Stove Designs

Bjarne Laustsen, January 2010, update November, 2010

Jiko Mbono is Swahili for Jatropha Stove.

This is an early version of the stove, it is now using That stove was an early prototype. It is no longer using whole seeds but instead pellets made from the pulp left over after the pressing of jatropha oil, although there is only one pelletization facility for this in Tanzania and no distribution arrangements. Now only, the Jiko Safi uses whole seeds.
The idea is to plant jatropha as a hedge around land holdings. Animals won’t eat it and around an average holding it produces enough seed for a family’s annual fuel needs. I agree that planting it as a crop isn’t ideal

*****

Jiko Mbono was developed for burning whole Jatropha seeds.
The stove is a TLUD (Top-Lit UpDraft) gasification stove with natural draft air supply.

Earlier development of Jatropha stoves have mainly been based on the use of Jatropha oil. But the use of Jatropha oil in stoves have had some problems. In wick stoves the problem have been on the high viscosity of the oil which makes it difficult to climb wick to feed the flame, this has caused the wick material to burn. Jatropha pressurised stoves have also the problems of keeping the nozzles clean, and also the complicated design which tends to make the stoves relative expensive.

I therefore got the idea to burn the seeds directly in the stove. If the gasification process could provide the heat in the stove to vaporize out the oil from the seeds in the form of gasses, that will save us the work of first mechanically pressing the oil out of the seeds.

I therefore started some experimentation with some simple stove design, and these first experiments showed that it was possible to burn the whole seeds in a stove. Further developments was however needed to get an efficient and user friendly design of the stove.

I contacted Dr. Hassan M. Rajabu from College of Engineering & Technology at University of Dar es Salaam so that we could further develop the stove and test the stove after each modification. In this development we have received valuable economical support from the US based organisation Partners for Development and also support from Pamoja INC. Engineer F. Lauwo from Tanzania Engineering and Manufacturing Design Organisation (TEMDO) have provided assistance in producing the prototypes of the stoves.


Diagram of Jiko Mbono.

The fire in the stove is normally started by having a few crushed seeds that are soaked in methylated spirit or kerosene. These crushed seeds are placed at the top of other seeds in the fuelbox and the fire is lit in these crushed seeds.
The initial process can be started inside the stove or outside. When some seeds at the top got good flames (3-5 minutes) the fuelbox is then placed on the shelve at the bottom of the stove door and the door is closed so the fuelbox get into its position in the centre of the stove. In this initial phase the primary air is kept fully open.

The pyrolysis of the seeds by supply of primary air will gradually build up and the gasses from the pyrolysis will raise by the draft from the stoves internal chimney and be burned at the top by mixing with the secondary air.

During this gradually build up of heat the primary air supply need to be reduced such that enough secondary air can be supplied to allow for a good combustion of the gasses.

The burning of the Jatropha seeds is undertaken in batch portions. After all the seeds in the fuelbox have been pyrolysis the fuelbox need to be taken out and refilled for a new burning. It is not possible at this stage of the development of the stove to refill the fuelbox when the stove is operating, such refilling will just results in heavy smoke.

With a full load of fuel 300 – 400 gram of Jatropha seeds the stove can burn for 1 to 1½ hour when used in real cooking where the fire is somehow turned down. During test we have recorded specific fuel consumption on around 52 gram seeds per liter of boiling water, and an energy efficiency around 44%. However, the high efficiency is atributed to the design of the top part of the stove where the top is inserted in a skirt.

When operated properly the carbon in the seeds will remain as some kind of charcoal.

The use of renewable fuel is important here in Tanzania, where most of the biomass fuels are harvested in natural forests which takes year to re-grow.
We have estimated that a household having 200 – 300 meters of hedges of Jatropha trees will be able to meet their own need of fuel for the household cooking. Jatropha is often planted as hedges, it is a good hedge plant, as it is not browsed by goats, cows or other animals. Also as a hedge plant it does not compete with food crops on cultivating areas.

For urban households in Tanzania Jatropha is a viable alternative to charcoal. A farmer here gets 150 Tsh for one kg of Jatropha seeds (exchange rate 1350 to $). In town the Jatropha seeds will sell for around 300 sh. An urban household will need around 2 kg seeds per day to meet their energy need for cooking, that gives a monthly energy bill of 18,000 sh. If the same households are using charcoal it will on average consume 3 bags of 30 kg charcoal of a price of not less than 15,000 sh, this gives a monthly energy bill of minimum 45,000 sh. The use of Jatropha will in this way represent a good saving and alternative to fuelwood and charcoal.

Other seeds and crop wates can also be used in the stove. We know that seeds from the Croton tree burns well so does Castor seeds. We have also tried and found that the shells from cashew nut burn well in the stove. These shells are mainly a waste product from small-scale Cashew nut processing plants which are scattered in regions growing cashew trees.. We also believe that other seeds such as the oil palm kernel could also burn well when cracked a little. There will likely be many other oil holding seeds that could be used in such a stove.

This is a three-part brief description of the World Stove Everything Nice stove made by Al Hislop and Patty Roberts, with Ron Larson participating in the first tests, January, 2010.

World Everything Nice StoveWorld Everything Nice Stove
Plans Available at: http://worldstove.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/EverythingNice_Stove_Instructions.pdf

Part A. Narrative (by Patty)

Biochar Experiment 1 1/9/10

Al made an Everything Nice pyrolyzer from the design on the World Stove website. We used a large coffee can and then a canister for the two cans so it was rather large. We first tried pine cones but they just smoked so we put in pellets instead. This gave a good clean burn and we put a tripod over the stove and boiled water, heated soup, cooked pasta and cooked pasta sauce with fresh meat and fresh vegetables. When the flame extinguished, there was still some smoke coming from the stove so it was covered on the top to remove oxygen and set in a shallow basin of water on the bottom. This extinguished the smoke but moistened the bottom of the char slightly. When we emptied the stove, we saw that some of the pellets had not pyrolyzed. We believe this was because of the fairly large diameter of the can. To dry the char and pyrolyze the remaining pellets, we put the mass into a canister and put it into our hot wood stove. This allowed complete pyrolysis of the remaining pellets and provided complete drying of the fuel. It’s possible that this changed the pH of the char from its original pH because of a different pyrolysis temperature.

Ignition: torch (for several minutes)

Pre-burn Fuel Weight: 58.5 oz wood pellets from 100% pine, less than 1% ash

Post-burn Fuel Weight (Char): 16.5 oz (28.2% of starting weight)

Post-burn Fuel Volume: Slightly greater than half of pre-burn volume

Time: 2 hours and 20 minutes of a very good, clean, strong burn.

Calculated output to pot: 560 watts


Exp1: (Saturday)
_*Lighting:*_ See text. Hope others can tell us of their successful
ways to light this same stove. We have not yet tried to solve this
problem using prepared starter materials. Maybe easier with the
"restriction-lid" removed? The two sheet metal wind-breaks and the ice
show this was not the best day for testing. Note the small amount of
discoloration (burned paint on the lid) - from an earlier test with
too-loose material (that was easier to light), which only gets a little
larger in later photos.. Discoloration off-centered because of windy
conditions and means of lighting. When we got it started with this
torch, there was never any massive smoking.

Experiment 1, Good FlameExperiment 1, Good Flame

*_Good flame_*. A typical flame without a cook-pot. We saw essentially
the same flame for a total of more than 4 hours over two experiments.
The gap-reducing bricks not in place in this early photo. The
discoloration of the lid never got much more pronounced than here -
showing that a relatively cool gas is coming up in the outer narrow
"chimney". You can't see it here - but there are hot gases going down
through the central can fuel supply - doing the pyrolysis without
oxygen. We are unsure whether any pyrolysis gas is coming upwards
(we don't understand the pressure profiles yet), but certainly a good bit
is going downward. This is the best view of the outer set of large
holes. Could they be done with a punch? Maybe. Could they be
placed on the bottom of the outer can? Maybe - with a spacer
between the bottom surfaces of the two “cans” (as is done in the
mainWorld Stove models). There are several ways
possible to control this air supply - which should NOT be called the
primary air, as would be appropriate if this were a TLUD. Although
there is some pre-mixing of the combustion gases, this still is showing
signs of being a ("wispy") diffusion flame - not at all like the tighter
much bluer flame seen in Nathaniel's numerous YouTube videos and
mentioned in the instructions.

Experiment 1, CookingExperiment 1, Cooking
*_Cooking_*: Typical flame with a typical pot (and larger ones used for
some of the cooking). The tripod was in no way optimized (we raised
the stove about three inches with standard available mini-bricks; four
inches might have given higher efficiency - but more soot). It was
certainly easy to have too much heat for cooking pasta (boil-over once
when we weren't paying attention). At no time during the two hours of
operation did we (or could we) adjust anything. We are working on a
possible fix for that, when on a later weekend, we will try a means of
controlling the air flow. You should also next see a "convection skirt"
of the type being sold by Aprovecho.

Biochar Experiment 2 1/10/10

Using the same stove as yesterday, but this time with a cone in the center to displace the area that didn’t pyrolyze yesterday, we filled the stove with pellets again. This time however the stove had 15% less fuel because of the cone. We spent about a half hour trying to light the stove with twigs, vasoline, pine needles, paper, some other fluffy combustibles and fondue fuel. None of these things got the stove going. We ended up using the torch again. The torch lit the pellets in a minute or so and then it took about 15 minutes before we saw the good, steady, smokeless cooking flame. Once we got that good flame, we measured 2 hours 23 minutes of pyrolysis. The stove burned for the about the same amount of time as yesterday, but this time all the pellets were pyrolyzed. The outer can seemed to have the same temperature pattern today as yesterday.

Ignition: torch (shorter time than yesterday)
Pre-burn Fuel Weight: 49.5 oz wood pellets (same kind as yesterday)

Post-burn Fuel Weight (Char): 14 oz (28.2 % of starting weight, same as yesterday)

Post-burn volume: a little less than half

Calculated output to pot: 287 watts (This number is much lower than yesterday’s. We don’t like our thermometer for this application, so both days’ numbers are suspect.)

Time: 2 hours 23 (more carefully measured than yesterday)

Those temperatures were pretty consistent until the pyrolysis ended and we put a cap on the top. Unlike yesterday, we didn’t put the bottom in water. Smoke began to come out of the holes at the bottom and the temperature at the bottom began to rise. We suspected that some combustion was starting to take place. We poured the pellets into a tray but they seemed to be getting hotter rather than cooler so we scooped them into another canister and put on a tight lid so no more oxygen would be available.

Experiment 2, ConeExperiment 2, Cone

_*Cone*_ - Showing the cone and the interior (the latter after almost
five hours of operation). No signs of any excess heat anywhere on the
outside can. Little on the inner can, but considerable tarring on the
inside and the top portion of the cone. Probably a lot of interesting
pyrolysis science in understanding why the cone looks like it does after
2+ hours of operation one time. Note the many interior small holes.
Note the single screw holding the two cans together (not shown in Nathaniel's drawings [at http://worldstove.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/EverythingNice_Stove_In...
] but mentioned at the bottom of p 3. We found all the instructions
complete, but guess we have to test a lot more fuel combinations before
we get the tight blue flame mentioned in the instructions.

Experiment 2, After PyrolysisExperiment 2, After Pyrolysis
Exp 2 (Sunday)
*_After Pyrolisis_* A view into the unit perhaps ten-fifteen minutes after the
unit stopped operating - and began smoking (pretty profusely, so you
want to react quickly). We placed a second lid to cover the opening -
but nothing else.(no covering of the lower holes - which we would likely
try to do next time). Note good uniformity of the char except right in
the middle where you can see the tip of the added cone. This is the first
time you can see that there are two cans - with the spacing of about a
centimeter (exact spacing dictated by can availability; this outer can is available at
about $.50-$1.00; no cost for the inner can). At the lower left is the
(pre-trimmed) pine cone which charred perfectly after being placed into
the unit.. No lighting up, no combustion, perfect retention of tiny
features - proving the lack of oxygen just below the flames seen in
other pictures. The unit was initially filled up to within 3/4 inch of
the top of the inner can, per Nathaniel's instructions, so you can see
there was perhaps 35-40% shrinkage.

Experiment 2, CharExperiment 2, Char
_*Exp 2 Char:*_ This to show the good uniformity of the resulting
char. Just a few that looked torrified (deep brown color - but we
can't even see them in this photo), not charred. In Experiment #1,
with no interior cone, perhaps 15% uncharred, roughly in the volume
taken up by the cone.

New plans and new ideas: We want a sliding band around the bottom of the can which can be used to regulate airflow through the holes and maybe the pyrolysis rate. When the band slides down, it will partially close the holes. When pyrolisis has finished, the band can be pushed all the way down to cover the holes entirely and keep oxygen out.

Part B. Technical Description

(by Al)

The inner tin was a Yuban Coffee can, with diameter 6.05 inches (excluding the roll bead where the bottom is attached. The original height of the can was 7.5 inches, and the height was trimmed down to 6.7 inches above the inside of the bottom surface. 74 holes .0.159 inch diameter were drilled on a line 0.75 inches from the bottom.

The outer tin was a decorative cookie tin with a fitted lid. The diameter of the can (excluding the rolled bead that attached the bottom) was 6.4 inches. A 3 inch diameter hole was cut in the center of the lid. The lid was 7.1 inches above the inside of the bottom of the can. 33 holes of 0.5 inch diameter were drilled as close as possible to the bottom of the outer can.

The inner can was filled to about ¾ inch of its top with pine pellets intended for use with pellet stoves. The weight of the fuel was 58.5 oz (1.66 kg). These pellets were ignited using a propane torch over the entire top surface for about 1 minute.

The stove operated with what appeared to be constant output for 140 minutes. A water heating test was performed with a pot set about 3 inches above the stove opening. Two liters of water was placed in a covered pot of diameter 8.5 inches and height (without lid) of 3 inches. Water temperature was measured using a “point-and-shoot” infrared thermometer. (I suspect that at higher temperatures this thermometer reads low, as it most likely senses the temperature of the steam above the water in the pot, and not the water itself.) Water start temperature was 12.5C, and finish temperature was 81.1C, at which time boiling bubbles were coming off the bottom of the pot, and much energy was being lost to steam. Elapsed time was 17 minutes.

When the flame extinguished, much smoke came from the stove, so a lid without a hole was placed on top of the stove. Smoke continued to pour from the holes at the bottom of the stove, so it was placed in a pan of water to cover the holes. This resulted in wetting of the contents of the stove. After cooling, the stove was opened and the contents examined. The fuel was found to have been converted to char, except for a portion of pellets about 1.5 inches high and 3 inches in diameter at the bottom of the stove.

Since the fuel was wet, it was not weighed. Instead, the wet fuel including the unconverted pellets was placed in a container and heated to complete pyrolization. The weight of the remaining char was 16.5 oz (28.2% original weight).

A hollow metal cone of height 4.5 inches and diameter 4.5 inches was made, and placed in the bottom of the inner can before adding fuel pellets for a second run. This time the weight of the fuel was 49.5 oz, the burn time was again 140 minutes, and the weight of the remaining char was 14 oz (28.3% original weight). This time all but 1 or 2 pellets appeared to have been converted to char.

This is a three-part brief description of the World Stove Everything Nice stove made by Al Hislop and Patty Roberts, with Ron Larson participating in the first tests, January, 2010.

World Everything Nice StoveWorld Everything Nice Stove
Plans Available at: http://worldstove.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/EverythingNice_Stove_Instructions.pdf

Part A. Narrative (by Patty)

Biochar Experiment 1 1/9/10

Al made an Everything Nice pyrolyzer from the design on the World Stove website. We used a large coffee can and then a canister for the two cans so it was rather large. We first tried pine cones but they just smoked so we put in pellets instead. This gave a good clean burn and we put a tripod over the stove and boiled water, heated soup, cooked pasta and cooked pasta sauce with fresh meat and fresh vegetables. When the flame extinguished, there was still some smoke coming from the stove so it was covered on the top to remove oxygen and set in a shallow basin of water on the bottom. This extinguished the smoke but moistened the bottom of the char slightly. When we emptied the stove, we saw that some of the pellets had not pyrolyzed. We believe this was because of the fairly large diameter of the can. To dry the char and pyrolyze the remaining pellets, we put the mass into a canister and put it into our hot wood stove. This allowed complete pyrolysis of the remaining pellets and provided complete drying of the fuel. It’s possible that this changed the pH of the char from its original pH because of a different pyrolysis temperature.

Ignition: torch (for several minutes)

Pre-burn Fuel Weight: 58.5 oz wood pellets from 100% pine, less than 1% ash

Post-burn Fuel Weight (Char): 16.5 oz (28.2% of starting weight)

Post-burn Fuel Volume: Slightly greater than half of pre-burn volume

Time: 2 hours and 20 minutes of a very good, clean, strong burn.

Calculated output to pot: 560 watts


Exp1: (Saturday)
_*Lighting:*_ See text. Hope others can tell us of their successful
ways to light this same stove. We have not yet tried to solve this
problem using prepared starter materials. Maybe easier with the
"restriction-lid" removed? The two sheet metal wind-breaks and the ice
show this was not the best day for testing. Note the small amount of
discoloration (burned paint on the lid) - from an earlier test with
too-loose material (that was easier to light), which only gets a little
larger in later photos.. Discoloration off-centered because of windy
conditions and means of lighting. When we got it started with this
torch, there was never any massive smoking.

Experiment 1, Good FlameExperiment 1, Good Flame

*_Good flame_*. A typical flame without a cook-pot. We saw essentially
the same flame for a total of more than 4 hours over two experiments.
The gap-reducing bricks not in place in this early photo. The
discoloration of the lid never got much more pronounced than here -
showing that a relatively cool gas is coming up in the outer narrow
"chimney". You can't see it here - but there are hot gases going down
through the central can fuel supply - doing the pyrolysis without
oxygen. We are unsure whether any pyrolysis gas is coming upwards
(we don't understand the pressure profiles yet), but certainly a good bit
is going downward. This is the best view of the outer set of large
holes. Could they be done with a punch? Maybe. Could they be
placed on the bottom of the outer can? Maybe - with a spacer
between the bottom surfaces of the two “cans” (as is done in the
mainWorld Stove models). There are several ways
possible to control this air supply - which should NOT be called the
primary air, as would be appropriate if this were a TLUD. Although
there is some pre-mixing of the combustion gases, this still is showing
signs of being a ("wispy") diffusion flame - not at all like the tighter
much bluer flame seen in Nathaniel's numerous YouTube videos and
mentioned in the instructions.

Experiment 1, CookingExperiment 1, Cooking
*_Cooking_*: Typical flame with a typical pot (and larger ones used for
some of the cooking). The tripod was in no way optimized (we raised
the stove about three inches with standard available mini-bricks; four
inches might have given higher efficiency - but more soot). It was
certainly easy to have too much heat for cooking pasta (boil-over once
when we weren't paying attention). At no time during the two hours of
operation did we (or could we) adjust anything. We are working on a
possible fix for that, when on a later weekend, we will try a means of
controlling the air flow. You should also next see a "convection skirt"
of the type being sold by Aprovecho.

Biochar Experiment 2 1/10/10

Using the same stove as yesterday, but this time with a cone in the center to displace the area that didn’t pyrolyze yesterday, we filled the stove with pellets again. This time however the stove had 15% less fuel because of the cone. We spent about a half hour trying to light the stove with twigs, vasoline, pine needles, paper, some other fluffy combustibles and fondue fuel. None of these things got the stove going. We ended up using the torch again. The torch lit the pellets in a minute or so and then it took about 15 minutes before we saw the good, steady, smokeless cooking flame. Once we got that good flame, we measured 2 hours 23 minutes of pyrolysis. The stove burned for the about the same amount of time as yesterday, but this time all the pellets were pyrolyzed. The outer can seemed to have the same temperature pattern today as yesterday.

Ignition: torch (shorter time than yesterday)
Pre-burn Fuel Weight: 49.5 oz wood pellets (same kind as yesterday)

Post-burn Fuel Weight (Char): 14 oz (28.2 % of starting weight, same as yesterday)

Post-burn volume: a little less than half

Calculated output to pot: 287 watts (This number is much lower than yesterday’s. We don’t like our thermometer for this application, so both days’ numbers are suspect.)

Time: 2 hours 23 (more carefully measured than yesterday)

Those temperatures were pretty consistent until the pyrolysis ended and we put a cap on the top. Unlike yesterday, we didn’t put the bottom in water. Smoke began to come out of the holes at the bottom and the temperature at the bottom began to rise. We suspected that some combustion was starting to take place. We poured the pellets into a tray but they seemed to be getting hotter rather than cooler so we scooped them into another canister and put on a tight lid so no more oxygen would be available.

Experiment 2, ConeExperiment 2, Cone

_*Cone*_ - Showing the cone and the interior (the latter after almost
five hours of operation). No signs of any excess heat anywhere on the
outside can. Little on the inner can, but considerable tarring on the
inside and the top portion of the cone. Probably a lot of interesting
pyrolysis science in understanding why the cone looks like it does after
2+ hours of operation one time. Note the many interior small holes.
Note the single screw holding the two cans together (not shown in Nathaniel's drawings [at http://worldstove.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/EverythingNice_Stove_In...
] but mentioned at the bottom of p 3. We found all the instructions
complete, but guess we have to test a lot more fuel combinations before
we get the tight blue flame mentioned in the instructions.

Experiment 2, After PyrolysisExperiment 2, After Pyrolysis
Exp 2 (Sunday)
*_After Pyrolisis_* A view into the unit perhaps ten-fifteen minutes after the
unit stopped operating - and began smoking (pretty profusely, so you
want to react quickly). We placed a second lid to cover the opening -
but nothing else.(no covering of the lower holes - which we would likely
try to do next time). Note good uniformity of the char except right in
the middle where you can see the tip of the added cone. This is the first
time you can see that there are two cans - with the spacing of about a
centimeter (exact spacing dictated by can availability; this outer can is available at
about $.50-$1.00; no cost for the inner can). At the lower left is the
(pre-trimmed) pine cone which charred perfectly after being placed into
the unit.. No lighting up, no combustion, perfect retention of tiny
features - proving the lack of oxygen just below the flames seen in
other pictures. The unit was initially filled up to within 3/4 inch of
the top of the inner can, per Nathaniel's instructions, so you can see
there was perhaps 35-40% shrinkage.

Experiment 2, CharExperiment 2, Char
_*Exp 2 Char:*_ This to show the good uniformity of the resulting
char. Just a few that looked torrified (deep brown color - but we
can't even see them in this photo), not charred. In Experiment #1,
with no interior cone, perhaps 15% uncharred, roughly in the volume
taken up by the cone.

New plans and new ideas: We want a sliding band around the bottom of the can which can be used to regulate airflow through the holes and maybe the pyrolysis rate. When the band slides down, it will partially close the holes. When pyrolisis has finished, the band can be pushed all the way down to cover the holes entirely and keep oxygen out.

Part B. Technical Description

(by Al)

The inner tin was a Yuban Coffee can, with diameter 6.05 inches (excluding the roll bead where the bottom is attached. The original height of the can was 7.5 inches, and the height was trimmed down to 6.7 inches above the inside of the bottom surface. 74 holes .0.159 inch diameter were drilled on a line 0.75 inches from the bottom.

The outer tin was a decorative cookie tin with a fitted lid. The diameter of the can (excluding the rolled bead that attached the bottom) was 6.4 inches. A 3 inch diameter hole was cut in the center of the lid. The lid was 7.1 inches above the inside of the bottom of the can. 33 holes of 0.5 inch diameter were drilled as close as possible to the bottom of the outer can.

The inner can was filled to about ¾ inch of its top with pine pellets intended for use with pellet stoves. The weight of the fuel was 58.5 oz (1.66 kg). These pellets were ignited using a propane torch over the entire top surface for about 1 minute.

The stove operated with what appeared to be constant output for 140 minutes. A water heating test was performed with a pot set about 3 inches above the stove opening. Two liters of water was placed in a covered pot of diameter 8.5 inches and height (without lid) of 3 inches. Water temperature was measured using a “point-and-shoot” infrared thermometer. (I suspect that at higher temperatures this thermometer reads low, as it most likely senses the temperature of the steam above the water in the pot, and not the water itself.) Water start temperature was 12.5C, and finish temperature was 81.1C, at which time boiling bubbles were coming off the bottom of the pot, and much energy was being lost to steam. Elapsed time was 17 minutes.

When the flame extinguished, much smoke came from the stove, so a lid without a hole was placed on top of the stove. Smoke continued to pour from the holes at the bottom of the stove, so it was placed in a pan of water to cover the holes. This resulted in wetting of the contents of the stove. After cooling, the stove was opened and the contents examined. The fuel was found to have been converted to char, except for a portion of pellets about 1.5 inches high and 3 inches in diameter at the bottom of the stove.

Since the fuel was wet, it was not weighed. Instead, the wet fuel including the unconverted pellets was placed in a container and heated to complete pyrolization. The weight of the remaining char was 16.5 oz (28.2% original weight).

A hollow metal cone of height 4.5 inches and diameter 4.5 inches was made, and placed in the bottom of the inner can before adding fuel pellets for a second run. This time the weight of the fuel was 49.5 oz, the burn time was again 140 minutes, and the weight of the remaining char was 14 oz (28.3% original weight). This time all but 1 or 2 pellets appeared to have been converted to char.

A WOOD-GAS STOVE FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
See http://www.bioenergylists.org/node/2559

Qwgc.jpg

A WOOD-GAS STOVE FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
See http://www.bioenergylists.org/node/2559

Qwgc.jpg

Yvonne Vögeli and How to Build the ARTI Compact Biogas Digestor, January 2010

Lively discussion on the Digestion discussion list has

Building instructions, posted on HowToPedia:
How to Build the ARTI Compact Biogas Digestor (also see the attached pdf).

Recent studies analyzing the effectiveness of this system have generously been provided by Yvonne Vögeli with Eawag / Sandec. Thier work is summarized here: Anaerobic Digestion of Organic Solid Waste

Specifically: TECHNICAL AND BIOLOGICAL PERFORMANCE OF THE ARTI COMPACT BIOGAS PLANT FOR KITCHEN WASTE -CASE STUDY FROM TANZANIA

For additional information, take a look at our earlier article: Compact Biogas Plant - Compact, low-cost digester for biogas from waste starc

A couple of the presentations from the ASEAN-US NEXT-GENERATION COOK STOVE WORKSHOP, November 19, 2009.

One is a great study by Dr. Modi of Columbia University of several stoves in Tanzania, and the other is some useful info from Tami Bond. Kirk also gave a very useful presentation, but unfortunately it was not included in the proceedings.

A couple of the presentations from the ASEAN-US NEXT-GENERATION COOK STOVE WORKSHOP, November 19, 2009.

One is a great study by Dr. Modi of Columbia University of several stoves in Tanzania, and the other is some useful info from Tami Bond. Kirk also gave a very useful presentation, but unfortunately it was not included in the proceedings.

Laurens Rademakers, Biochar Fund
December, 2009

See the attachment for full sized pictures.

we've designed a new biomass stove that produces char. The stove is a simple hybrid of a rocket stove and a retort. We would be glad if you could upload it to the stoves list, because we want to see what the community thinks of it. It is only a concept, even though we've tested some basic design steps.

We will be testing this design at our large biochar site in Congo, where our project soon kicks off.

Laurens Rademakers, Biochar Fund
December, 2009

See the attachment for full sized pictures.

we've designed a new biomass stove that produces char. The stove is a simple hybrid of a rocket stove and a retort. We would be glad if you could upload it to the stoves list, because we want to see what the community thinks of it. It is only a concept, even though we've tested some basic design steps.

We will be testing this design at our large biochar site in Congo, where our project soon kicks off.

World Stove Corp, Italy
October, 2009

LuciaStove for Developing Nations
Lucia StoveLucia Stove

Using a TLUD for Pasteurization at the Paramount Dairy in Uganda
John and Charles Anglin, Uganda, October 19, 2009
Pasteurization of 450Lts Milk Complete after 1.5hrs
Pasteurization of 450Lts Milk Complete after 1.5hrs

John and Charles Anglin have built an institutional / industrial size TLUD for pasteurization at their Paramount Dairy in Uganda. Their 2-page report with 4 photos describes and shows the TLUD and the 450 liter milk-vat. The fuel is papyrus reeds. This report is about a "work-in-progress," and they have given permission to post it to the Stoves Website. The Anglin's can be reached via the Stoves Listserv.

Courtesy of Paul Anderson

I’ve been following a couple of different groups and discussions to learn about biochar for about 6 months. Id like to share what I’ve been learning and ask a couple of questions.

My purpose is to use biochar as a component in biological soil synthesis and buffer for use in a vaquaculture growing system.

I have been making small TLUD stoves, observing modeling tweaking making another.

Michael N Trevor
Marshall Islands

Marshall Islands TLUD
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
Fuel

Loading Fuel
Loading Fuel

and AGainand Again
Trying to Lite Off
Trying to Lite Off

now its goingnow 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 TLUDMarshall Islands TLUD

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.

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.

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.

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.

Paul Anderson, 2009 SeaChar Stoves Workshop

The efforts at SeaChar (Seattle Biochar Initiative) produced a 5-gallon (22-liter) TLUD.

"On Saturday, August 1, Seachar hosted Dr. Paul Anderson (Dr. TLUD) for an all-day workshop in the construction of Top-Lit Up Draft (TLUD) cookstoves. The stoves can quickly be constructed from commonly available materials, and produce charcoal while providing heat for cooking (or other uses). Paul’s TLUD stoves have been tested and shown to produce very low emissions of CO and particulates. The stoves can provide benefits wherever people rely on biomass for cooking. TLUD stoves use a wide variety of small pieces of biomass for fuel. The clean burn greatly improves indoor air quality compared with open burning and many other types of stoves. In addition, the charcoal can be used as biochar to improve soil fertility, sequester carbon, and potentially provide a source of income through carbon credits."

For More See: http://seachar.org/wordpress/?p=176

The focus was for making biochar, but this size of TLUD will be highly appropriate of institutional-size cookstoves in the developing countries.

File attachments: 

An Update from BSH on Protos. The Plant Oil Stove.
Samuel N. Shiroff, Director, BSH

For a brief update BSH is preparing a mass production capacity that should come on-line in late autumn of this year. Initial production will be ramped up through Q4 so we can expect to produce several thousand units in 2009. We are working with a local Indonesian partner - in an OEM process with 100% local content. This is part of our goal, but since BSH is not present in any meaningful way in our conventional business in that country, it is a very new activity for us. Thus, the time line may be subject to delay if quality or other issues arise. I would rather delay a few weeks than deliver a defective product.

The initial cost is going to be around US$40 - 42 Ex-works. This means it does not include transport or tolls if moving outside of Indonesia. Our total capacity for 2010 should be around 50,000 units - so this price will hopefully edge down. Naturally currency fluctuations will also play a role. BSH is running the project as a "social business". This means our goal is simply to cover costs and any additional profit will be put back into the project - for instance subsidizing costs in countries where there is viability, but not enough purchasing power for the capital costs. The mentioned price is the cost of production and local overhead. No more. Larger orders do not generate greater discounts. At first all orders will be filled out of Indonesia. New production capacity requires a minimum annual demand of 25,000 units and a viable infrastructure in the desired region. With perhaps the exception of the tank and some cleaning tools, it is simply not possible to establish small-scale local production that ensures consistent quality in an economically viable manner.

Project Title: Western Gasifier Stove Project
African Christians Organization Net work, Salim Mayeki Shaban, May 10, 2009

AFCON WorkshopAFCON Workshop

APPLICANT

Name of Organization: African Christians Organization Net work
Mailing Address: P.O.BOX 323, BUNGOMA 50200 Kenya
Physical Address: 1 st fl. KCB Building
Telephone: + 254 727 621841
Email: salimshaban2005 at gmail.com
Principal Officer: Salim Mayeki Shaban
Project Contact Person: Salim Mayeki Shaban Programme Coordinator and Everlyne Otunga Program Manager

PROJECT
Focal Area: Reducing indoor air Pollution and forest Conservation
Activity Category: Learning by Doing Project.

Proposed project Duration: Two Years.

FINANCES
Total Mount grants Request: (KSHS) 4,245,429.20 (USD) 62,241.3
Other Contributions (KSHS) 1,520,000.00
Grand Total (KSHS) 5,765,429.20
Exchange Rate kshs 70.00 = I Us$

1.0 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1.1 GOAL OF THE PROJECT
To promote energy conservation and reduce deforestation in the sugar cane growing in Western Kenya.

.1.2.1 Specific Objectives
To Promote TLUD gasifier cookstoves and five biogas planter in Western Kenya
To provide and service 20,000 TLUD gasifier cookstoves and 5,000 fireless stoves..
To train 150 women and youth groups in production, repair and sale of energy saving equipment
To train schools and communities on energy conservation and use of renewable energy technologies.
To develop an energy equipment workshop for production, service and sale of improved cook stoves and energy saving equipment.

1.3 ACTIVITIES
The activities in the project will be
Community mobilization on energy conservation, forest resource management and effect of indoor air
Training in design, manufacturers and sale of renewable energy equipment and technologies i.e. biogas, TLUD gasifier cookstoves.
Networking on renewable energy conservation i.e. knowledge sharing and information dissemination.
Manufacture TLUD gasifier cookstoves, and five Biogas planters

2.0 STATEMENT OF COMPLIANCE WITH PARTNERS
This project will be carried out within the Nile Basin in Western Kenya. The same area is sources of Nile and other small tributaries. The project will promote energy saving culture and lead to sustainable use of forest resources while contributing towards the Kyoto protocol implementation. While noting that firewood is the major source of energy within the Nile basin and Methane, is 20 times more potent CO2 and hence its use in biogas energy is encouraged in managing green house effect.

3.0 PROJECT AREA
Western Kenya has a population of over 5 million people of which 80% depend on agriculture for livelihood and over 70% use firewood as fuel source. A survey has shown that all boarding schools use firewood and charcoal as fuel for cooking hence pressure on forest cover. Sugar cane growing in Mumias, Malava and Bungoma is a heavy user of trees as firewood. This combined has led to heavy exploitation of forests and trees for firewood hence a danger to the water catchments area.

4.0 PROBLEMS/CHALLENGE
Sugar cane cultivation in western Kenya, which started in mid 1970’s, has accelerated the rate of destruction of trees due to high population density has further compounded the problem of destruction of forests and trees hence threatening the very source of water within the Nile Basin. Schools continue to put pressure on forest due to their high demand for firewood to use in cooking with highly inefficient open fire stoves. These project will develop biogas as an alternative source of energy, promote economical use of energy in institutions and homesteads through use of energy saving stoves create employment for people trained in production and service of the same and of the same and efficiently generate and use the highly potent methane from farmlands through biogas plants.

5.0 RATIONALE
This project meets the requirements of MDG's and Partnership for clean indoor air broad objective. The project will support community driven effort and will address environmental threats on local scale within the Nile basin region in the area of development and use of alternative energy and construction materials. In the process of carrying out participatory planning and appraisals for Musamba, Matungu, Kholera and Khalaba, the villagers expressed the desire to get cheap alternative to fuel firewood energy and alternative to open fire 3-stone cooking method. In all this areas, villagers expressed their fears that trees are disappearing and as a result they use farm wastes like maize stalks for firewood. The same should be used to replenish soil fertility after the crop season and should not used in the kitchen as firewood. Others were resorting to cane trash and remnants.

See specific goals and objectives in the attached project document.

AFCONAFCON

GEO fuel briquettes

is a very low cost technology, and also for making briquettes with very less effort. This is screw based system, requires very less energy and space to operate. Briquettes can be made using human power, convenient for young or old in making briquettes from various types of waste material. Small pieces of waste papers, sawdust, leaves, wood shavings, rice husk, etc. can be used as raw material. Any sticky material available in abundant can also be added if required for producing compact and strong briquettes. The cost of each such device made up of iron is less than $8 (USD) or Rs. 400. Various types of stoves are available for using the briquettes, including some of these AVAN and MAGH series stoves can be used. Magh-1 stove with little adoption can also be used for briquettes as fuel. We can also make and use special stoves for the briquettes as fuel. For more details see: http://e-fuelbriquetts.blogspot.com/

Also see http://e-lowcostextruder.blogspot.com/ | http://www.e-geo.org | http://www.goodstove.com

Paal Wendelo has created a pdf of his powerpoint presentation illustrating the comparative wastefulness of traditionally made charcoal compared with his TLUD stove.

Jordan Ανδρικά • Summer SALE έως -50%

Stove and 1 HP Pelletizer
Brendon Mendonca, Watershed Organisation Trust April 25, 2009

WOTR StoveWOTR Stove
Pictures of the stove (4000 sold) and 1 HP pelletizer.

Following is the link to our website http://www.wotr.org/renewable_energy.html

WOTR FLAMEWOTR FLAME
WOTR 1 HP Pellet MillWOTR 1 HP Pellet Mill

Brendon mendonca.brendon@gmail.com

Project Surya: Reduction of Air Pollution and Global warming by Cooking with Renewable SourcesV. Ramanathan and K.

Dear friends,  

www.rocketstove.org  is finally online! And our friend John page from Aprovecho has agreed, at least in the short term, to be the new web administrator.   

Our goal is to make this a practical site. For example the key content that I have right now is the Institutional Rocket stove  design tool that will allow users to  generate a custom set of institutional stove plans (brick and metal)  just by inputting pot size and a few other  key inputs .Ideally this would be the site that users would  turn to for specific plans on how to construct  rocket stoves , bread ovens, dryers kilns etc. If you have content that features step by step stove plans please register and then post them to the site.  (note e: g it might take a day or 2  to approve your registration  as I have to manually  accept each registration ) .  Registered users will eventually be able to  produce their own home page if desired , or just add contact info. Foremost I would appreciate it if we could link your webpage to ours and vice versa.

The second goal of the site is to link people in the stove community by interest and region . For example someone could turn to the site and be linked to stove producers, purchasers and/or researchers in  China, Guatemala,  or Uganda. As the site grows into phase two we will add more functionality (ordering stoves online, visitors donating to specific projects, etc)   but initially I would love to collect as many links and content as possible in the next few weeks for the launching of the site . 

At present this is a volunteer effort , and John and I would appreciate any form of support (financial or otherwise) from the stove community to get this web page up and running. The webpage was only made public last week so we are still very much in our infancy so we appreciate your patience as we smooth out the wrinkles. 

Also, Please feel free to forward this e-mail to anyone you think might be interested. 

Peace 

Peter Scott
Biomass Energy Consultant
cel (USA) : 541 232 7955
skype:rocketmanpeter
cel(Malawi): 265 856 9155
USA address
78590 Echo Hollow Lane
Cottage Grove,OR
97424
USA

 

Dear friends,  

www.rocketstove.org  is finally online! And our friend John page from Aprovecho has agreed, at least in the short term, to be the new web administrator.   

Our goal is to make this a practical site. For example the key content that I have right now is the Institutional Rocket stove  design tool that will allow users to  generate a custom set of institutional stove plans (brick and metal)  just by inputting pot size and a few other  key inputs .Ideally this would be the site that users would  turn to for specific plans on how to construct  rocket stoves , bread ovens, dryers kilns etc. If you have content that features step by step stove plans please register and then post them to the site.  (note e: g it might take a day or 2  to approve your registration  as I have to manually  accept each registration ) .  Registered users will eventually be able to  produce their own home page if desired , or just add contact info. Foremost I would appreciate it if we could link your webpage to ours and vice versa.

The second goal of the site is to link people in the stove community by interest and region . For example someone could turn to the site and be linked to stove producers, purchasers and/or researchers in  China, Guatemala,  or Uganda. As the site grows into phase two we will add more functionality (ordering stoves online, visitors donating to specific projects, etc)   but initially I would love to collect as many links and content as possible in the next few weeks for the launching of the site . 

At present this is a volunteer effort , and John and I would appreciate any form of support (financial or otherwise) from the stove community to get this web page up and running. The webpage was only made public last week so we are still very much in our infancy so we appreciate your patience as we smooth out the wrinkles. 

Also, Please feel free to forward this e-mail to anyone you think might be interested. 

Peace 

Peter Scott
Biomass Energy Consultant
cel (USA) : 541 232 7955
skype:rocketmanpeter
cel(Malawi): 265 856 9155
USA address
78590 Echo Hollow Lane
Cottage Grove,OR
97424
USA

 

Dear friends,  

www.rocketstove.org  is finally online! And our friend John page from Aprovecho has agreed, at least in the short term, to be the new web administrator.   

Our goal is to make this a practical site. For example the key content that I have right now is the Institutional Rocket stove  design tool that will allow users to  generate a custom set of institutional stove plans (brick and metal)  just by inputting pot size and a few other  key inputs .Ideally this would be the site that users would  turn to for specific plans on how to construct  rocket stoves , bread ovens, dryers kilns etc. If you have content that features step by step stove plans please register and then post them to the site.  (note e: g it might take a day or 2  to approve your registration  as I have to manually  accept each registration ) .  Registered users will eventually be able to  produce their own home page if desired , or just add contact info. Foremost I would appreciate it if we could link your webpage to ours and vice versa.

The second goal of the site is to link people in the stove community by interest and region . For example someone could turn to the site and be linked to stove producers, purchasers and/or researchers in  China, Guatemala,  or Uganda. As the site grows into phase two we will add more functionality (ordering stoves online, visitors donating to specific projects, etc)   but initially I would love to collect as many links and content as possible in the next few weeks for the launching of the site . 

At present this is a volunteer effort , and John and I would appreciate any form of support (financial or otherwise) from the stove community to get this web page up and running. The webpage was only made public last week so we are still very much in our infancy so we appreciate your patience as we smooth out the wrinkles. 

Also, Please feel free to forward this e-mail to anyone you think might be interested. 

Peace 

Peter Scott
Biomass Energy Consultant
cel (USA) : 541 232 7955
skype:rocketmanpeter
cel(Malawi): 265 856 9155
USA address
78590 Echo Hollow Lane
Cottage Grove,OR
97424
USA

 

This Rocket Stove that is made from 4 cans and can be made by anyone with metal clippers. The efficiency of this stove surpasses any other rocket stove because it heats an unlimited supply of hot water at the same time that it cooks over the fire. Sound to good to be true? Check it out! Here is the link to the YouTube videos. May the world be blessed and thank God for this gift.

http://www.youtube.com/Littlechristgod

CONE SHAPED STOVE Khalid ELYOUNSSI, Centre National de la Recherche Forestiere, March 27, 2009

Cone Shaped StoveCone Shaped Stove

This improved cookstove has been developed in the CRF (Centre de Recherche Forestière, Morocco) to respond to a need of fuelwood saving cookstoves in rural areas. The idea behind its conception is to approach the combustion principle in a gas stove. This has been made possible by a cone-shaped combustion chamber. Cookstoves with such conception has not been tested before. See report attached. Khalid ELYOUNSSI Centre National de la Recherche Forestiere Charia Omar Ibn El Khattab, Bp 763, 1050 Agdal Rabat, Morocco Tél:(212) 37 666405 Fax: (212) 37671151 E-mail:k.younssi71@gmail.com

Paul Anderson, March, 2009 How many of each major type of cookstoves exist in the developing societies(functioning in 2009)? The attached "draft" Matrix gives you my guesses. Perhaps YOU have additional input. Maybe we should change the Matrix. More columns, more lines. Or do you agree with what content? What I am attempting is to get us all reasonably "on the same page", literally on the same single page. Please look carefully at the two Notes at the bottom. In the general rank ordering, any stove type (or specific stoves within a type) might be shifted one or two columns to the left or right. But the question is, are the notes and orderings reasonably correct? There is no right or wrong, best or worst. By sheer numbers of units, the 3-stove fire is "best." It literally is "the competition to beat" for all of the other stoves. The file is an active MS Word document ( .doc), so you can change it as you please, but please indicate that you have altered it. (I desire neither the glory nor the blame for what you contribute.) It is a very small file and might be distributed with this message.

Marshall Islands Energy Fair--- Stoves March 2009 Michael Trevor, Marshall Islands,March 8, 2009

Firing Things UpFiring Things Up

See slide show attached. I did this in conjunction with a Woman's Club, "Kare in Okrane." Essentially, "Women of the Break of Dawn," a reference to women getting up a the break of day to prepare for the family's day. We did have hundreds of observers and a strongly expressed interest. In this case the rocket stove had the clear edge. Burning fuel is what people understand. Women have been doing it at their grandmother's knee since childhood. The Solar oven probably came in second. Here it was much like a microwave. I had to constantly open it up and invite people to touch the pot. Ouch, that it hot, hey it does work. What can you cook in it? Sadly the TLUD was more of curiosity. . The kerosene/propane like flame did surprise people, and I repeatly brought up charcoal and terrapreta as a benefit over time. However, the small size and short burn worked against it. I simply switch between two to resolve this. Best Regards to all Michael Trevor mtrevor@ntamar.net

Marshall Islands Energy Fair--- Stoves March 2009 Michael Trevor, Marshall Islands,March 8, 2009

Firing Things UpFiring Things Up

See slide show attached. I did this in conjunction with a Woman's Club, "Kare in Okrane." Essentially, "Women of the Break of Dawn," a reference to women getting up a the break of day to prepare for the family's day. We did have hundreds of observers and a strongly expressed interest. In this case the rocket stove had the clear edge. Burning fuel is what people understand. Women have been doing it at their grandmother's knee since childhood. The Solar oven probably came in second. Here it was much like a microwave. I had to constantly open it up and invite people to touch the pot. Ouch, that it hot, hey it does work. What can you cook in it? Sadly the TLUD was more of curiosity. . The kerosene/propane like flame did surprise people, and I repeatly brought up charcoal and terrapreta as a benefit over time. However, the small size and short burn worked against it. I simply switch between two to resolve this. Best Regards to all Michael Trevor mtrevor@ntamar.net

Marshall Islands Energy Fair--- Stoves March 2009 Michael Trevor, Marshall Islands,March 8, 2009

Firing Things UpFiring Things Up

See slide show attached. I did this in conjunction with a Woman's Club, "Kare in Okrane." Essentially, "Women of the Break of Dawn," a reference to women getting up a the break of day to prepare for the family's day. We did have hundreds of observers and a strongly expressed interest. In this case the rocket stove had the clear edge. Burning fuel is what people understand. Women have been doing it at their grandmother's knee since childhood. The Solar oven probably came in second. Here it was much like a microwave. I had to constantly open it up and invite people to touch the pot. Ouch, that it hot, hey it does work. What can you cook in it? Sadly the TLUD was more of curiosity. . The kerosene/propane like flame did surprise people, and I repeatly brought up charcoal and terrapreta as a benefit over time. However, the small size and short burn worked against it. I simply switch between two to resolve this. Best Regards to all Michael Trevor mtrevor@ntamar.net

Construction Plans for the “Champion-2008” TLUD Gasifier Cookstove (including operational instructions) Paul Anderson, March 1, 2009

TLUDTLUD


The document attached contains detailed instructions for the construction of Anderson’s "Champion-2008" top-lit updraft (TLUD) gasifier that can be used in many different cookstove structures. On 18 pages with 39 Figures, the “Champ” is described in three versions (Hobbyist, Refugee and Artisan) with the same dimensions but using different materials and metal-working skills.

Construction Plans for the “Champion-2008” TLUD Gasifier Cookstove (including operational instructions) Paul Anderson, March 1, 2009

TLUDTLUD


The document attached contains detailed instructions for the construction of Anderson’s "Champion-2008" top-lit updraft (TLUD) gasifier that can be used in many different cookstove structures. On 18 pages with 39 Figures, the “Champ” is described in three versions (Hobbyist, Refugee and Artisan) with the same dimensions but using different materials and metal-working skills.

BP Arivi Paraffin Stove

February 2009

BP Arivi Paraffin StoveBP Arivi Paraffin Stove
BP Arivi

BP has taken a life-cycle approach, starting with the consumer need, through to regulatory and HSE assessment in the case of BP Arivi. BP Arivi is a low-sulphur paraffin fuel for domestic cooking, providing consumers with access to an affordable, high-value fuel, in safe and child-resistant packaging. Different options were considered to determine the most appropriate fuel to meet the needs of consumers and scrutiny of the supply chain was undertaken to identify key risks We are now commercially piloting this solution in the market in South Africa and there will be further iterations around the process. (Website www.myarivi.com)

Other BP Arivi Links

Designer - Terrestrial ( www.trstrl.com ) Arivi Stove

Design and Development of a Natural Draft Biomass Gasifier
R. Krishna Kumar February 28, 2009

Naturl Draft Gasifier - KumarNatural Draft Gasifier - Kumar

N D G - BASICS & PRINCIPLES

  • Operates under the principlle of “ Chimney Effectt ”
  • Natural draft caused by density difference

UNIQUE FEATURES COMPARED TO CONVENTIONAL SYSTEMS

  • No blower is required for the operation
  • Automatically takes the required quantity of air for Gasification
  • Convey the Producer Gas formed by Gasification - Naturally
  • Reduced fuel consumption compared to traditional chulas

More detail, schematic pictures and testing information are in the attached pdfs and in the 2004 discussion:
http://www.repp.org/discussiongroups/resources/stoves/kumar/ndg.htm

Design and Development of a Natural Draft Biomass Gasifier
R. Krishna Kumar February 28, 2009

Naturl Draft Gasifier - KumarNatural Draft Gasifier - Kumar

N D G - BASICS & PRINCIPLES

  • Operates under the principlle of “ Chimney Effectt ”
  • Natural draft caused by density difference

UNIQUE FEATURES COMPARED TO CONVENTIONAL SYSTEMS

  • No blower is required for the operation
  • Automatically takes the required quantity of air for Gasification
  • Convey the Producer Gas formed by Gasification - Naturally
  • Reduced fuel consumption compared to traditional chulas

More detail, schematic pictures and testing information are in the attached pdfs and in the 2004 discussion:
http://www.repp.org/discussiongroups/resources/stoves/kumar/ndg.htm

Design and Development of a Natural Draft Biomass Gasifier
R. Krishna Kumar February 28, 2009

Naturl Draft Gasifier - KumarNatural Draft Gasifier - Kumar

N D G - BASICS & PRINCIPLES

  • Operates under the principlle of “ Chimney Effectt ”
  • Natural draft caused by density difference

UNIQUE FEATURES COMPARED TO CONVENTIONAL SYSTEMS

  • No blower is required for the operation
  • Automatically takes the required quantity of air for Gasification
  • Convey the Producer Gas formed by Gasification - Naturally
  • Reduced fuel consumption compared to traditional chulas

More detail, schematic pictures and testing information are in the attached pdfs and in the 2004 discussion:
http://www.repp.org/discussiongroups/resources/stoves/kumar/ndg.htm

Design and Development of a Natural Draft Biomass Gasifier
R. Krishna Kumar February 28, 2009

Naturl Draft Gasifier - KumarNatural Draft Gasifier - Kumar

N D G - BASICS & PRINCIPLES

  • Operates under the principlle of “ Chimney Effectt ”
  • Natural draft caused by density difference

UNIQUE FEATURES COMPARED TO CONVENTIONAL SYSTEMS

  • No blower is required for the operation
  • Automatically takes the required quantity of air for Gasification
  • Convey the Producer Gas formed by Gasification - Naturally
  • Reduced fuel consumption compared to traditional chulas

More detail, schematic pictures and testing information are in the attached pdfs and in the 2004 discussion:
http://www.repp.org/discussiongroups/resources/stoves/kumar/ndg.htm

Finned Pots as a Means of Increasing Efficiency Dale Andreatta, Ph.D., P.E., dandreatta@sealimited.com, February 13, 2009

Finned PotFinned Pot

Executive Summary A pot with heat transfer fins has much greater surface area than pots with no fins. In theory, this could lead to greatly increased heat transfer to the pot for a given stove, and the pot would theoretically improve the performance of the stove under all conditions. While we often concentrate on the stove as the primary element of a cooking system, the efficiency of a stove is mainly determined by the heat transfer to the pot, and designing a better pot would be an easy way to make a more efficient stove. A variety of types of finned pots were built and tested. The best designs were separated out in the lab, using natural gas to simulate a wood flame. Several types of fins can be retrofit to existing pots. The better designs of finned pots performed well over a range of conditions using simulated stoves, and sometimes also with an actual wood burning stove modified to use natural gas to simulate a wood flame. With fins on or near the bottom of the pot the finned pots typically gave around a 1.76-fold improvement in heat transfer. If the fins were on the sides of the pot a greater than 2-fold improvement was achieved. Tests on actual stoves using wood as the fuel generally gave smaller improvements in performance, generally 1.33 or less, corresponding to a 25% or smaller reduction in fuel usage. These tests were done under a variety of conditions with a variety of stoves, including the open fire (3-stone fire). On industrial fuel stoves using kerosene or alcohol, improvements were even less, with the finned pots giving 1.2 fold improvements or smaller. In some tests the finned pot used more fuel than an unfinned pot. The reasons for this wide range of results is not known. It is not recommended that finned pots be pursued as a means of increasing the efficiency of stoves. Better results can probably be achieved with less effort by using skirts around the pot. These skirts could be attached to the pots with optimum dimensions. See attached report presented to ETHOS 2009

Bolivia Inti-Sud Soleil Retained Heat Stove and Efficient Cookers Rozenn Paris, Bolivia Inti-Sud Soleil, February 2009

Le cuiseur à bois économeLe cuiseur à bois économe

In attached French documents you will find the information relative to the cookers: the retained cooker and the efficient stove we use in Chile and Africa. Bolivia Intl Sud-Soleil

Bolivia Inti-Sud Soleil Retained Heat Stove and Efficient Cookers Rozenn Paris, Bolivia Inti-Sud Soleil, February 2009

Le cuiseur à bois économeLe cuiseur à bois économe

In attached French documents you will find the information relative to the cookers: the retained cooker and the efficient stove we use in Chile and Africa. Bolivia Intl Sud-Soleil

Hello stoves community,

At ETHOS 2009 we held a panel on stove safety, bringing in viewpoints from corporate standards development, national standards certification, and small to medium scale developers. The team led by Nathan Johnson (Iowa State University) included Crispin Pemberton-Pigott (New Dawn Engineering), Casper Thijssen (Philips), and Karabi Dutta.

The panel gave a comparative analysis of how different stove industries (multinational corporations, medium-scale companies, NGOs, small developers, etc.) addressed fundamental stove safety questions. These topics included:

a) applicability of standards and regulation;
b) incentives and benefits
c) facilities and equipment availability
d) cost vs. benefit
e) resulting action

We determined that each type of industry has a different perspective that influences their path or actions towards a safer stove. And that all sub-industries may not produce safer stoves given the same incentive mechanisms or policies. As such more than one path to safety may be needed to reach the greatest amount of end-users (and producers). The panel ended the discussion with an overview present work in stove safety with recommendations for next steps.

Please view the attached file for more details. I will be leading a group in 2009 to work on the following: assemble database of injury data, b) analyze incentive mechanisms, cost/ benefit, c) development of lab testing procedures for different stove categories, d) publication of findings/ results, and e) look for partnerships with international agencies to support safer stove design and production.

Please contact me if you have any questions. There will be more updates to follow. Best,
Nathan Johnson
atlas@iastate.edu
PhD Candidate, Mechanical Engineering, International Development
Iowa State University

CO and PM Emissions from TLUD Cookstoves Presentation to 2009 ETHOS Conference, Kirkland, WA 23-25 January 2009 Paul Anderson, Biomass Energy Foundation, January 22, 2009

CO and PM in TLUDCO and PM in TLUD

Introduction Since 2005, high quality quantitative data on emissions from cookstoves have been accumulating. For data to be properly comparative, both a standardized cooking task and reliable emissions measurements are required. The principal test continues to be the standard five-liter Water Boiling Test (WBT), about which much has been written and debated. Equipment for reliable emissions measurements has been gathered, installed, tested, and accepted for operation at the Aprovecho Research Center (ARC) in Cottage Grove, Oregon, USA. No known equivalent site exists anywhere else in the world. Sincere thanks are given to the Shell Foundation, other financial donors, the ARC organization, and the numerous scientists who assisted in the establishment and operation of those emissions hoods. While the ARC facilitated the gathering of data presented here, the author is responsible for interpretations and any errors or omissions. Dozens of different stoves have been tested to various degrees with the ARC equipment and methodologies. Hundreds of separate test results have been collected. The two measured emissions are carbon monoxide (CO) and particulate matter (PM). This report is focused upon those emissions from four categories of cookstoves: 1. The traditional “three-stone fire,” which provides baseline data. 2. “Simple improved cookstoves” that utilize basic combustion that is confined in various stove structures made of ceramics, mud, or metal. 3. “Rocket stoves” that utilize clear principles and designs that provide significant control over the amount of wood in the area of combustion, with some restriction on the flow of air to the combustion area. 4. “TLUD (top-lit updraft) gasifier stoves” that essentially separate in time and location three processes of biomass burning (pyrolysis, char-gasification, and combustion). They also emphasize separate control of primary and secondary air supplies. Robert Flanagan, a TLUD stove developer in China, has coined the term “third-generation cookstoves” for these stoves that have the capability to easily create and save charcoal for use as a “biochar” additive to improve soil fertility (as in “terra preta”) and to remove permanently carbon from the atmosphere. See attached presentation

Paal Wendelbo and His “Peko Pe” Top-Lit UpDraft (TLUD) Gasifier Cookstoves
Paul Anderson, January 19, 2009

Paal WendlboPaal Wendlbo

This report is in three parts: pioneer experiences; selection of photographs; and technical specifications of the PP stove. The report is based on e-mail interviews and materials provided by Paal Wendelbo in July 2008 and December to Paul S. Anderson, who has added interpretive content. Mr. Wendelbo has approved the basic content about himself, but Dr. Anderson is responsible for any errors, omissions, and editing.

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This is an experiment using biomass in the KEROSENE WICK STOVE. http://e-kerbiostoveexp.blogspot.com/ (for more photographs) The stove was lit at the top using a little amount of biomass soaked in kerosene. The fine holes of 1 to 2 mm located all along the inner and outer frame are useful in achieving very good bluish flames. The flames continued for 30 to 45 minutes duration. Only at the end the performance was bad, the option was that, a lid was used to shut down safely. The fire was very high (Reasons I am not sure). If one does not have enough kerosene, and in emergency one can use the kerosene stoves too with fine wood shavings as fuel. The end product is very good biochar. I am thankful to TOM REED for explaining the functioning of a Kerosene stove, which was the motivation for doing this experiment. http://listserv.repp.org/pipermail/stoves_listserv.repp.org/2009-January...
Also see http://e-woodgasstovemodified.blogspot.com/

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