Home made CQC rocket stove (L) is easily improved with the addition of a Jet-Flame (L).

We won the Tibbets Award!

ASAT, the for-profit arm of Aprovecho, has been awarded a prestigious Tibbetts Award by the US Small Business Administration. The Tibbets Award is given for demonstrating significant economic and social impact from the R&D funding provided by SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) grants. ASAT received EPA SBIR grants that enabled the research and development of:

  • The Jet-Flame that increases combustion efficiency (costs around $11). See: www.Jet-Flame.com
  • An air cooled thermoelectric generator (water cooling is hard to install).
  • A low cost, easily cleaned electrostatic precipitator (90% reduction of soot).
  • The Integrated Stove. See: www.ssmstoves.com/project/m55/

We partnered with the Gates funded Global Health Lab to develop the Jet-Flame. They have recently supported sending Jet-Flame samples worldwide. C-Quest Capital (CQC) has completed several pilots and has plans to do projects in Africa, Asia, and India. A factory in Malawi is gearing up to build Jet-Flames and solar systems with carbon credits from CQC. 

Home made CQC rocket stove (L) is easily improved with the addition of a Jet-Flame (L).
The CQC home made brick Rocket stove is updated with the Jet-Flame in Malawi

“C-Quest Capital is committed to the Jet-Flame as a truly breakthrough technology. Our stoves in Malawi now use less wood, women save time cooking, and breathe a lot less smoke.”

Ken Newcombe, CEO, C-Quest Capital

The clean combustion of biomass adds homegrown power to the energy mix here in the USA and in other countries. Without the EPA SBIR this would not have happened! To learn more about the Tibbets Award, visit tibbetsawards.com.

Intro image for YouTube Video

New Video: Rocket Stove 2021 – LEMS+ Realtime Combustion Analysis

Watch what happens with PM2.5, CO2, Oxygen and more during a wood burning stove test in this real-time video from Apro’s Laboratory Emissions Monitoring System. The LEMS provides a display of what’s being recorded by the various sensors in the stove being tested, and in the emissions hood. In this video, Dean Still gives an overview of what the five lines on screen represent, and how they relate to each other as the fire progresses.

For more info about Aprovecho’s emissions monitoring systems, see aprovecho.org/portfolio-item/emissions-equipment.

Inventor’s Pride: Watch Out!

Almost perfect!

Having unbiased villagers or Dr. Jim Jetter test Aprovecho’s Lorena stove might have helped to reduce our embarrassment when again and again the open fire was proven to be much more fuel efficient! Inventor’s pride is a well-known human frailty. Creating a truth-telling team including all the folks concerned with a stove project helps to address the inventor who is doing what feels natural and right, but can be misguided. It happens at ARC frequently!

The ARC team has found that an engineer/researcher may know more about the thermodynamics of a stove, but the expertise of cooks, manufacturers, distributors, retailers, and funders in the stove project need to be included in the decision making process from start to maturity. Test, test, test!

As Dr. Kirk Smith said, “You get what you inspect, not what you expect”.

Our advice is to test everything frequently from all angles and try to respond to problems without inventor’s pride. It’s not easy! Cognitive dissonance messes up judgement all the time. 

It’s easy to think, “I am intelligent, and make good decisions.” Admitting a mistake can threaten that image of self. It can be really hard to hear someone say, “Man, that Lorena stove is terrible! How could you have been so dumb?”

At Apro, we strive to use criticisms as a tool for improvement. Taking time to assess and define the problems, and consulting with our team about how to make improvements, moves us forward towards a more successful outcome.

Rocket Stove 2021 - Pot Skirts

New Video: Rocket Stove 2021 – Pot Skirts to Increase Heat Transfer

In this video, Dean Still explains why a pot skirt – a sheet of metal wrapped around the cooking pot – is a simple yet important way to improve the fuel efficiency of a rocket stove. He also explains how to calculate the appropriate distance between the skirt and the pot. Stay tuned to the end of the video to find out who is causing all the ruckus in the background…

Helpful references:

simplified diagram of constant cross sectional area
Simplified drawing of the concept of constant cross sectional area.

This is a very simplified illustration of what “constant cross-sectional area” means. The top circle represents the cross-sectional area of a stove riser. The bottom ring shows the same area translated into the space around a pot. It’s important to keep the cross-sectional area that the hot gasses flow through consistent, so they don’t slow down. Hot, fast flowing gasses transfer heat most efficiently. 

graph helps calculate proper skirt gap for best heat transfer efficiency
Chart for calculating channel gaps, from Dr. Samuel Baldwin’s “Biomass Stoves: Engineering Design, Development, and Dissemination.” 1987, Volunteers in Technical Assistance.

This is the chart for determining efficient channel gaps, explained towards the end of the video. It was developed by Dr. Samuel Baldwin in 1987.

Here is the Ten Stove Design Principles poster referred to in the video. Many more helpful documents are also linked on the Publications page.