Dr. Tom Reed visits our lab!
We have some exciting visitors at the Aprovecho lab! Fascinating people pass through the stove laboratory, including academics, project implementers, and inventors with their newest designs. Dr. Thomas Reed, 87 years young, just spent a week here testing his TLUD and fan stoves under the emission hood. It was inspiring time learning from the inventor of the TLUD! Dr. Paul Anderson in his TLUD Handbook (2010) summarizes some of Tom’s early stove experiences: “In 1985 on a trip to South Africa, gasification expert Dr. Thomas B. Reed awoke one night thinking of a very small gasifier for the domestic stove needs of impoverished people. For ten years he worked to develop what is now called the TLUD (Top-Lit Up-Draft) natural draft gasifier stove…” in 1998 Dr. Reed began work on a smaller, forced convection model with a fan with the intention to make a stove for the affluent North American camper market. He successfully produced the Wood Gas CampStove for marketing in 2003 and it can produce impressive heat for sustained periods.” Tom’s Wood Gas stove is a successful product that’s still for sale and it is exceptionally clean burning. The stove can be operated in two ways: as a batch fed TLUD and when fuel is metered bit by bit into the combustion chamber. The primary air and secondary air are balanced to create a 6 to1 ratio that helps to achieve nearly complete combustion. The design can be made in smaller and larger versions adapting to user needs. The WoodGas stove was the cleanest biomass burning stove in our analysis of 18 stoves recently published by the USEPA.https://www.pciaonline.org/files/Test-Results-Cookstove-Performance.pdf
Intensive Training Workshop held at Zamarano University, Honduras
An Intensive Training Workshop was held in Reasearch Triangle Park, North Carolina in January of this year as a collaborative effort to unify technicians and personel of multiple Regional Testing and Knowledge Centers around the world, and to push forward standardized stove testing practices and technology. As a follow-up to this workshop, another workshop was just held in Honduras. Aprovecho’s own Samuel Bentson and Mike Hatfield attended the workshop, hosted by Zamarano University, and shared their experience and knowledge with the multiple other attendees. These workshops are an excellent way to bring together those involved with stove technology and RTKCs and to coordinate knowledge, effective strategies and standardized practices of stove development.
Initial Outcomes from Timor-Leste Indoor Air Pollution Study
Staff at the Timor-Leste Center Cookstove Testing and Knowledge Center (TL-CTKC) and students from the Dili Institute of Technology (DIT) completed an initial study on Indoor Air Pollution (IAP) in homes just outside of the capitol city, Dili. The Aprovecho Indoor Air Pollution Meter was used to measure carbon monoxide and particulate matter in sixteen homes for a period of two to four days each. Initial findings show extremely high levels of both pollutants in these homes. Average CO levels were more than two times higher than WHO guidelines, and PM levels were over thirty times higher. The next steps in this effort will be to continue the study including homes with improved cookstoves.
The full two-page summary is available for download here.