Damon Ogle and the ARC staff have a long history, starting in Central America and Mexico, listening to folks praising their stoves with chimneys. There are now millions of beautiful Latin American kitchens in which the dangerous smoke is transported out of the house, as it is in the USA/Europe. The Rocket stove can be […]
If renewable switch grass, for example, was burned cleanly enough biomass could join solar, wind, hydro, and thermal energy as sustainable energy replacements in the post fossil fuel era. ARC estimates that an emissions rate of 0.3 grams/hour of PM2.5 would protect air quality in cities and meet the Paris Agreements when replacing natural gas. […]
Since 1976, ARC has been investigating how to improve heat transfer and combustion efficiency in Low Middle Income Countries’ wood burning cook stoves. Emissions of Particulate Matter have been shown to kill millions of people annually. PM concentrations are frighteningly high in homes without chimneys but emissions into outdoor air are an increasing health/climate concern. […]
Total Plants: 107 Metric tons/year: 11,188,200 Depending on the size of the home, winter heating with a pellet burning stove uses from 2 to 6 tons of wood pellets per year. If the average house burned 3 tons per year, 3,729,400 homes could be heated with pellets currently manufactured in the USA. There are 142,153,010 […]
A boundary layer of still air on the bottom and sides of a pot keeps the hot gases from actually contacting the surface and is a dominant factor in heat transfer efficiency. According to Newton’s Law, doubling the surface area doubles the heat transfer when the temperature and velocity of the gases are constant. In […]
When a wooden stick is burned a lot of smoke is produced but the made charcoal at the tip of the wooden stick does not make much smoke.Rocket Stove: Push the sticks in slowly so the charcoal at the tip is burning.TLUD: Charcoal covers the slowly burning fresh wood. If the stove begins smoking, the solid wood […]
Almost 20 years ago, ARC was invited to a conference in Bonn, Germany to consider standards for cook stoves including emissions. In preparation, we met with Dr. Kirk Smith and his protégés at the University of California at Berkeley. We discussed the beneficial effect of increased air exchanges that decrease the concentrations of CO and […]
Forced draft mixing with preheated jets of primary air reduced emissions of PM 2.5 by around 90% in our stove tests with the Jet-Flame. Would adding secondary air jets further decrease emissions? Secondary Air Works in TLUDs Lefebvre, Vanormelingen, and Udesen examined secondary air jets air in cylindrical combustion chambers and describe most successful patterns […]
The ARC lab is located in the Oregon woods where “hippies” and “rednecks” live on small farms in approximately equal numbers and share numerous points of view. I learned about these overlapping values when I accompanied my Dad, a Christian community organizer, to pot-luck meetings at nearby Granges, members of a farmers’ association organized in […]
The direct burning of biomass seems to be dramatically more efficient compared to ethanol for applications such as home heating, cooking, heating water, or drying clothes. It makes sense that not having to create alcohol from biomass would save energy. When the use of natural gas is decreased (due to climate change), burning biomass for […]