Institutional-size stoves like this Lihubesi stove frequently use a sunken pot or pot skirt to increase heat transfer efficiency. While testing the institutional-size Alpha Limited TLUD, ARC staff conducted an experiment to see if a skirt is strictly necessary with a very large pot. A 58cm in diameter pot was heated by the six-inch in […]
Schoolhouse Creek, filled with late winter run off, rushes along next to the Cafeteria building The Aprovecho lab is in a green forest, eight miles east of Cottage Grove, Oregon, a town of ~10,000 people. Working in a forest to design, manufacture and sell clean burning biomass cooking and heating stoves makes sense. Heating and […]
S Dr. Reed’s Alpha Limited stoves Lefebvre, Vanormelingen, and Udesen examined secondary air jets air in cylindrical TLUD combustion chambers and described the most successful patterns and penetration depths. They reported that air jet penetration lengths approaching the middle of flame in a cylindrical combustion chamber resulted in a maximum reduction of PM2.5. An increase […]
The Tom Reed Alpha Limited Forced Draft TLUD stoves (India) The six-inch and four-inch in diameter FD-TLUD stoves are powered by two AA batteries and are well known to be inexpensive and clean burning. The smaller stove was the “high combustion efficiency” stove used in a 2015 Round Robin test series at Regional Testing and […]
The popular Jiko stove, photo by AIDG on Flickr With carbon prices low and support apparently shifting, perhaps thinking about market-based improved cook stoves is increasingly interesting? In the Millennium Villages studies, a high-end retail price of something like $10 was recommended to sell stoves directly into the market. (Adkins, Tyler, al, 2010) What can be […]
From SAMUEL BALDWIN’S “BIOMASS STOVES: ENGINEERING DESIGN, DEVELOPMENT, AND DISSEMINATION,” VITA, 1987 Various stove/pot/skirt combinations are achieving ~ 60% thermal efficiency. How high can we go? There may be other important factors? In ARC tests of modern Rocket stoves, a pot with an area of around 800cm2 scored 34% thermal efficiency. Increasing the area to […]
Two dollar and fifty cent SSM adjustable pot skirt Aprovecho staff travel around the world assisting stove projects. We experience that almost all biomass stoves in Low Middle Income Countries markets are sold for $10 USD or less. It seems to us that more expensive stoves are supported by carbon revenue, or sold in cities […]
Iterative Development: Addressing Health & Climate Change Thanks to the Osprey Foundation, ARC just finished building a new heating stove lab and we are experimenting with how to make very clean burning home heating stoves. The intended price points are considerably lower than higher emission stoves currently for sale. Zero Green Premium products cost less […]
INDOOR AIR QUALITY GUIDELINES: HOUSEHOLD FUEL COMBUSTION, 2014 A “Cut and Paste” Summary PM levels have to be very low to protect health “Among the key findings is that for several important health outcomes, including child acute respiratory infections, exposure to the key pollutant– fine particulate matter, or PM2.5 – needs to be brought down […]
Do not burn the rice! A stick fed cook stove can achieve a ~three to one turndown ratio (TDR) by burning more or fewer sticks per unit of time. In a low mass Rocket cook stove, ~five small sticks can boil the water/food and ~two to three small sticks can simmer it (without, hopefully, burning […]