Wow! Tom Reed Forced Draft TLUDs are great!

The Tom Reed Alpha Limited Forced Draft TLUD stoves (India)

The six-inch and four-inch in diameter FD-TLUD stoves are powered by two AA batteries and are well known to be inexpensive and clean burning. The smaller stove was the “high combustion efficiency” stove used in a 2015 Round Robin test series at Regional Testing and Knowledge Centers. As shown, the Tom Reed stove uses two crossed pieces of metal as pot supports.

The four inch in diameter ARC Round Robin test results were:

As a part of a recent Osprey stove improvement project, ARC added a stainless steel Winiarski stovetop to the smaller and larger Alpha Limited stoves that increased thermal efficiency and resulted in reductions of PM2.5 in the larger stove. The added stovetop seemed to encourage the injected, horizontal secondary air jets to more powerfully cover the top of the fuel? 

Winiarski stove top

With the addition of the SSM Winiarski stovetop, (6mm pot supports and flat perimeter to accommodate a pot skirt) the larger Alpha Limited stove became a very clean burning TLUD. The ISO PM2.5 Tier 4 is less than 62 mg/MJd. The Tier 5 (an inspirational goal for PM2.5) is less than 5 mg/MJd. In a single test, the improved larger Alpha stove achieved 6mg/MJd for PM2.5 after burning for 94 minutes at 4.6 kW.

The thermal efficiency in the smaller diameter Alpha Limited stove was improved but the PM2.5 was not reduced when adding the Winiarski stovetop. The smaller stove ran for 26 minutes on 0.4 kg of Douglas fir pellets.

The following chart describes the features in the larger Tom Reed Alpha Limited FD-TLUD. Perhaps, adapting these hole sizes and air pressure, etc. to other stoves might result in reductions of emissions while increasing thermal efficiency?

Give it a try? 

Tell us what happens?