Detailed Observations At Work

Last week we shared some thoughts about the importance of gathering detailed data and making direct observations when testing stoves. Here’s a question we recently considered.

Did a partial cover over the sticks entering the combustion chamber help reduce emissions in the CQC stove with Jet-Flame?

No, not in this preliminary test series, although lots of interesting things happened! Placing a swinging door over the fuel opening into the combustion chamber has often occurred to Rocket stove designers and it appears now and then in stoves. Dr. Winiarski liked the swinging door.  The thought is to get the excess air down by reducing the amount of air coming into the combustion chamber through the door. With sufficient but less excess air, the temperatures needed for cleaner combustion should rise.

Excess air did go down when a metal cover was near to touching the tops of the sticks in our experiments. It fell from an average of 2.91 times stoichiometric to 2.54. The average temperature in the combustion chamber did rise as a result, from 557°C to 596°C. The partial cover was doing its job. Firepower went up (4359 watts up from 4012 watts) and that might have helped with heat transfer efficiency. However, in this particular case, the thermal efficiency was unchanged (36% covered and 37% uncovered).

The positive changes in excess air and temperature also did not affect the emissions. PM2.5 (56mg/MJ-d covered and 55mg/MJ-d uncovered) and CO (2.63g/MJ-d covered and 2.72 g/MJ-d uncovered) were not changed enough to show a difference. Of course, using a Jet-Flame that is introducing lots of changes into the combustion chamber, including more excess air, probably makes this an unusual set of circumstances.

The swinging door may be great in a natural draft Rocket stove and as usual, Dr. Winiarski was right. It didn’t seem to be needed in this scenario. That’s OK with me, because the cover obscured the visual clues that help to tend a fire, and make tending more fun. I felt like I was flying a plane through the fog and was glad to land.