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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Dear Nikhil and Jiddu and all Testers<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">First, I agree with Nikhil: “</span>…some debates on efficiency are still pending, but let's keep the metrics debate separate from those on stove testing protocols.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">I think we have to carefully parse something that is being conflated. The quote from Bailis is the key, and the fuel consumption metric is the lock. The key opens the lock to reveal what is inside.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">This is quoting from Nikhil’s message of 24/06-2017 @ 02:10<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>“Rob Bailis et al. in 2007 (on WBT 3.0.0):”</i><i><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>"This modified version of the well-known Water Boiling Test (WBT) is a rough simulation of the cooking process that is intended to help stove designers understand
<span style="background:yellow;mso-highlight:yellow">how well energy is transferred</span> from the fuel to the cooking pot."<o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">The ‘efficiency’ metric is the calculated heat transfer efficiency, from the fire to the pot. It is
<b><i>not</i></b> a fuel consumption metric and never was from the moment the remaining char was ‘deducted’.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">If you have not been following the plot for the past 10 years, the issue is that the fuel efficiency and the heat transfer efficiency, for all intents and purposes, are the same
<b>if the device is <i>not</i> burning a solid fuel </b>save in very particular circumstances that almost never apply to small cooking stoves.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">When any device is burning a solid fuel, almost invariably there is a difference between what the fuel contains and what is being burned at any moment or overall. That is why you can find a char
product during the burn or remaining at the end, of virtually all solid fuel fires.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">The crafters of the WBT “fuel consumption” metric, in their innocence and ignorance, transferred the efficiency metric from a homogeneous, constant conditions combustion such as a power station or
an oil stove to a solid fuel burning appliance without considering that doing so creates a difference, a reporting error, between the fuel consumed and the fuel actually burned.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Now the most recent messages:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Nikhil wrote:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">“The more fundamental issue is, how did "fuel efficiency" become the performance metric in the first place,”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">‘Fuel efficiency’ was
<b>never ´the performance metric’ in the first or second or third or fourth place</b> when it comes to the WBT. My statement covers the 4 major versions of the WBT. The WBT never, ever, reported the fuel consumption if the fuel was wood. It takes the energy
theoretically (and not very accurately) released, and calculates the equivalent dry mass of ‘dry fuel’ that quantum of energy represents.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">This error, this mischaracterization, is fundamental. Calculating the energy released (badly or not) and then saying the ‘fuel consumption’ is directly related to that
<b>energy</b> number is fundamentally wrong if there is any char product. What happens to that char is irrelevant if it is not going back into the stove on the next burn. If that
<b>is</b> the case, the test should have been started with char from a previous equivalent burn. The WBT does not cater for this possibility.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">So, let us be as clear as Rob Bailis was in 2007: the WBT calculates the heat transfer efficiency,
<b>not</b> the fuel consumption <b>nor </b>the fuel efficiency <b>nor</b> the specific fuel consumption, not for cold start, not for hot start, and not for simmering.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">The fact that these metrics have been mis-named (because that is not what they report) is the fault of the creators of the spreadsheet, particularly v.2.0 (2003), 3.0 and 3.1. That means the Berkeley
students and Aprovecho who were paid to do it. Reading the story from Dean Still about what provoked the review of v2.0 shows that the outputs from WBT2.0 had reached the point of ridicule.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">The fact that the misrepresentation of the heat transfer numbers as somehow representing the fuel consumption, the fuel efficiency and the specific fuel consumption continue, is first the responsibility
of Aprovecho as the defacto custodian of the protocol for a long time, the GACC as the current custodian of the WBT 4.x, University of California, Berkeley, which contributed to all 3 versions and continues to use WBT 3.0, the PCIA and EPA which used v2.0,
v3.1 and v4.x, and the University of Colorado (UC) which used v2.0, v3.1 and for a while v4.x. After agreeing with what Prof Philip Lloyd then at the University of Cape Town called the WBT’s ‘irreproducible results’, UC then generated its own “enhanced precision”
version called the EPTP, which is the WBT with two additional conceptual errors that make the ‘fuel efficiency’ error even larger. I believe it is still used by Envirofit to mis-rate their current products. All of them continue to use these miscalculations
as representing what the metric names obviously indicate, but do not report.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Who has been fooled by this misrepresentation of the fuel consumption? The Gold Standard, for big money, the CDM carbon offset buyers which is to say the UNFCCC, then GIZ, GACC/UNF, Shell, DGIS,
USAID, US State Dept, Berkeley Air, Aprovecho, Nexant, Biolite, Burn Design Lab, EnterpriseWorks/VITA, Envirofit, and for a while, Prakti Design + GERES, the latter two having realised they were handed a stinker and abandoned it to create their own more realistic
tests. The number of individuals, governments and stove projects affected is far too long to list. ProBEC falls in between because they used the WBT for a while then departed (under David Hancock and yours truly) because of the errors in it. From that work
came (through GIZ) the creating of SeTAR and its heat transfer efficiency method, then the HTP. The CSI Test is the contextual test version of the HTP.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Normally, a scholarly review such as that performed by Penn Taylor (2008?) would be enough to sink the WBT protocol until it was corrected, revised, and externally reviewed. That this did not happen
is telling. Penn’s Masters thesis, which was defended and accepted, outlines in detail some serous errors in the protocol and he is the first person to offer a correction for ‘the ash problem’ (believe it or not, the WBT considers the mass of ash remaining
to be unburned charcoal which is, in turn, considered to be unburned raw fuel). His peer reviewed proposal to correct this problem is mathematically correct but has never been incorporated except by SeTAR and the CSA Method B415.1:2010. (There is an EPA heating
stove test that corrects for ash mass <i>and</i> char but in a completely different manner.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">My own reviews in 2007 (WBT3.1), 2008 (IWA) and 2009 (WBT 4.0) were ignored save for one public correction (to v3.1, 2007) by Nordica McCarty at Aprovecho which was reversed (without publicity) after
a few months. That correction was one of the few made in v4.0. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">The devastating reviews of WBT 4.2.3 by Zhang, Y
<i>et al</i> (2013/14) should have been enough to sink it yet again. Zhang shows clearly, unequivocally, that all three low power metrics in the WBT and in consequence, the IWA 2012:11 have no physical basis. These papers would in a normal world have forced
corrections (were the errors correctable) to the protocol and spreadsheet. Zhang’s experiment was replicated (which is the basis of good science) by Jim Jetter of the EPA. Rather than supporting the criticisms and demanding corrections, the EPA continues to
use and defend the WBT’s metrics including the ‘char deducted’ efficiency metric. Riva’s detailed analysis (2016/17) of the WBT’s statistical problems and Gorritty’s Monte Carlo evaluations (2013?) hammer 10 nails into the lid of the WBT’s coffin. They report
an inherent variability in the results or 50% or more. Obviously it cannot be used to place a stove with reasonable confidence on a performance tier.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Apparently no amount of debunking of the claims by the WBT will be sufficient to have the largely US-based supporters abandon this method. Not only has it been defended in the form of the barely
corrected v4.x (2009/11/12/13), it was injected without consultation into the IWA 2012:11 as the default test method, in spite of that self-same document requiring that all test methods have to expert, externally reviewed (which it would fail). So would the
CCT 2.0 which still contains the char energy error correction Nordica approved.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">At this point I have brought the two topics together again: the metric ‘fuel efficiency’ and the protocol. Why? Because the principal use of the protocol has been to make claims for fuel consumption
reductions, particularly in the case of the Gold Standard and CDM, for relative fuel consumption against a local measured or declared baseline.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">It is clear that the problem is caused by using the heat transfer efficiency (which is almost calculated correctly) to claim a fuel consumption rating, even by organisations which are supposed to
hand money from one bank account to another on the basis of measured fuel savings. The WBT doesn’t measure fuel consumption, it measures the heat transfer efficiency. Thank you Rob Bailis, for clarifying that point, 10 years ago.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">No WBT result should be accepted at face value; no WBT result should be believed until it has been recalculated using a corrected spreadsheet. To my knowledge, no such sheet exists because to do
so would require correcting several conceptual errors at the same time to produce valid claims.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">It has been said many times, including on this list, that some practitioners have been able to obtain good clusters of results while using the WBT protocol (largely attributable to using unrealistic
fuel plus great skill and constant attention). Multiple replications of an incorrect result do not fix inherent problems. The EPTP (which
<i>does</i> have less variability in the simmering results) gives an even less correct answer for the efficiency metric because the changes were made without reference to the conceptual framework of the test. The arbitrary change made in 1987 by Sam Baldwin
to the VITA test (removing the lid from the pots) was an attempt to reduce the variability in the low power efficiency results, for a conceptually defective metric (low power efficiency is not, in fact, reported). Imagine! Thirty years and still no corrections!<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Given the persistent and carefully detailed published criticisms of the WBT and its metrics from multiple authors in multiple countries for at least 10 years, informal and published, it is time to
disavow this test method and all things reported by it. It <i>certainly</i> should not be used to trade money for services rendered.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Sincerely<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Crispin<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">CC Neha Rao, Gold Standard<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-US">From:</span></b><span lang="EN-US"> Stoves [mailto:stoves-bounces@lists.bioenergylists.org]
<b>On Behalf Of </b>Nikhil Desai<br>
<b>Sent:</b> 24-Jun-17 01:32<br>
<br>
</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Jiddu: <br>
<br>
Thank you. <span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In a way, because "<span style="font-size:9.5pt">a stove optimised using the WBT protocol is almost certainly not optimised for field performance" that WBT needs to be junked collectively. Since there is no official group -- GACC is only
a UN Foundation project, does not even have the status of a legally distinct entity - this denouncement must come one at a time, such as from you and everybody else who thinks "WBT harms stove development in many more ways than we can imagine."<br>
<br>
To assign GACC a "responsibility" to do so is side-stepping the main issue -- there is NO legal basis for WBT as a testing protocol for cookstoves in the US, the home of UN Foundation. <br>
<br>
It is people who have chosen to be misled -- and to mislead others by pretending that somehow the WBT is an "industry standard" or an EPA-blessed standard in the US - who need to articulate whether or when GACC had misled them. <br>
<br>
GACC has no official standing of any kind. Nor does ARC or any other biomass cookstove organization I can think of. <br>
<br>
As usual, ready to be challenged and proven wrong. <br>
<br>
The more fundamental issue is, how did "fuel efficiency" become the performance metric in the first place, with such convoluted thinking of "fuel-free" (standardizing wood quality beyond contextual relevance), "cook-free" (standardizing the cook's operating
behavior, again beyond contextual relevance), and "food-free" (ignoring that the main cooking task is preparation of a variety of foods, which also varies contextually) mania? <br>
<br>
A few weeks ago I posted a reference to an ARC piece on such fuel-free, cook-free, food-free testing protocol that is its WBT. <br>
<br>
I see no reason for fuel efficiency - or for that matter PM2.5 hourly emission rates - to be a performance metric that any and all cook should bother about. There is no proof that these matter in any relevant manner. <br>
<br>
If I remember correctly, Paul Anderson called Jim Jetter's data on emissions composition "irrelevant". I agree, but then unless there is an "official" platform, who is to decide what is relevant? <br>
<br>
Neither EPA, nor WHO have jurisdiction or competence in the matters of cookstoves, emissions, fuel efficiency, or anything remotely connected to the ISO TC 285 exercise. This is all an academic junket. We first need to recognize the damage done over the last
six years by this distraction, for which GACC is hardly responsible. It began as an EPA game -- wild goose chase or a witch hunt, if you know what I mean by such code words - and the strategy was cast in stone before GACC appointed a new UN Foundation Executive
Director as its own "Chief Executive Officer". <br>
<br>
Just what legal standing CEO of a project has is questionable. I happen to be familiar with the legality of how a multilateral UN Partnership became an independent entity by means of a legal instrument, and know of similar transitions from a project to an entity
over the last 25 years. GACC has no legal existence, and it is not just a minor issue, quibbling over words. Yes, anybody can use any protocol for any performance metric, it is when such are enshrined in ISO "voluntary standards" that the fundamental scientific
vacuity of the metrics and the protocols must be questioned. </span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<br>
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Nikhil</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Georgia",serif">------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
Nikhil Desai</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif">(US +1) 202 568 5831</span><span style="font-family:"Georgia",serif"><br>
<i>Skype: nikhildesai888</i></span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">On Fri, Jun 23, 2017 at 5:25 AM, Jiddu alexander <<a href="mailto:san@nesware.net" target="_blank">san@nesware.net</a>> wrote:<o:p></o:p></p>
<blockquote style="border:none;border-left:solid #CCCCCC 1.0pt;padding:0cm 0cm 0cm 6.0pt;margin-left:4.8pt;margin-right:0cm">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt">Dear Nikhil,<br>
<br>
Any stove developer is entitled to use whatever performance testing protocol for their product development. However, the WBT has in my view been the standard (maybe less so since all the stovelist discussions). Most new players joining the field (funders, companies,
universities, etc.) will generally gravitate to using the WBT. This leads automatically to the fact that many stoves are being developed and optimised using the WBT protocol.<br>
<br>
My opinion is that a stove optimised using the WBT protocol is almost certainly not optimised for field performance, it has a random influence on field performance. Not only because of CO, PM or efficiency, also due to boiling and simmering phases. Further
more it contains bad science (of which simmering is a big part) that confuses scientists who come into the stove field.<br>
<br>
You mentioned:<br>
<br>
a) I see no reason to care if WBT is unreliable about efficiency and fuel<br>
savings. Has WBT use harmed anybody? I am still waiting for an answer.<br>
<br>
I think the WBT harms stove development in many more ways than we can imagine, partly as my opinion describes above.<br>
<br>
The GACC has a responsibility because so many players (th companies, funders, etc.) will follow their advice. I don't think a proper shift away from the WBT can be achieved without an official declaration by GACC.<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
Jiddu<br>
<br>
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