Huck Rorick & Pearly Wong
Groundwork Institute http://www.groundwork.org

In the community of Besongabang, Cameroon the families often use firewood to process palm oil. The oil is sold to other communitiies, and the Besongabang families use the dried wastes (the leftovers of palm oil processing) to help light fires that are used for cooking, and palm processing.

The first 3 pictures of are of the palm oil processing practies of Besongabang, and the third picture is of the wastes, which are mostly dried. These wastes are often used to start the 3 stone family cooking files, but as Pearly Wong notes, the process of starting these fires is labor intensive. The sticks light easily, but the palm wastes frequently go out, and sometimes the fire must be started multiple times before any cooking can happen.

In this community, they are comfortable using stick wood and logs and there are no charcoal stoves or charcoal production. Groundwork volunteers have been talking through several options with other members of the Biomass Cooking Stoves list, and also with the families in Besongabang. It seems like an improved wood stove would be a good fit for this community especially if the problem of lighting the fires could be resolved, and the families value the improvements that may come in the form of less labor, less smoke or less fuel used.

Crispin Pemberton-Pigot and Christa Roth suggested using a lighting cone to help start the stoves. The lighting cone provides extra shelter from the wind and extra draft, and may help the families in Besongabang start their fires with fewer attempts and less wood.

For more information about lighting cones see http://stoves.bioenergylists.org/content/using-metal-cone

BURN Manufacturing
http://www.burnmanufacturing.com

Jikopoa stove and partnership with Equity Bank to bring improved stoves to families in Kenya.

Burn factory tour:

The Wonderwerk TLUD natural draft test stoves use a combustor section above the secondary burn area to provide time and space for the secondary flame to burn more completely.

The project started as a way to shorten the overall height of a TLUD stove by adding an improved combustor. In the process of Kirk Harris improved the efficiency of the stove.
His write-up: http://stoves.bioenergylists.org/files/wws_tlud_combustor_paper102714.pdf

Kirk modified the original TLUD design ( http://www.drtlud.com ) to include a concentratior and used Venturi principles to blend secondary air to improved combustion.

Marc Ayats Plana has updated his TLUD Oven paper the latest results. You can download a copy here.
http://stoves.bioenergylists.org/files/tlud_oven_english-update.pdf

This Oven started out as an experiment in creating a low mass oven using a rocket style stove, and after some experimentation Marc switched to a TLUD style stove to improve the oven's efficiency and to also be able to use agricultural residues, almond shells, instead of wood. Please see the report for details.

And there is more on the Fogons Solares web site:
http://www.cuinessolars.jimdo.com

ETHOS Cooking Stoves Conference in Kirkland, Washington January, 2015.
for more about the next ETHOS Conference see http://www.ethoscon.com/

The ETHOS conference brings together people involved in stove design, dissemination, and testing from Universities, Government, and Non Government organizations, and has themes around the topics of improving cook stove design and performance, reducing emissions, and improving stove adoption, but listening to the needs of the people using the stoves. It ends with the 'lighting of the stoves' which is a demonstration of some of the cooking stoves that people have talked about in the conference.

In addition to capturing photos of the stoves, this year I captured a few pictures of the crowd of attendees comparing stove designs, toasting marshmallows, etc.

The big green stove is the InStove institutional rocket stove http://instove.org/

The lovely people taking pictures were from CREEC ( Energy and Energy Conservation ) which presented a great analysis of current cooking stove tests and some insights to improve them. They also noted that fans typically fail in Uganda, and there are no fans available to replace them.
For more about CREEC see http://creec.or.ug

StoveTec and Aprovecho presented some interesting innovations in stove design that they hope to field test in the coming year. The light green stove has an insulated top door for adding fuel to their TLUD style stove. The purple stove is their rocket stove that has been optimized for improved particulate emissions, with an improved set of colors.
For more about StoveTec stoves see http://stovetecstore.net/
for more about Aprovecho and stove testing see http://www.aprovecho.org/lab/index.php

I was happy to get a good picture of Christa Roth of GiZ her handbook of MicroGasification is outstanding, to download a copy go to https://energypedia.info/wiki/File:Micro_Gasification_2.0_Cooking_with_g...

Some faces from the next crowd picture include Peter Scott with Burn , see http://www.burndesignlab.org and Seema Patel with the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves http://cleancookstoves.org/

The next stoves are TLUD style Stoves see http://www.drtlud.com/
including Kirk Harris's TLUD stove with a novel Wonderwerk Strata Combustor
http://stoves.bioenergylists.org/content/wonderwerk-strata
The Kirk Harris stove has a modified dome design concentrator just under the pot rest.

The very groovy orange stove is the Rocket Works stove http://www.rocketworks.org/ and it was a pleasure to see how that stove has evolved over the last couple of years.

Unfortunately, I missed taking photos of Jon and Flip Anderson's Rocket baking stove. They were making chocolate bread in it, that was delicious, and I clean lost my head and forgot to take photos.

The final couple of pictures are of Dale Andreatta's inner chamber of the Rocket Stove with a viewing window that he's been tinkering with. The concept is simple, allow the person operating the stove to have a window to quickly check the progress of the fire from a distance. Larry Winiarski noted that improving the mass of the stove under the rest for the fuel sticks also helps retain heat in the combustion chamber and reduces the need to constantly feed or tinker with the stove.

I've attached the program to give you an idea of the breadth of the discussion. There were a lot of conversations about improving stoves through lowering particulate emissions, and reducing CO in the lab, an update on the ISO process for clean cookstoves, and some really fantastic detailed sessions about user adoption of stoves, the differences in communities between stoves where there is and is not stove adoption, availability of stoves, and wonderful insight from Cecil Cook about cook stove programs in Indonesia.

SNV Uganda, Last Mile Intelligence Report
March, 2015

Background

Uganda’s energy consumption matrix stands at about 90% biomass, 7% petroleum products and 2% of electricity produced from hydro and thermal power plants. Only 12% of the total population is estimated to have access to electricity of which only 1% comprises the rural population. People in Uganda depend almost exclusively on dim kerosene-fired lamps for light. Around 95% of the country’s population have to use the expensive and dangerous fuel because they do not have access to the electricity grid ad other modern energy alternatives. To exacerbate the worrying situation, the use of biomass hugely depends on traditional technologies such as three-stone fireplaces that have very low efficiencies (10%-17%). Consequently, communities are facing growing scarcity of access to firewood and charcoal with demand ever increasing while supply remains unsustainable

Government, NGOs, private sector and development partners have been implementing
a number of improved cookstoves (ICS) interventions however, access to ICS remains very low especially in rural [last mile] communities. Most funding for ICS has been through projects and programmes that in the end fail to attain sustainability beyond the implementation period. Consequently, adopters are frustrated after project periods with no access to repair, new ICS and other related services.

SNV in the Energy Sector

SNV has been working in Uganda’s energy sector providing technical support to the Uganda Domestic Biogas Programme. In 2014, SNV expanded its portfolio in renewable energy sector by adding support to scaling up market-based approaches to distribution of improved cookstoves and Pico solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. SNV is working with stakeholders
to develop long-term sustainable market based solutions that will encourage investments from public and private sector stakeholders while scaling up access to ICS and pico solar PV among last mile consumers.

Read the Study: http://stoves.bioenergylists.org/files/snv_market_intelligence_study_rep...

Published on Mar 31, 2015

AIMS of the Eco-Kalan Project
To Improve the Health, Environment and Economics of Poor Communities

March 30, 2015

Dear Friends,
In the current video, I share with you the exciting developments from the partnership between the Eco-Kalan Project with the Negros Oriental Visayan Forum, the 79th Infantry Battalion and the 302nd Infantry Brigade of the Philippine Army in a livelihood program based on the Eco-Kalan and the Bingka Oven.

Since the Oct. 4, 2014 demonstration at Felipa Beach on Cooking with the Eco-Kalan and Baking with the Bingka Oven to members of SUMAPI Dumandan (http://youtu.be/RUYq7i1gQj4 ), we have learned and accomplished the following:

On December 14 -15, 2014, the Eco-Kalan Project and its partners
- set up an Eco-Kalan-C kitchen with Bingka ovens fired with wood and coconut shell charcoal and a traditional oven fired by wood for comparison; and
- officially launch the Eco-Kalan & Bingka Oven as a livelihood program for SUMAPI Dumandan under the Visayan Forum's umbrella.

In reviewing the interviews with SUMAPI members, guests and attendees at the launching, I learned about the limitations in the supply of coconut shell charcoal; restrictions in the production and supply of wood charcoal; and the seemingly unavoidable smoke when using wood as fuel for the Bingka oven. Smoke during baking can tarnish the appearance and taste of the baked product making it unmarketable.. And yet, wood is most often the fuel of choice when coconut shell or wood charcoal are not available or when wood is free for the picking.

I decided to make a clay stove which can function as a TLUD (gasifier) stove in phase 1 of the burn and as a charcoal stove in phase 2. That gave rise to the Whirly Pinay-S (2 kg wood capacity) and the Whirly Pinay-L (4 kg wood capacity) based on Kelpie Wilson's tin can Whirly Girl TLUD (Top Lit Upward Draft) stove. Our March 17, 2015 test runs with the large bingka oven using firewood in the improved Whirly Pinay (longer secondary air slits) produced clean, untarnished bingkas in all the 4 batches.

On February 27, 2015 Lakbay Aral (Educational Tour),
- the Eco-Kalan Project hosted the last of the school year's Lakbay Aral luncheon for 150 people. It was on this occasion that the Whirly Pinay-L was used to cook breakfast for over 30 people who prepared the luncheon. The coming Lakbay Aral video will include cooking the breakfast.
- the Eco-Kalan Project was requested to provide snack and water for everyone travelling back to Milagrosa, Sta. Catalina. I challenged the SUMAPI Dumandan and Visayan Forum's clients from Ayungon to bake 500 muffins using 4 Bingka ovens fired by wood in the Whirly-Pinay-S stove; coconut shell charcoal in a small and large Eco-Kalan stove; and by LPG in a gas burner. They rose to the challenge with enthusiasm and succeeded.

On March 8, 2015 Baking Extravaganza,
- the Eco-Kalan team at Felipa Beach and SUMAPI Dumandan and Ayungon Visayan Forum clients baked and ate to their hearts' content.

Warm regards,

Rebecca Arrieta Vermeer
Eco-Kalan Project in the Philippines
http://www.eco-kalan.com/

After over 30 years of doing theoretical and experimental research, the authors of this document (Newtech Co., Ltd. in Quy Nhon city, Binh Dinh and Tan My Kim Co., Ltd. in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam), until now, have completed all not only modern but also cheap & user-friendly technology solutions which can help the poor all over the world do cooking by gas generated at their home without buying any drops of liquefied gas.

These technologies solutions can be developed in a country or in a big city or small town in any countries in the world, even it is in America, Europe, Australia and especially in Asia and Africa.

This technology solution includes the technologies of the authors and the following ones which have been provided with patents issued by the National Office of Intellectual Property of Vietnam:

1. Coal changed into arbitrary biomass available locally by applying modern but simple anoxic thermal degradation technology of the authors in order to change the biomass into BioCarbon which can be burnt to become gas easily.
2. Cleaning black coal, brown coal, peat coal and other harmful substance by applying the modern and simple technology of the authors and colleagues and coworkers in Vietnam.
3. Increasing heating value and quality of BioCarbon coal and the above mentioned black coal, brown coal, peat coal by modern but simple carbon accumulation technology of the authors and coworkers in Vietnam.
4. Determining the gas generating additives which can be mixed with BioCarbon and above mentioned black coal in order to make them become fuel which is easy to be burnt to become gas, and they are called “clean coal to be burnt to become gas”. The author calls such fire in gas “Vietnam Magic Fire”. This is a very important technology because it controls the entire gasification process at the desire of the persons producing the “clean coal to be burnt to become gas”.
5. Technology of forming the burnt coal in pellet (Figure 1), shaped biomass coal fuel (Figure 2) and an ant hill coal fuel (Figure 3)
6. Technology of producing stoves heating the burnt coal to become gas, with the structure which is simple but modern and cheap and can be produced anywhere in the world.

Thanks to the special structure of this gas cooker, thanks to the quality of the coal burnt to become gas and especially of the gas generating additives, where all types of cookers invented by the authors burn them to become gas after some minutes from fire lighting, such gas is likely liquefied gas and can cook during from 2 to 8-10 hours depending on additive coal and cooking volume. The cookers do not emit toxic gas, do not cause explosion, light a fire easily, without smoke, with long fire using period, can be used in house and user-friendly. The burner of the cooker can resist the heat of up to 17200C.
The cookers have combustion correction device of gas which is easy-to-use and allows to keep with fire so that gas burning can be continued later until gas is out. The cooking efficiency of such cookers is very high, at the range of 25% to 28% (while the cooking efficiency of the firewood stove is 7-8%).

In the Figures 4,5,6,7, there are the pictures of the small gas cooker used for the household with 1-3 persons, medium gas cooker used for the household with 4-6 persons, big gas cooker used for the household with >7 persons, cookers for cooking noodle and cookers for the restaurants and those anthill coal fuel cookers with three above mentioned sizes.

See the attached file for more details TECHNOLOGY SOLUTION FOR HELPING THE POOR ALL OVER THE WORLD DO COOKING WITH GAS GENERATED AT THEIR HOME

The inverted pyramid rebar stove is ubiquitous in Haiti. Lots of radiation and convection away from the pot. No air control. Pot is often placed directly on the charcoal which quenches the charcoal and interferes with good radiative heat transfer.
I cut up a scrap stainless steel kitchen sink, built a sheet metal outer box, put in 1" of ceramic fiber board insulation, and added legs and pot supports. The inverted pyramid grate will have the legs shortened and be placed inside the "sink". A slide gate with sets of progressively smaller holes will be added to the "drain" for air control.

Manufacturing is helping improve the lives of women and girls in East Africa with its efficient charcoal-burning Jikokoa™ stove and opportunities for women to participate in its workforce. The stove itself represents a step-change in the design and efficiency of charcoal-burning cookstoves. As well as being an aspirational household product, it cuts down on smoke and soot by more than 60% compared to the widely used Kenya ceramic jiko. But it’s not just women using the stoves who benefit. With all manufacture now done in a new state-of-the-art factory in Kenya, BURN emphasises that all jobs are open to both men and women at all levels – just over half of its workforce are women.

More about the 2015 International Ashden Award Winners
http://www.ashden.org/awards/2015/international

Jo Kennard in Australia has developed a retained heat cooker the Easy Oven, and has developed an excellent table of recommended cooking times and recipes to go with it.

Inspired by traditional Haybox cookers, and made from modern materials, the EasyOven saves between 86% - 90% of energy used while cooking meals, keeps food hot (or cold) for up to 3 hours. It was field tested during the Christchurch earthquakes and the Brisbane floods, and it is at home both in rural kitchens and in suburban potlucks. For More information see http://www.easyoven.com.au

On my trip to Haiti in March 2016, I finished the ammo box stovetop oven. It is made with two ammo boxes, ceramic fiber board insulation, some stainless steel sheet, and various hardware. The oven chamber is 13" x 13" x 5". I plan to add split firebricks on the floor for use as a pizza oven. It fits on a household rocket stove but could be used over virtually any heat source.

In my continuing quest to use readily available manufactured materials for stove construction, here is the steam pan charcoal stove with "perforated lollipop" air control. It is a 1/6 size steam pan (roughly 6" x 7" x 4" deep) inside a 1/2 size (roughly 10" x 12" x 6" deep) with 1" ceramic fiber board insulation between. The charcoal chamber is lined with expanded stainless steel to extend the life of the inner pan and improve air flow. Army surplus D rings are used for pot supports. Threaded rod for legs. It can be easily disassembled for repair. It has a small charcoal capacity like the BURN's Jikokoa (formerly Tank).
I plan to eventually build a two burner version in a full size steam pan.b

On a recent trip to Haiti, I completed the first prototype of a new school rocket stove. This one has a 330 stainless steel liner, 2½" insulating firebrick walls, and galvanized steel outer shell. The skirt is 304 stainless inside, 1" ceramic fiber walls, and galvanized steel outer. The mouth and firebox are 6½" x 6½". The pot is 40 qts with the top diameter about 1/4" larger than the diameter near the bottom, and is imported. The locally available spherical bottom pots made skirt construction extremely difficult. We hope to someday produce this stove in quantity at a combined vocational school/stove factory.

Small scale biochar production and use was discussed at the annual conference of the Engineers in Technical and Humanitarian Opportunities of Service (www.ethoscon.com)

An estimated 2.5 billion people worldwide cook their meals with biomass. ETHOS is an international group of individuals and organizations that promote improved cooking stoves for health, safety, and household energy. The Toplit Updraft or TLUD stoves are efficient and can produce biochar as a co-product of household energy.

Participants were interested in how biochars can be used to remediate soils and improve agriculture. Norman Baker, Sequim, showed how a 55 gallon TLUD can be used to make biochar for growing vegetables and improving nutrition. Paul Anderson (drtlud.com) described 12,000 TLUD stoves in India that product 10 tons of biochar each day. Users receive cash from selling the biochar to a German company, atmosfair gGmbH, which recovers carbon offsets for the energy savings and char to help fund the energy efficient cooking stoves. Art Donnelly, Seachar (seachar.org) demonstrated a new biochar making stove and described how biochar from cooking stoves has been used by coffee workers in Costa Rica. ETHOS participants are among the 1600 partners of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (cleancookstoves.org)

I have built the ELSA stove that's
documented here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55r5DmvT3XE .

I started with a stainless steel trashcan that had seen better days. I
unrolled it and glued on ELSA stove blueprints from the web. Then I cut out
the shapes with a 24 tpi bimetal blade in a jigsaw.

I don't have an anvil, or the sheet-metal "curling" tool (is there a name
for it?) that is shown in the video. I bent the metal over some angle-iron,
and I made the tool from some stainless tubing I bought at the hardware
store.

I couldn't get the stove to light until I used the lighting cylinder, which
is shown in the video, for some extra draft. I used brown packing paper as
tinder, and wood pellets as fuel.

I attached a couple of photos. One shows the stove itself. You can see
that I'm an amateur fabricator. The other shows the stove under a kettle.
A lot of condensation forms on the kettle and, after the stove has burned
out, there is a thick layer of creosote on part of the kettle.

To avoid the creosote formation, I'm not sure if I should raise the kettle
to give the flame more time to burn out, or lower the flame by, say,
centrally introducing preheated secondary air---I am thinking of Kirk
Harris' design.

Dave

--
David Young
dyoung@pobox.com Urbana, IL (217) 721-9981

The PROFOGONES Project, created by Fundación Vida, is dedicated to promoting and developing the market for improved cooking stoves in Honduras.

Their website (in Spanish) is still under development, but they already have some excellent promotional and informational videos online:

Videos: http://profogones.hn/videos/

Main Site: http://profogones.hn/

Modifying a Retail Chinese TLUD Camp Stove for Improved Efficiency

The problem with the stove is that the primary air grate has large diamond shaped cuts for air. This allows the stove to burn excessively, producing a large flame exiting the stove top. The large flames envelope the pot bottom and sides producing heavy deposits of soot on the cooking utensil.

My idea was to modify the stove by reducing the primary air and attempt to force the flames back into the burner by using a stainless steel cylinder in the center of the stove opening to restrict the exiting air flow, and at the same time introducing air into the stove top by punching holes in the angled concentrator ring/pot support.

To restrict the primary air flow, a paint can lid was placed upside down inside the stove bottom. A threaded bolt was run through the center of the lid, and four small holes were punched for primary air. A stainless steel cylinder was affixed to the top of the threaded bolt. Cylinder height adjustments can be performed by loosening the jam nuts, repositioning, and re securing.

No fan is used.

The assembly is placed inside the stove, and wood pellets are poured onto the paint can lid. (About 1” deep). After the pellets are ignited, it takes around 5 minutes for the stove to gasify. After gasification, you can see the flames are being pushed down into the stove.

Placing a pot on the rests does not affect the flame inside the burner.
The present design has not been optimized, and the stove burns with a distinct smell of partially burned gasses.

Variables that are affecting the stove performance:

1. Cylinder Height
2. Cylinder Diameter
3. Cylinder Length
4. Concentrator ring air hole size. (Also # of holes)
5. Primary air hole size and location.
6. Wood gas regulation.

The concept is crude, but it works. By optimizing the parameters, the drop in modification may be a viable solution to the soot issue plaguing cooks.

I myself have little knowledge of stove physics. I just dabble in the art. I am just presenting the concept for anyone wishing to develop it any further.

Regards,
Jim Tisso

A new handbook aims to help designers and entrepreneurs by translating recent R&D advances into practical approaches for improving biomass cookstove performance, usability and affordability. The Handbook for Biomass Cookstove Research, Design, and Development, was developed in partnership with MIT’s D-Lab and the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, with funding by UK aid from the UK government.

Downloadable at: http://cleancookstoves.org/resources/517.html

All,

Attached are some drawings of a stove I have been working on. I hope at least some of you will enjoy looking through it. My design concepts are a bit odd, but they work.

Kirk H.