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

Manually-operated biomass pelletizer - clay as a binder?
Charlie Sellers, May 10, 2008
Honeycomb Coal

Making Rocket Stoves in China
Dean Still, Aprovecho Research Center, March 28, 2008

Hi Stovers!

A lot of the folks on the List saw the Rocket stoves that we are making in China at ETHOS. John Page and I just spent ten days at the factory near Shanghai. Here’s a quick update on the China project.

The big news is that the lightweight, refractory ceramic combustion chambers are now being extruded at the rate of about one thousand per day. You can imagine that John and Dean were grinning ear to ear, watching the materials being mixed three times in the big grinders. When thoroughly mixed, the clay is extruded into the combustion chamber shape, pushed by a 100HP motor, and every twenty seconds or so, another combustion chamber is ready for drying. (There are photos of all this.) Drying takes about 30 days and then firing takes place in the huge coal fired kiln, as big as a supermarket. I think that we can fire about 20,000 combustion chambers at one go. The kiln is being fired and emptied simultaneously. The clay deposit is located one kilometer from the kiln.

The cast iron stove top was adjusted; raising the pot supports two millimeters, after further emission testing in the lab showed a reduction in CO and PM with a little higher clearance.

We have the first order for a container of stoves, which is going to India. The factory has arranged for a good set up price (about $600) for the packaging. The six sided box can be printed in the local language with desired designs and logos.

We are investigating shipping costs to and duties for all countries. There are different duties for whole stoves and for stove parts. We’re going to write up our experience and send it around to everyone, bit by bit, trying to share what we learn from this project.

You can contact me for the stove catalog, questions, etc…

All Best,

Dean
Aprovecho Research Center
www.aprovecho.org
541-767-0287 Oregon, USA
dstill@epud.net

New Factory Under Construction