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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body bgcolor=white lang=EN-CA link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D;mso-fareast-language:EN-US'>Dear Paul<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D;mso-fareast-language:EN-US'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal>1. Important heating-stove and air quality work is being done in Mongolia. Congratulations to all who are involved. Seems the World Bank is the big backer. <span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Acknowledged. Thanks. The WB is not the biggest backer: Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) put up the largest lump of money which had a spend deadline of Sept 2013 so they dived in early. There was a lot of rushing as a result but it worked. The local government is also deeply committed as the city had the worst pollution of any capital city in the world. It is also the coldest capital and virtually everyone who looked at the problem said for years that the only solution was to stop people burning coal. I was brought in in 2007 to see what could be done with what they had. The result, a huge reduction in source pollution, is directly because of improved stoves, not fuel substitution or fuel banning (though a fuel ban came and went). There are still improvements that can be made. There is still big resistance to the idea that coal can be burned cleanly, just as there is resistance to the idea that wood can be virtually smokeless, but people are getting past that canard. Donors, not so much.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>The conclusions ‘about what is possible’ are not made by people who have looked at the solutions, only the problem. The whole concept of ‘dirty fuels’ and ‘dirty stoves’ is fatally flawed, as we have previously discussed on this list. Wood, coal and kerosene can be burned extraordinarily cleanly in the right devices. People often use the wrong devices.</span><br><br>2. Information flow about these efforts is horrible. Our ONLY source of info has been Crispin. THANKS!!!! Otherwise, this is almost off of the radar for Stoves discussions openly on the Internet. I searched for <o:p></o:p></p><blockquote style='margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt'><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D;mso-fareast-language:EN-US'>Ulaanbaatar Clean Air Project (UB-CAP) <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D;mso-fareast-language:EN-US'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>The project documents are available at the World Bank (a lot but well hidden including the AMHIB report), at MCC’s site and some from LBNL (Berkeley) which was the technical team for MCC. ADB has a few. The lab manual is out there somewhere. It has a lot in it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></blockquote><p class=MsoNormal>Very interesting that even Crispin (an adviser to the project, but about emissions and evidently not about stove design / manufacturing) does not have clear photos / tech drawings / and other info about the stoves themselves.<span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:36.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>My early involvement was heavily spent on stove design (and standards/protocols) to get the local manufacturers aware of what was possible in terms of emissions, to improve the heat exchanger efficiency and to get the ignition process to be far more rapid. Several innovations relating to heating stoves came from that. I worked for GIZ to create the GTZ7 series and to turn an existing GTZ5 into a TLUD which was quite successful. The GTZ7 stove (original version) drawings are on my website <a href="http://www.newdawnengineering.com/website/library/Stoves/gtz7/">here</a>. With various producers we at the lab (paid for by the Asian Development Bank – they also have documents) local producers created much better products and became better designers. I went through 4 generations of downdraft stove in collaboration with the SeTAR Centre at the Univ of Johannesburg, resulting in 2 patents. It is now BLDD6. There is a lot of local manufacturing capacity in Ulaanbaatar, underutilised in my opinion. Lots of technical skill. The training is good, the designs have been lacking.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Here is an improve ignition stove. Look at the top left screen, top line. That is the combustion chamber temperature. It has a phenomenal rise in the first minute. The dip is the switch over from wood to coal. On the top right is a window with an upward sloping line. That is the burn rate (mass change per minute). Dead straight line. Stack temp is constant at 200 C. Now <i>that</i> is a high performance stove. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><img border=0 width=453 height=318 id="Picture_x0020_1" src="cid:image002.jpg@01D09298.09C5B2E0"><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><br>3. The fuel is wet lignite with over 50% volatiles. FANTASTIC!!! TLUD stoves thrive on getting volatiles released from solid fuel, and THEN do the clean burning a few centimeters away!!!! <br><br><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:36.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>That is a very important aspect of getting a clean burning stove. It is hard to light semi-coked fuels. JICA (Japan) has been working in parallel with us on large burners >100kW in most cases and they long have advocated semi-coked coal but it is three times the price and they won’t make the fuel briquettes small enough to work properly on small burners. They should never be larger than 1/6<sup>th</sup> the diameter of the combustion chamber. Better 1/10<sup>th</sup>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:36.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:36.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>Germany usually pushes semi-coke as well because that is how they cleaned up their air in short order. But that is just putting low volatiles fuel into a poorly designed burner. Get a better burner and it is far better to use the cheap, hydrogen-rich fuels. People are poor and there is no gain from processing the fuels. There is a lot of energy lost in the process, pointlessly. Semi-coke is not nice to work with. More is needed to start, and more has to be added earlier in the burn than with other raw fuels. Loss upon loss. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><br>4. The stoves are heavy (high mass which is good for heating-stoves) with cast iron and ceramic (which is great for withstanding the higher temperatures of burning some (maybe much or all) of the final carbon (similar to coking coal once the volatiles are gone) at relatively high temperatures for the "typical sheet-metal TLUD stoves" for tropical climates.<br><br><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:36.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>The local traditional stoves are very light and made from 2mm sheet metal. They are very good wood stoves. They are (unmodified) lousy coal stoves. The mass is not as important as one might assume. I expect to see light, portable highly efficient, very low smoke coal stoves eventually. There is a stove development centre just being assembled now – a world first I think. It is next to the SEET Lab. It has an unusual operating mandate.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><br>5. The GACC and the EPA programs about cookstoves do not (I believe) include COAL-burning stoves. This needs to be corrected. I certainly hope it is resolved well before the November GACC Forum in Ghana. The success in Mongolia should be well documented and well disseminated.<span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:36.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>There is strong institutional resistance to burning coal, rooted in the US and EU. I have complained here about the failure to the Stove Comparison Chart to even list the stoves emerging from Mongolia which would be tucked into the bottom left corner of ‘Tier 4’ if they were. They are far better than nearly all wood stoves – out of necessity. North American coals are not often same the quality as the Mongolian (young) coals as far as domestic users are concerned. NA coals can have a lot of sulphur as well. It varies a lot. Nalaikh has 0.2%. It qualifies as ‘<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Very_low_sulphur_coal">Very Low Sulphur Coal</a>’ which is also available in Indonesia.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><br>Note: Fossil fuels increase the final CO2 in the atmosphere, but that CO2 is "acceptable" in some circles, such as by those who promote LPG, which is extremely clean burning (but is carbon positive). Allowing for that, the issue of CLEAN fuel is about other emissions (black carbon, methane, Particulate Matter PM, CO etc.). Therefore, there are NO DIRTY FUELS, but only DIRTY STOVES that cannot burn the fuels well. Kerosene (parafin) dripped into a TLUD or Rocket or other stove will give a dirty fire. That is a user error, not a stove error. Countless examples could be given of inappropriate burning of fuels. But what is important is that any one type of fuel can be cleanly burned in at least ONE design of stove. <br><br><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:36.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>Any problem caused by CO<sub>2</sub> in the atmosphere is not created by poor people cooking soup and heating their yurts. We should be realistic about these things. There is nothing else to burn and there is a huge local supply, and it goes to -50 C even in the city.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><br>Related: Even if we could have one of the Mongolian TLUD stoves available for viewing and testing, most certainly the same fuel (high volatile wet lignite) would be needed for any appropriate testing of the stove. Different types of coal would probably not burn as cleanly in that stove.<br><br><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:36.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>I expect that most of the stoves would run <i>better</i> on harder drier coal. The problem for UB is that most of the stoves were designed to run on something else, and they happen (by fluke mostly, not design) to be able to deal with the Nalaikh and Baganuur coals. Some that will pass (70 mg/MJnet) with Nalaikh will not pass with Baganuur which is younger and friable and somewhat like sheets of paper. If heated primary air is provided it gasses like crazy. As the City government tightened the emission targets, early winners failed subsequent tests largely because they would not listen to the design advice from the lab. There are too many people trying to provide all the air through the fuel – an approach that only works with particular coals of particular content and particular size. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:36.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:36.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'>People frequently blame the fuel for poor performance but it is really the mismatch. I built a J-Stove in 2007 for $20 to demonstrate totally smokeless burning in a downdraft burner (termed the Mongolian Reference Burner). It was used to show people that they should stop blaming the fuel and just build a stove that worked properly using the available fuel. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><br>6. We (the collective "we the Stovers") could certainly benefit from further information from Mongolia. I suspect that a Chinese-speaking American engineer-type person could greatly assist with this. I am wondering how much the Mongolian advancement is already being introduced into northern China. Or is there a "not invented here" barrier to the spread of the progress?<br><br><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Not invented here is yet more different from ‘invented in Mongolia’. The problem is real. We need to get the stove development centre going. A lot will come from that. All the progress made so far has been too unpredictable and chancy. Much more effort is needed on optimising the ignition and refuelling methods. TLUDs are not good for refuelling and people don’t like that. It is a temporary solution. The water heating low pressure boilers will create a lot of opportunity because they are large investments that leave some room for advanced technologies. We will try to make stoves that generate 2 kW of electricity too. I feel we can get the fuel consumption down by 40%. There is a lot going on. It is unfortunate so many have vilified the fuel and preconceived the solutions. As you can tell by now, the locals are not listening much and have largely solved the problem.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Incidentally, when you see the stoves and get drawings, don’t assume <i>anything</i> about the ability of any stove to burn a different fuel. It is very difficult to know in advance, though we can usually tell what a bad stove will look like. Good and very good ones are more by chance because the fundamentals of combustion and fuel evolution are still estimated by guess and by golly. I don’t think one manufacturer has a decent test facility. And even if they do, what is the protocol?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>It is important to consider that virtually no European, Indian, Chinese or Nordic stove will meet the very tight performance demands of UB City. In the coming two years a new generation of cross draft stoves will emerge. Once lit, they produce virtually no smoke at all. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Here is an interesting photo:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><img border=0 width=453 height=101 id="Picture_x0020_2" src="cid:image006.jpg@01D09298.09C5B2E0"><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>On the left is Berkeley’s (LBNL) Dusttrak which was new and we calibrated it against the lab’s one. They agreed within a couple of micrograms/m<sup>3</sup>. The one on the left is drawing ambient air (see, no-pipe) and showing 195 micrograms per m<sup>3</sup> and the one on the right is connected to the stove on the test bed. The stove is literally cleaning the air that passes into it. A refuellable cross draft stove that runs long enough, will have net-negative PM emissions because they will only make smoke (from the wood) during ignition.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Then we will light them with gas! </span><span style='font-family:Wingdings;color:#1F497D'>J</span><span style='color:#1F497D'> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Regards<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Crispin<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></body></html>