In 2011, Dr. Samuel Baldwin at the Department of Energy (who wrote the Bible on cook stoves in 1987) organized a two-day 100 person conference to identify how cook stoves could be improved and manufactured. Key recommendations were: At least 90% emissions reduction and 50% fuel savings are appropriate initial targets for biomass cook stoves. Multiple […]
In 2009, The New Yorker published an article about the Rocket stove entitled Hearth Surgery: The quest for a stove that can save the world. One year later, USAID funded field tests in Africa showed that the insulated Rocket stove was not cleaner burning than the open fire. The Rocket with skirt saved 40% of the […]
Kirk Harris has been investigating TLUDs for decades and, as far as I know, his natural draft TLUD burning pellets achieved the lowest natural draft recorded score for PM2.5: 0.7mg/minute at high power (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory). This video shows Kirk in China at Shengzhou Stove Manufacturer where Mr. Shen built a copy of his […]
A major accomplishment of the past few years has been the creation of thirty Regional Testing and Knowledge Centers (RTKCs). Many of these facilities rely on emissions equipment and training from Aprovecho Research Center. They are usually created as an addition to a university in a developing country, and were initially funded by large development organizations such as […]
ARC engineers rely on feedback from field testing to improve the real-world function of biomass cooking systems. Sometimes the news is challenging, but in this instance the news was very encouraging! In 2014 the UNHCR (The UN’s Refugee Agency) conducted pilot testing of the SSM SuperPot in seven refugee camps in four countries in East […]
The Field Informs the Lab In Part 1, we gave examples of how field studies can provide unpleasantly surprising results. Rocket stoves were designed to make a little less smoke and use substantially less fuel. So when the rocket stove was field tested by USAID the inventor, Dr. Larry Winiarski, was not surprised that the […]
ARC has been unpleasantly surprised on several occasions by the results of USAID field studies. For example: When a popular high mass Rocket stove (6-brick stove) used about as much wood to cook compared to open fires. In fact, the open fire outperformed or equaled the performance of all the high mass stoves! When even […]
The air in a kitchen has to be very clean to protect women and children from multiple diseases. Unfortunately, moderate amounts of smoke seem to damage health almost as much as higher concentrations. As exposure rises from zero, the chance that a child will get pneumonia increases sharply and then levels off so that indoor […]
In 2018, the World Health Organization concluded, “Every day around the world, billions of children are exposed to unsafe levels of air pollution. The result is a global public health emergency.” The WHO recommends that a combination of actions may be most effective. Aprovecho has used Retained Heat Cookers (Hayboxes) for decades and we recommend […]
When Dean Still came to Aprovecho in 1989, Dr. Larry Winiarski asked him to compare the thermal efficiency of the Lorena stove and the Three Stone Fire. The testing revealed a problem for the ARC staff when our Lorena used three times more fuel than a carefully operated open fire! Half of the staff, who […]