We had a couple of days between jobs at the lab and decided to see if a simple Rocket stove manufactured in India, patterned after the BURN stove, could get better thermal efficiency. Low grade stainless steels, like 304, can’t withstand the hotter combustion chamber temperatures generated when insulated, so in the BURN stove room […]
Charcoal production has wiped out forests in Africa – making charcoal is a very energy inefficient process (Aprovecho Institute, 1984a). Burning off the volatile compounds in wood consumes and wastes between 50% and 80% of the energy! Busy people are out in the world accomplishing things. There’s a ton of information on the Internet and […]
Dr. Larry Winiarski, the Technical Director of Aprovecho Research Center (ARC), died this past week at the age of 81. In the 1980’s and 90’s, Dr. Sam Baldwin defined how to improve heat transfer efficiency in biomass cook stoves (pot skirts, etc.), Dr. Tom Reed created the TLUD, and Dr. Winiarski invented the Rocket stove. […]
In 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) published intermediate and final indoor air guidelines for vented and unvented biomass cooking stoves. Their strong recommendation directed governments and implementers to advocate technologies and fuels that are proven to protect health. The WHO advises implementers that to protect health the cook stove intervention should not exceed the […]
The old saying, “if you can’t handle the heat, get out of the kitchen,” is not lost on us when we are working in the test kitchen. It takes us a while to get the vertical and horizontal grid of Climate Solution Consulting’s HAPEx particulate matter monitors started and positioned. Then ARC’s PEMS-PC partial-capture based […]
Why test a stove? Most of the time, our lab uses testing for product development. If we did not test a stove prototype we would be guessing whether it met expectations. Testing in the lab gets us ready for the field testing of prototypes. Then, customers take the prototype and make it work. The factory […]
There are many forced draft TLUDs that are quite similar to Dr. Tom Reed’s 2001 version, the WoodGas stove. The Oorja stove can be about as clean burning but has several obvious differences: a high mass refractory ceramic combustion chamber, much bigger secondary air holes, and high firepower. Like other forced draft TLUDs the turn […]
Fred and Lise Colgan created InStove, manufacturing and distributing institutional stoves initially designed by Dr. Larry Winiarski. They developed and sold large Rocket stoves that cooked food, sterilized medical equipment, and pasteurized water. The autoclave, sold by Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, works like a big pressure cooker and sterilizes quickly using steam and pressure. The unit […]
It can be challenging to find the time to read a book so here’s a ten-minute video introduction to “Clean Burning Biomass Cookstoves” (2020), our recent updating of the 2015 edition. Download the book for free on the publications page. We spent a significant part of last year rewriting most of the book trying to put […]
Aprovecho Research Center is pleased to announce that it has just been awarded a $50,000 grant from The Osprey Foundation in support of expanding research into the connection between biomass combustion and climate change. To date, a handful of lab and field studies have resulted in relatively little information on how stove/fuel interventions could impact emissions. […]