<html><head></head><body lang="en-US" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: initial;"> <div style="width: 100%; font-size: initial; font-family: Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); text-align: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Here is my response to Nikhil post about a stove insert costing $1 that reduces fuel consumption by +/- 60% and fits inside traditional clay stoves and/or 3 stone fires. </div><div style="width: 100%; font-size: initial; font-family: Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); text-align: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></div><div style="width: 100%; font-size: initial; font-family: Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); text-align: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A complete description of the metal insert is provided in the November issue of Solutions from the Un of Iowa. </div><div style="width: 100%; font-size: initial; font-family: Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); text-align: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></div><div style="width: 100%; font-size: initial; font-family: Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); text-align: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">I am interested to hear about other examples of incrementally improved traditional stoves like the Keren traditional stove which Crispin and GERES have developed in Java which embodies 4 different innovations:</div><div style="width: 100%; font-size: initial; font-family: Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); text-align: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><ol><li><span style="font-size: initial; text-align: initial; line-height: initial;">a metal or ceramic grate to insure primary air flow from beneath the burning wood,</span></li><li><span style="font-size: initial; text-align: initial; line-height: initial;">relocation of multiple air holes to one air hole opposite the mouth of the stove, </span></li><li><span style="font-size: initial; text-align: initial; line-height: initial;">much lower and flatter pot rests to reduce excess air flow through the combustion chamber, </span></li><li><span style="font-size: initial; text-align: initial; line-height: initial;">Introduction of an ignition tube, pipe or cone to reduce emissions and accelerate the lighting of fires.</span></li></ol></div> <div style="width: 100%; font-size: initial; font-family: Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); text-align: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">My personal interest is to learn about other examples where traditional stoves have been technically tweaked at very low costs which are affordable by most householders. As a result of the higher performance of a radically improved traditional stove from the perspective of stove users and buyers, the benefit delivered simply over power the natural of the stove users/buyer's resistance to change and rapidly result in spontaneous dissemination and widespread acceptance by stove users with little or no subsidy from government programs or inducement by stove promoting and disseminating NGO's. </div><div style="width: 100%; font-size: initial; font-family: Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); text-align: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></div><div style="width: 100%; font-size: initial; font-family: Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); text-align: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">To some extent that is the story of the Kenyan Ceramic (lined) Jiko (CKJ) and now it seems Crispin is tweaking the traditional stove in villages in impoverished rural communities in Kyrgyzstan to create stoves which are locally produced by metal workers that perform so well according to local standards that these radically higher performance stoves are now demanded by the rural buyers. The cooks and operators are demanding that the stove makers produce these outwardly traditional looking stoves that </div><div style="width: 100%; font-size: initial; font-family: Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); text-align: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><ol><li><span style="font-size: initial; text-align: initial; line-height: initial;">save so much coal, </span></li><li><span style="font-size: initial; text-align: initial; line-height: initial;">do not leak smoke into rhe houses, and </span></li><li><span style="font-size: initial; text-align: initial; line-height: initial;">only have to be fueled two times in 24 hours. </span></li></ol></div><div style="width: 100%; font-size: initial; font-family: Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); text-align: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">I am pretty sure there are similar success stories out there documenting other instances of spontaneous stove technology transfer and almost instant "instituitionalization" of affordable, unsubsidized, radically higher performance locally produced stoves??</div><div style="width: 100%; font-size: initial; font-family: Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); text-align: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></div><div style="width: 100%; font-size: initial; font-family: Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); text-align: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Increase my amazement with other stories about the nearly spontaneous acceptance of radically improved traditional stoves that happens inside the context of the traditional stove system and culture. </div><div style="width: 100%; font-size: initial; font-family: Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); text-align: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></div><div style="width: 100%; font-size: initial; font-family: Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); text-align: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Cecil the Cook</div><div style="width: 100%; font-size: initial; font-family: Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); text-align: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></div> <div style="font-size: initial; font-family: Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); text-align: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone</div><div style="font-size: initial; font-family: Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); text-align: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></div><div id="_originalContent" style=""><div style="white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;">Dear Nikhil et al,</div><div style="white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><br></div><div style="white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;">Nikhil, thank you for this connection to a stove aficionado at Iowa State Un. </div><div style="white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><br></div><div style="white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;">Can we see what this insert looks like? Have you seen it? Is his claim of 60% savings possible? I think such savings are possible. What did we and GERES get with the improved Karen stove in Indonesia? </div><div style="white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><br></div><div style="white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;">As a development principle I support the idea of an in situ approach to stove technology innovation that uses the traditional stove as a starting point and then gradually introduces small changes in its design based on real stove science.</div><div style="white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><br></div><div style="white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;">I also agree with a self help approach that sees technology change as an opportunity for indigenous stove makers to learn how to fabricate better performing stoves and also to learn about and internalize the scientific reasons - translated into the ethnoscience of the local culture - which makes sense of why and how these small changes radically improve the performance of culturally and environmentally situated "old faithful" traditional stoves </div><div style="white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><br></div><div style="white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;">I realize that technology mostly changes slowly by making small incremental improvements. But occasionally it changes drastically because of the arrival of totally new technologies that are so powerfully improved that the new technos rapidly replaces the traditional technos. Many social, economic, political, cultural, and environmental fasctors shape the process by which both big and little changes in technology take place. </div><div style="white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><br></div><div style="white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;">My optimization strategy is to figure out what are the biggest progressive, easily affordable, and sustainable changes in stove technos that a stove-operator-fuel system change program can introduce into a particular stove using community with the smallest investment of scarce resources for the purpose of promoting the greatest amount of change (improvement) in the efficiency and emission performance of an established traditional stove-fuel-cuisine-operator-fabricator-seller system's.</div><div style="white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><br></div><div style="white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;">Therefore, I am interested to see if the combustion enhancing metal grate insert is spontaneously and rapidly adopted by the stove using community for which it was developed and to which it was offered as a stand alone improvement. If the stove technos innovation is right and it manages - for the right price or additional self help labour cost - to optimize enough of the locally important and culturally recognized stove performance parameters the in my experience such a stove innovation should spontaneously spread like wildfire!</div><div style="white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><br></div><div style="white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;">It occurs to me that we can learn a lot if we look around the world of "traditional" stoves to find areas and communities where different types of stove technology innovations - once introduced - have spontaneously and rapidly spread with little or no outside agent promoting or subsidizing their adoption and spread. What are the "necessary and sufficient" conditions required to trigger a rapid pocess of spontaneous adoption of a range of simple to more complex innovstions in stove technos? </div><div style="white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><br></div><div style="white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;">Here is Nikhil's link to an intervention reaching 2000 households in village India with locally fabricated metal grates inserted into otherwise unchanged traditional mud stoves. Perhaps we should encourage more of these types of experiments and search for additional examples of spontaneous and rapid dissemination of stove inovations around the world??</div><div style="white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><br></div><div style="white-space:pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;">https://now.uiowa.edu/2015/12/small-metal-grate-makes-big-impact-environment-health</div><div><br></div>In search and service,<div>Cecil<br><div style="color: rgb(38, 38, 38); font-family: Calibri, 'Slate Pro', sans-serif, sans-serif;">Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.</div></div>
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