Years of experimenting with stoves at ARC taught us that a high mass combustion chamber absorbs a lot of heat that could be going into the cooking pot. That led us to presume that efficient combustion chambers had to be lightweight, which are harder to make. Once we started experimenting with forced draft, we were […]
Dr. Tom Reed frequently talked about selling a billion clean burning woodgas stoves. Now that the Biden administration is pointing out that natural gas (and electricity made from fossil fuels) are things of the past, it can be imagined that using woodgas to cook may become a larger part of a post-fossil-fuel future. “On January […]
Here are lessons learned that summarize what we consider to be the ‘state of the art’ in 2021. Please remember that, as scientists, we do not consider these hypotheses to be true. The concepts are evolving and, like all knowledge, will coalesce into a state of greater accuracy as experience, experiment, and analysis shapes understanding. […]
The blacksmith’s forge is probably the most familiar technology that blows jets of primary air up into charcoal or coal, resulting in the high temperatures needed to shape or melt metals. A forge needs air at high pressure (10” water column) to do its work. A fan (usually a radial pressure blower) capable of moving […]
pdf available at: deohs.washington.edu/sites/default/files/AirFilterInfographic_FINAL.pdf I hope that you are living in a smoke free environment! There’s a forest fire about 40 miles east of the lab that floods our valley with smoke when the wind slows down. I just looked up and noticed that it was getting hard to see Blue Mountain, a sure sign […]
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 […]