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T. B. Reeda, R. Waltb
a The Biomass Energy Foundation, 1810 Smith Rd., Golden, CO 80401; b Community Power Corporation, Aurora, CO
Through the millennia wood stoves for cooking have been notoriously inefficient, unhealthy and slow. Electricity, gas or liquid fuels are preferred for cooking - when they can be obtained. A new "turbo wood-gas stove" is described that cooks quickly and efficiently with no significant emissions in a closed space. It uses a 3 Watt blower and develops 3 kilowatts of heat. It burns 10 min to several hours in batch mode, depending on size and fuel used. It can boil 500 ml of water in 3.5 minutes, comparable to an electric or gas stove.
1. The Problem
Since the beginning of civilization wood and biomass have been used for cooking. Over 2 billion people cook badly on inefficient wood stoves that waste wood, cause health problems and destroy their/our forests. Electricity, gas or kerosene are preferred for cooking - when they can be obtained However, they are costly and depend on having a suitable infrastructure and are often not available in developing countries. In the last few decades, many improved wood stoves have been developed (the Chula, the Hiko, the Maendeleo, the Kuni Mbili, etc.), but the new wood stoves are often more difficult to manufacture, more heat goes to heat the stove than heat the food, and they do not offer good control of cooking rate. They are not often accepted by the cooks for whom they are developed.
pyrolysis zone, as shown in Fig. 1. It can operate on either natural or forced draft.1,2,3
Fig. 1 - Inverted downdraft gasifier made from "riser sleeve", showing primary air inlet, fuel zone, flaming pyrolysis zone and charcoal zone. The inverted downdraft gasifier can be operated in batch mode which is suitable for cooking meals. (The gasifier can also be operated continuously by addition of an auger feed for the fuel at the bottom and an auger to remove charcoal at the top. However, this complicates construction.) We previously developed a natural draft cook stove which uses only natural convection.1,2 The rate of gas production and heating is controlled by the primary air supply to the gasifier. As an option, the gasifier can make charcoal with a 20-25% yield. While this stove burned cleanly, natural draft does not easily provide good mixing. The heating rate was low, due to the use of natural draft.
blower, the power could come from stored compressed air, bellows, wind-up generators, photovoltaic, thermoelectric or other sources.
4. operation of Turbo-Stove
Dozens of runs have been made on various models of the Turbo Stove. As a sample, 153.7g of wood chips were loaded in the fuel magazine and 5 g of starter chips were placed on top. The starter chips were lit with a match and the blower started at 12.0 V from a DC power supply. A highly turbulent clean fire resulted. After 1 minute a 2 quart copper bottomed pot containing 500 ml of water was place on the pot supports. A thermocouple was inserted 3 inches below the top of the bed. The data in Table 1 were taken and are shown in Fig. 3. Table 1 Typical run in Turbo Stove on 153 g of wood chips Time min 0 1 2 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 5.5 6 6.5 7 8 9 10 17 42 74 93 94 94 94 94 94 94 94 94 94 93 22 22 26 41 400 680 720 620 702 697 688 653 660 668 Water temp -C Bed temp -C Comments Startup 1-min Pot on Heating Heating Boiling Vigorous Vigorous Vigorous Vigorous Vigorous Vigorous Vigorous Vigorous decreasing OFF
The fuel magazine was immediately removed from the burner chamber and air excluded. The resulting charcoal weighed 37.7 g, a yield of 24.5%. The remaining water was poured in the measuring cup and measured 299 ml, so 201 ml boiled away.
The energy content of the fuel (volatiles plus charcoal) was approximately 18 kJ/g or a total of 2766.6 kJ. 37.7 g of charcoal containing approximately 24kJ/g energy, or 904.8 kJ remained unburned, so 1861 kJ of energy was released by the 116 g of burning volatiles. (The volatile energy alone was 16kJ/g, a useful figure for calculations when charcoal is a byproduct.) 1 min was consumed in lighting the fire before adding the pot, so the energy released for cooking during the remaining 9 minutes was 1675 kJ, or 3.10 kW. The efficiency of water boiling was Eff = (Heat to water + heat for vaporization)/heat released = (161.2 + 460.5)/1675 = 37.1% Charcoal production Efficiency = 37.7/153.7 = 24.5% The water boiled in 145 s as compared to 236 s on the large burner of our electric stove, reflecting the higher intensity of forced draft wood-gas cooking. The gasification front took 4 minutes to reach the thermocouple, so is travelling 1.9 cm/min. The bottom of the pot was clean, indicating near complete combustion of the wood-gas.
We operated with wood chips with 0, 10, 20, 25 and 30% moisture content (wet basis). The stove operated equally well at all levels, but the charcoal production decreased from 25 to 3%.
6. Conclusions
A forced convection wood-gas stove has been developed that develops a 3 kWthermal flame using a 2 W blower. It can be started, operated and stopped indoors with no odor of burning wood. In order for the stove to be commercially successful, there is still work to be done in optimizing the stove for various fuels and available fuels to the stove determining the effect of moisture adapting the stove to various cooking situations adapting the stove for local manufacture developing other uses for this simple clean heat source
References
1. La Fontaine, H. and Reed, T. B., "An Inverted Downdraft Wood-Gas Stove and Charcoal Producer", in Energy from Biomass and Wastes XV, D. Klass, Ed., Washington, D. C., 1993. 2. Reed, T. B. and Larson, R., "A wood-Gas Stove for Developing Countries", in Developments in Thermochemical Biomass Conversion, Ed. A. V. Bridgwater, Blackie Academic Press, 1996. 3. Brand, Stephen, "Multi-Fuel Gasification for Energy Production in Rural Areas", in Proceedings, 2nd Biomass Conference of the Americas, Aug. 21, Portland Ore., the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, NREL/CP-2008098, 1995.