Improved Biomass Cooking Stoves

Dear Friends, Partners and Colleagues,

We are excited to announce that the Center for Entrepreneurship in International Health and Development (CEIHD) has changed its name to Impact Carbon!

CEIHD retains its mission, board of directors, projects, programs, grants, contracts, and legal status and is now legally “Doing Business As” (DBA) Impact Carbon. Our new website is under construction at http://www.impactcarbon.org.

This name change is a milestone marking the complete transition of CEIHD, formerly a research center at the University of California, Berkeley, with close ties to Dr. Kirk Smith’s Research Group, to an independent nonprofit organization focused on both carbon project development with social, health and environmental impact, and philanthropic field building and development.

Impact Carbon’s mission is to alleviate poverty and improve health and the environment through clean energy projects that reduce carbon emissions. We leverage carbon finance to develop and scale these projects, using the financial returns to benefit local partners and local people in the communities we serve. These projects have measurable health, social and environmental co-benefits, with emphasis on impact at scale.

Impact Carbon has a legacy of household energy expertise, successful project implementation, and a mission-driven commitment to social impact. Together with JP Morgan, Impact Carbon co-authored the pioneering Voluntary Gold Standard Cookstove Methodology and registered the first project that uses this methodology to generate rigorously verified carbon offsets with social co-benefits.

Impact Carbon is currently originating and developing new projects, raising investment and philanthropic support to finance new projects, and developing and providing project management services, tools and methods for the field. We have a pipeline of new projects in Asia, Africa and Latin America. With the experience gained on successful projects in Uganda, Kenya, Mali, Ghana, China and India, we seek to leverage carbon finance to rapidly scale cookstove and other micro-energy projects that provide a cost-effective opportunity to reduce carbon emissions and achieve development goals.

This is an exciting time for our organization, and we appreciate the contributions so many of you have made to help us reach this point. Thank you for your support through this transition and we look forward to continuing to work together!

Sincerely on behalf of the Impact Carbon Team,

Evan Haigler
Executive Director

For your records, please note our new contact information and email addresses:

182 2nd Street, Suite 400
San Francisco, CA 94105
+1 415 901 0112
www.impactcarbon.org

Caitlyn Toombs ctoombs@impactcarbon.org
Matt Evans mevans@impactcarbon.org
Evan Haigler ehaigler@impactcarbon.org
Admin admin@impactcarbon.org

Flame Speed Video
Alex English, October 6, 2009

This is a very short video which demonstrates the flame holding ability of a hole-in-thin-plate as Andrew described. The video also shows the nature of flame speed. For most of the video the flame is loosely attached to the outside of the combustion chamber. During this time the mix is fuel rich and has a slow flame speed slower than the rate at which it leaves the chamber. Near the end, the flame is able to rush back inside. I can control this with primary air or secondary air adjustments. Primary air controlling the rate of fuel gas production, secondary air supply providing oxygen for combustion and both influencing the resulting mix and its flame speed.

http://www.youtube.com/user/alexenglish11#play/all/uploads-all/0/eVsi2mS...

Michael N Trevor
Marshall Islands

Marshall Islands TLUD

I finally got to lite it up. Again as some of you know my interests are
varied and doubled up. I want to burn what people may be throwing away or
burning to add to green house gases and global warming. I am also interested
in Char and Terra Preta as well as atoll soils are regarded a notoriously
weak. For those not in the tropics my fuel here are chopped up pieces of
the mid ribs from coconut palms. These do take some time to gather dry and
chop but some place these are nearly ubiquitous as rice hulls or sugar cane
scraps and their price may be right for many $0.00.

Fuel

Loading Fuel
and Again

Trying to Lite Off
now its going

Over all the stove owes serious thanks to Paul Anderson, who kept after me
to make it, and Paal Wendelbo and Sai Bhasker. They all contributed ideas
for me to digest. To some I have joked this hydrid should be called the
Champion Pekope Smokeburner. I like the simplicity of Paals and Pauls
secondary air gap. I like Sai's idea of fins to promote swirling and
mixing. I worry a little about Pauls protruding handles so I changed that a
little. Paul uses a riser to promote draft so I kept that and put Sai's
twister fins inside it. .

Lighting it off was not so easy and took three attempts, and much more smoke
that I would have liked. The stem pieces were not catching fire well. I
finally got it going with some copra chips and small pieces of frond riblets
as well, with a dash of WD 40. Once it finally caught in about the 6th photo
the flames do appear to be curling around in the riser can, and in the 7th
the standing flame has a nice twisty shape. The burn was not as long as I
had hoped for as by say 35 minutes it was definitely dying down. The fuel
was quite chunky and not very tightly packed, probalby why. There also was
char material left in the bottom but I should have pulled the burner can a
few minutes earlier.

The reuseable mesh disk in the bottom of the burner, a tin can, and the
simple handles needing 4 small nuts bolts and washers is not very
technically advanced, meaning making multiple standby drop in burners is
"from the dump" cheap. The way I have suspended the burner by its handles in
notches in the outer cylinder is a step towards further simplicity and means
changing in and out additional fuel canisters is very simple. (Please though
not one make jokes about the sloppy mis-sized handles) A craftsman would
have each canister identical. The principle should be clear to all though.
Paal was much the source for the straight simple outer cylinder but the
hanging basket burner means no spacers or legs and only simple holes for air
entrance. I do see some areas for further testing here...the gap between the
inner and outer housing and the number and size of air holes allong the
bottom of the outer cylinder. I have never seen Rajan's stoves but a SS
outer cylinder for appearance, a cooler shell and longevity with a drop in
sacrificial burner might be worth considering.

Since Paul brought up longivity in TLUDS this morning, I do hope that my
aluminum outer cylinder will not get hot enough to have a problem. The
tincan liner simply means drink some more milk and make another one, not big
deal at all. It may not be a Stradavarus, really more of a washtub bass,
but now I can play with the tuning it and my fuels. The main thing is it did
work sort of and I believe a couple of my ideas have merit. Anyone out
there in the larger world who sees a use for any of this please help
yourselves. Also please pass along any suggestions. It is interesting the
the Legislature and hearing got in to fuels, solar and sustainable issues
today.

If Tom does not think this is to simplistic he might want to clean it up and
post it.

From the sand box in the Pacific,

Michael N Trevor..

Marshall Islands TLUD

Mahesh Yagnaraman
Ooorja First Energy

“Oorja” today represents a new way of cooking and has the potential to grow into a large,
successful business in India and globally. The initiative aims at creating a commercially
sustainable business, offering clean, safe and affordable energy solutions to identified
customers in both urban and rural households in developing countries."

More detail on the Oorja stove in The Hindu: A stove and a smokeless kitchen

http://stpenergy.blogspot.com/

Teaching Renewable Energies and Sustainability in the School of Diogo Vaz (São Tomé, Africa)

This work aims to show how sustainability and renewable energies could benefit a rural area of Africa (in São Tomé) by means of using solar energy and biogas. Applying these technologies requires ingeniousness and little founding, the favourable outcomes are becoming less dependent of fossil fuels (wood, coal and gasoline) while saving time and, more importantly, the forest. We have taught how to design, build and operate systems for cooking, lighting and water-heating that use renewable sources of energy.

From Magh CM woodgas good stove design

 

From Magh CM Woodgas Good Stove

From Magh CM Woodgas Good Stove

From Magh CM Production 8 to 18 sep09

From Magh CM adoption by community 18sep09

 

From Magh CM adoption by community 18sep09

Magh CM Woodgas Good Stove http://e-maghcm.blogspot.com/ designed recently is a very low cost TLUD stove meant for Common Man (CM). This can be produced by the local communities with less than 8 dollars (USD). Under Magh CM series I have designed many stoves / burners in the past. This stove design is one of the most acceptable stoves, as it has the options to run on forced air / natural draft. Most importantly the convenient charcoal / ash removal facility is created at the bottom, the grate can be simply lifted using a wire and immediately refilled for reuse. The additional window for secondary air in case of no power, the primary air control and the 12 V DC powered fan makes it like a geared vehicle for multiple options to control the heat / flame / updraft. Used the most commonly available oil tin can of 12 inches x 9 inches x 9 inches with a combustion chamber of 6 inches diameter and 9 inches height for the convenience of adoption for a family of 5 members cooking needs. The tin cans are easily available all over India. Posting here the pictures and the design for your valuable comments for improvement. I am thankful to all for your valuable suggestions in the past. This is the 30th Good Stove design of Avan and Magh series since last 4 years of my research and design. Happy to share that the people who have seen this stove have paid money in advance for having these Stoves. For more pictures and info see http://e-maghcm.blogspot.com/ and http://picasaweb.google.com/saibhaskar.gsbc

Christa Roth took these photos of Paal Wendelbo making a Peko Pe stove in the Aprovecho workshop during stove camp 2009. The stove, made from what was availble on site in about 2 hours, proved successful burning wood pellets and was awarded the prize for most interesting development.