and of course reduces emissions at the same time.  How
> it does that is a secret, but you can still get one for about a
> dollar. 
> 

Sold - where can I buy one please?  Seriously. My interest in stoves I 
know owes something to staying as a 5 year old with a Great Aunt in a 
cottage without any electricity or other 'services' and being allowed to 
light the circular wick chimneyed, blue flame oil stoves she cooked on.  
By the time I was 7 I got to play with her silent burner primus stove, 
and learned how to run it and maintain it properly.  So much more 
interesting than 'toys', or our electric cooker at home for that matter. 
I continued to prefer a roarer burner 'primus' to any other camp stove 
until Tom Reed introduced me to something more interesting, and have 
preferred TLUDs and volcano kettles ever since. 

> 
> 
> I remind you about the FSP stove from South Africa which has a novel
> burner that does not involved a standard pressure head. It has
> extremely low emissions as well. 
> 

I hadn't forgotten!  Something else I'd love to get my hands on.

Best wishes,   Neil Taylor