Remembering Ken Goyer

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On the front porch of the house he built in West Eugene, Ken Goyer shows an example of the Six Brick Rocket Stove

Photo by Paul Neevel for the Eugene Weekly

I think about Ken making the lightweight, insulated bricks from Bailey Hill yellow clay for the Uganda submerged double pot stove in 2002. Exposing the sides as well as the bottom of the pot(s) to flame and hot gases increased fuel efficiency. The Rocket combustion chamber, also made from Ken’s recipe (clay and sawdust) was a 5” in diameter, 12″ high cylinder, placed under the first, larger pot. 

We tested the stove using one pound of wood. 6.6 pounds of water in the first pot (12″ diameter) boiled in ten minutes. We had a great week of sunny, windy weather and it was great fun to work with Ken and Peter Scott (Burn Stoves), who was about to go to South Africa. 

I met Ken when he was doing “Ken’s Ten-Buck Tune-Ups.” He first saw open cooking fires when he went to El Salvador in 1992 to help Sylvia Gregory with her women’s empowerment project. With funding from Rotary Club, Ken directed construction of brickmaking kilns for refugee camps near Lira in Uganda and Gulu in Darfur. He helped to start Aid Africa and is one of the inspirational people we miss and so fondly remember. He was one of Larry Winiarski’s best friends.

ARC Assists CSIR-Ghana in Capacity-Building 

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In the first week of October, ARC Research and Development Engineer Jaden Berger visited CSIR-Ghana for capacity building training. The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is the foremost national science and technology institution in Ghana.

The main focus of the visit was to teach them how to perform field testing using various sensor suites. CSIR was especially focussed on learning to perform KPTs (Kitchen Performance Tests) while using EXACT sensors from Climate Solutions Consulting. We also used other sensors CSIR already had: a PEMS (Portable Emissions Monitoring System) with a portable hood, an IAP (Indoor Air Pollution) meter, and an air quality sensor along with performing UCETs (Uncontrolled Cooking Efficiency Tests) during cooking to determine the efficiency of the stove.

Making observations of how cooks are using stoves.

Setting up a PEMS with a portable hood to measure stove emissions.

Testing was done at a secondary boy’s boarding school in Accra. The school cooks breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 3,000 students using a variety of improved and unimproved stoves. The stoves identified as the least efficient and highest emitters were the 12 wood stoves and 4 palm kernel stoves. (Palm kernels used to be considered agricultural waste from palm oil production but are now commonly used as fuel.) Several design meetings were held to determine a design that would increase efficiency, clean up emissions, and remove emissions from the room the cooks were in.

Palm kernel stoves in use for breakfast.

Weighing wood for three 24 hour-long KPTs.

Performing UCET measurements.

The next step is for CSIR to finalize a CAD model of the design along with some CFD analysis to predict if the prototype will work. ARC will then virtually meet with CSIR and their manufacturer to finalize the design and begin creating prototypes.

During the second week of the visit, ARC and CSIR worked on wrapping up older projects. This included gathering final data for a charcoal conversion efficiency study, creating a draft of the charcoal conversion efficiency protocol so that it can be published, and developing and using a durability protocol that is more applicable to conditions a stove will have to withstand in Ghana.

Taking measurements for creating a new durability protocol.

Overall, a successful trip with good progress made toward improving health and cooking conditions in Ghana.

Visiting SSM

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New SSM Health/Climate Biomass Heating Stove Buildings

Here is a video I made last week, introducing some of the the new things I saw on my visit to Shengzhou Stove Manufacturer (SSM). I keep on saying in the video (Sorry!) how much I admire Mr. and Mrs. Shen. Mr. Shen is a great engineer who has built the new buildings, installed the machines, and taken the ideas that Dr. Winiarski brought to him and manufactured over five million durable, affordable Rocket stoves. Mrs. Shen runs the business, does HR, sells the stoves, etc. 

An amazing combination! Daughter, Kristina and nephew Chenkai, are being trained to assist the business. You’ll meet the younger generation in the video. Kristina went to the University of Oregon and is now a Vice President at SSM. Chenkai leads a team selling stoves out of his offices in Shenzen.

I walked around new buildings, tested clean burning stoves (including the Jet-Flame and forced draft TLUD) and saw a new wing being built (above) with huge machines to make health/climate biomass heating stoves, a new venture. Since 1976, Aprovecho has helped approximately one hundred stove projects, with SSM becoming the most commercially successful, rolling profits into expanding capacity.

What a joy to visit!

Appreciating Local Expertise

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Cooking over an open fire in Ghana. (Photo: Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves)

Cooks are experts!

Community organizers often say that to be successful the solution has to come from the folks with the problem. Another important factor is to appreciate the culture and long evolved expertise in their technical and social solutions. The women at Rancho San Nicolas, where I lived for eight years, were incredibly skillful at cooking on an open fire and were understandably proud of their abilities when cooking perfect tortillas, fish, beans, soup, etc. At a fish camp, guys who were not cooking every day, had a lot of trouble making anything close to a succulent home cooked meal.

Along with the hundreds of technical skills that made ranching fun, culture made life easier and more beautiful. Ranch culture was at least half of competency and expertise. Laughing at life’s problems made overcoming them much more likely. Religion, nature, the beauty of living outdoors and liking the slow pace were strengths in my friends that I grew to envy and attempted to emulate.

Bringing innovations started with lots of failure. The first Rocket stoves became flowerpots. The first solar cookers became toilet seats and windows. Eventually, ARC appropriate technologists made prototypes that were simply put on public display. Of our many attempts to introduce ‘helpful’ technology, cement rat proof boxes were the biggest success.

We learned a lot more than we taught, starting with listening to our expert hosts. The shorter and higher firepower Rocket stove that has gone viral was created by women in 18 villages in Southern India. Dr. Winiarski had the idea and the cooks made it practical.

Cleaner Burning Biomass Stoves: In Homes!

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The British Petroleum clean burning Oorja FD-TLUD stove from India

If protecting health and climate are important in stove projects, why not monetize the reductions of health/climate pollutants in carbon-offset projects?

Only the reduction in fuel use earns carbon income now!

With equal heat transfer efficiency, dirty burning stoves earn as much as clean burning stoves.

Dirty burning stoves are less expensive. “Market demand” reinforces the use of biomass stoves with low combustion efficiency.

Why not add income from reductions in CO, PM2.5 and Black Carbon, etc. to carbon projects to get cleaner burning stoves into use?

The approved 2017 Gold Standard Methodology already exists to do this! See: www.goldstandard.org/articles/black-carbon-and-other-short-lived-climate-pollutants

H.R.6316 – Clean Cooking Support Act

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Following the COP26 international climate conference, Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) and Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), have introduced a bill to accelerate access to clean cooking. Here is the opening text of the section defining the activities directed in the bill. H.R.6316 has been referred to the Subcommittee on Energy:

SEC. 5. CLEAN COOKING PROGRAM.

(a) Department Of State; United States Agency For International Development.—The Secretary of State and the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development shall work with the Clean Cooking Alliance, founded in 2010—

(1) to engage in a wide range of diplomatic activities, including with countries across the globe and with United States embassies abroad, to support activities of the Clean Cooking Alliance and the clean cookstoves and fuels sector;

(2) to continue the clean cooking initiatives supported by the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, an intergovernmental organization formed in 2012, to reduce emissions of climate pollutants;

(3) to advance programs that support the adoption of affordable cookstoves that require less fuel to meet household energy needs and release fewer pollutants, as a means to improve health, reduce environmental degradation, mitigate climate change, foster economic growth, and empower women; and

(4) to carry out other activities authorized under this Act.

(b) Department Of Energy.—The Secretary of Energy shall work with the Clean Cooking Alliance—

(1) to conduct research to spur development of low-cost, low-emission, high-efficiency cookstoves through research in areas such as combustion, heat transfer, and materials development;

(2) to conduct research to spur development of low-emission, high-efficiency energy sources;

(3) to support innovative small businesses in the United States that are developing advanced cookstoves and improved cookstove assessment devices; and

(4) to carry out other activities authorized under this Act.

The bill continues on in sections (c) through (f) to direct the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies to engage in supportive activities. You can read the full text of the bill at https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/6316/text

African Mud Stoves with Chimneys

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Damon Ogle was the Technical Director here at ARC

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 about 50% more fuel-efficient compared to the open fire, so about half the smoke is made. But that is not good enough to protect health inside a home.

Although health-protecting chimneys are seen in Latin America and India, it’s rare to see chimneys in Africa.  

One simple African stove with chimney is seen above. A sunken pot (or pots) sits down near the fire exposing its bottom and sides to the flame. The pot seals into the hole and the smoke flows up the chimney, not into the lungs of the cook and her children. 

Since 1976, ARC has continued to work with local communities worldwide to try to save fuel and protect health. Trying to protect climate requires very clean combustion and we’re working on that, too.

The Not-Stove Intervention

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Cooking outside

When the air exchange rate is doubled, the concentration of smoke is reduced by half. The average house in low middle income countries is estimated to have around 12 air exchanges per hour (ISO 19867-3). When ARC measured the air exchange rate outdoors in a gentle breeze it was found to be about 120 per hour. Exposure to smoke could theoretically be dramatically reduced by moving outside.

Changing stoves costs money and the transition to an improved stove is often a time consuming process. ISO reports that even stoves with chimneys (that often leak) only reduce concentrations of smoke in houses by around 75%. Experimenting with increasing the air exchange rate is probably the most cost-effective intervention to protect health. 

When we went to villages where women cooked outside, Dr. Winiarski would frequently ask the women if digging a well, etc. might be more important than new Rocket stoves. That is one of the things that we loved about Larry!

How To Make An Institutional Stove With Chimney

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Dr. Mouhsine Serrar and the Rocket institutional stove designed by Dr. Larry Winiarski

There are at least three ways to make institutional stoves with chimneys, all of which work well and save fuel and decrease emissions. Here they are:

  1. Shell Foundation supported the making of an eight-part video, a step by step guide to making a 50 to 100 liter institutional Rocket stove, with a heat resistant metal Rocket combustion chamber. It is a great stove with lots of successful field testing but it costs the most to construct because heat resistant metals like 410 stainless or FeCrAl are increasingly expensive. The super insulated combustion chamber requires these types of metal. 304 stainless will not last. https://youtu.be/VdhLWMW7IXA
  2. Cooking With Less Fuel: Breathing Less Smoke shows how to make the same institutional stove using bricks for the Rocket combustion chamber. Construction details can be found at aprovecho.org in the publications section. The book was written with the World Food Program in Rome. This is a less expensive stove that is slightly less fuel efficient at cold start but lasts longer and is easier to make in places where 410 stainless and FeCrAl are not available.
  3. Making a VITA style institutional stove without a Rocket combustion chamber is the least expensive way to create an institutional stove. The open fire under the pot is supported on a grate and the hot gases flow up the inside of the skirt, down the outside of the skirt and exit out the chimney placed below the bottom of the pot as in the Rocket stoves shown above. You can find a video we made about constructing the VITA stove at: https://aprovecho.org/video-gallery/

Lots of manufacturers do not use the chimney but we think that protecting health is very important. We try to follow Don O’Neals advice (HELPS International) to always include chimneys whenever possible, imagining our mothers cooking and getting ill from exposure to the harmful emissions without the protection of the chimney.

A Recent History of the Rocket Stove: 2009

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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 fuel to cook and emissions were only reduced by that amount.

Not a Planet Saver, yet!

The insulated Rocket combustion chamber raised temperatures but as Dr. Winiarski realized at the time, flame, air, and gases were not adequately mixed to achieve sufficient combustion efficiency. Larry knew that the Rocket was smoky but it was simple to make and with a pot skirt saved fuel. He wanted to provide folks with a stove that was helpful and he realized that it wasn’t perfect.

Larry’s idea went viral worldwide and continues to be a favorite on the internet and in many low- and middle-income countries. Millions of Rocket stoves are manufactured and sold yearly by factories large and small.

Going viral is great but can have a downside especially when the initial products are not technically mature. It’s normal for first generation products to be improved as time goes by. The process of development continues in 2022.