Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
This one is for fun and also for real. The theme of this post is “There’s never enough time.” I worked in the villages of the developing world off and on for a number of years. A recurring issue is the inefficiency of most stoves. The simplest is the “three stone” variety, made with three stones to put the pot on.
Figure 1. An obviously ancient three-stone fire with a modern cookpot in Tanzania. Photo Source
This is hugely wasteful of fuel, particularly in lands where wood and even branches and twigs are scarce. Among my known defects is that I’m an inventor. Over the years I’ve worked on making and designing a variety of stoves to try to improve stove efficiency. As a result, in one of my peregrinations around the web a few days ago I was intrigued to stumble across the “Kelly Kettle”.
The Kelly Kettle was used in Ireland by the shepherds to brew their cuppa tea. Here’s one at work on a beach somewhere.
Figure 2. Kelly Kettle cooking on a beach. Note the fire coming out the chimney.
The brilliance of the plan is that the water in the kettle surrounds the fire. I looked at that, and my inventor’s soul rose to the fore, and I thought “Man, I could make the radical Dutch Oven using that plan. Here’s what I think it might look like.
Figure 3. What I call the “Magic Cookpot”. Note the split (two part) lids, one of which has been removed, flipped over, and laid on the ground for clarity. Lids will have handles in the final version.
And here’s a cross-section:
Figure 4. Cross-section of Magic Cookpot without the lids.
No good to throw away waste heat, so the Kelly Kettles have a pan-holder that fits in the chimney to allow you to cook another pot of food on top.
Figure 5. Kelly Kettle with cookpot. Source.
Looks good to me, so here’s my version of the same. This would allow you to cook soup or stew and have a frypan on top …
Figure 6. Potholder inserts into chimney of Magic Cookpot.
OK, advantages of this plan:
• Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency. Even without cooking anything on the top, this will heat water with less fuel than any design I’ve ever seen.
• Cost. Because the stove and the cookpot are one, you don’t need to buy both.
• Portability. It can be moved easily.
• Adaptability. It can use a variety of fuels, including a propane burner.
• Speed. It will heat water fast.
As I mentioned, the theme of this post is the theme of life—there’s never enough time.
In a perfect world, I’d take this idea and run with it and make a big difference in the amount of wood burned around the planet. I don’t have time, I have a bunch of other projects going on. But I’d hate to see this idea die, it’s a really good one that could make a big difference. So I figure I’ll cast the idea free on the web, make a gift of it to the world of stoves, and see what becomes of it out in the greater marketplace of ideas.
How could this rough plan be improved? It needs a damper to control the draft, and some kind of flap to control the air intake. You could probably increase the heat transfer (fire to liquid) by putting some spiral fins up the chimney. This would increase the surface area and transfer extra heat to the cookpot.
In any case, there it is, and I encourage anyone with the time and energy to become the champion of the idea. You’ll make a name for yourself and have women blessing you all around the planet. All it needs are a couple of sharp Brazilian or Indian or Chinese (or European or American) college students who’d like to make a difference in the world.
w.
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For those of you who don’t think a change in how you cook can greatly change a landscape, I suggest you check out before-and-after pictures of certain parts of India, where over-grazed and denuded hills have been successfully reforested.
I visited the area around Amednager in 1974, and again in 2000, and the change was striking. A harsh and desert-like landscape was softened by the tops of many young trees. There did not seem to be fewer goats, (which got the blame for denuding the landscape in the old days,) but there did seem to be less smoke from cooking fires.
In 1974 cooking seemed largely done, away from the city, by fires of twigs and dried dung. In 2000 propane was much more widely used. Trucks delivering many, small, individual tanks were a common sight on the rural highways.
Effort was needed, when it came to planting all the trees. It was also important to educate the young boys who herd the goats not to climb trees and rip down branches for their goats. However I think the introduction of propane greatly reduced the stress on the environment. In essence the desert bloomed.
Here’s a different example of how a changed economy can dramatically alter a landscape:
In New Hampshire the landscape was 90% treeless in 1900, and hay was a great export, for horsepower in the cities to the south was dependant on imported hay. The change to cars and gasoline resulted in hay becoming less valuable, and New Hampshire is now 90% forested.
For anyone wanting to buy a lightweight volcano kettle more durable than my beer can designs but lighter than the trad 2 cup Kelly Kettle, this is the one. It’ll also help kickstart Devin’s US based small business.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1763800459/backcountry-boiler-hot-water-from-found-fuel
Why not just wrap the meal in aluminium foil and wire it to the overheated gearbox of the nearest windmill, of which there will be millions if some people have their way. Or, if you fear ladders, wire it to the focus of a solar parabolic, of which there will be millions if some people have their way.
Geoff Sherrington says:
May 10, 2011 at 6:56 pm
In our home, we have a middle aged, attractive lady to make cold food and liquid warmer. How she does it is her business, but she is very good at it. She is also more shapely than a chip heater and does not smoke. We have not had to think about this before, but I think we would call it “civilisation”.
—————————————————–
Geoff, your comments are usually worth reading, but this kind of ‘all boys together’ crap is not worthy. As someone said, I fear that we do not see you at your best.
What is interesting about this thread is that it is clear that many devices not unlike that suggested by Willis have been around for a long time. The real question is – why have they not been utilised? When billions of dollars a year are being spent in international aid, how come the existing devices, tried and tested, like the New Zealand ‘thermette’ are not already out there?
‘Invented’ things to save the world are a dime a dozen. The hard questions are about implementation. In the case of cooking, the low status of women in many Third World cultures might be a reason. Another might be the priorities of donors, who prefer things they can point to and be photographed with. Perhaps the ‘thermette’ does not work in those environments – who knows?
While it has been fun and interesting to read this thread, there is no doubt that chronic poverty is not solved or even ameliorated by building a better mousetrap.
johanna says:
May 11, 2011 at 9:39 am
Geoff Sherrington says:
May 10, 2011 at 6:56 pm
Winston Churchill and Lady Astor.
Classy, Caleb.
Did you think I would not understand the reference?
For those who missed it, he is saying that I am ugly, and that he will be sober in the morning. It is quite possible that one of those statements is true.
Not really in keeping with WUWT manners.
johanna says:
May 11, 2011 at 9:39 am
Say what? Better mousetraps, in hundreds of different ways from better stoves to inexpensive modern clothing to vaccinations to cheaper communications, have been of great use to ameliorating the lot of the poor of the planet.Your claim is not only meaningless, it is totally wrong and an insult to those who have worked in the field.
Go ask a woman who now has some kind of improved stove if she would go back to the old one before you start this kind of nonsense. Go ask a man with a flashlight why he doesn’t use a burning reed torch, and if he’d go back to it.
I love you armchair experts, you’re likely great folks and you have great fantasies … but all I can say is, go out and learn something in the field before you write about your fantasies, people like you are dangerous when you start claiming those fantasies are real.
w.
W.
you should look at the various wood-gas camp stoves on the market … they are able to burn alot of the low volume fuel (twigs, etc) available in the 3rd world and can burn the fuel down to ash … i.e. very efficient …
some of them do require batteries but many designs require nothing but fuel …
I’ve experimented with a small (less than 4 inches across) homemade version and have been able to create smokeless blue flames at the top of my mini stove that can heat up a pot of water very quickly …
the basic concept is that they seperate the generation of burnable gases and the actual burning of the gas … in other words the bottom of the stove “cooks” the fuel in a low oxygen environment, generating very hot burnable gas which rises to the top where it is mixes with clean air that “ignites” the gases … they cook the fuel down to ash in the process …
the typical campfire tries to generate the burnable gases and burn them with the same air and location which leads to left over fuel in the form of charcoal and unburned fuel which escapes as gases before burning …
Willis, your assumption that I am an ‘armchair expert’ is not only unfounded (you don’t know me), it is incorrect.
“go out and learn something in the field before you write about your fantasies, people like you are dangerous when you start claiming those fantasies are real.”
What fantasies? Please explain.
You said:
“Go ask a woman who now has some kind of improved stove if she would go back to the old one before you start this kind of nonsense. Go ask a man with a flashlight why he doesn’t use a burning reed torch, and if he’d go back to it.”
Please reference where anyone in this thread (let alone me) suggested anything of the kind. Who are you railing against? What kind of nonsense? Since you linked it to my post, I would appreciate your explanation of the colorful phrases about burning reeds and torches, in particular.
As we say in Australia, you’ve lost it, mate.
Willis, you nail it, right out of the park. The “better mouse trap” analogy is precisely what has raised humans form grubbing around in the dirt. BooYaa, Brother Man! BooYaa.
you guys are really missing the boat.
as the white haired gentleman who had been writing camping columns in “Guns & Ammo” said about thirty years ago when asked to divulge what the greatest camping
gadget invented in the last century was????
“My Airstream trailer” no doubt about it.
C
Johanna,
You wrote,”…there is no doubt that chronic poverty is not solved or even ameliorated by building a better mousetrap.” Then you would solve or ameliorate chronic poverty, how?
Writing as only slightly more than an armchair quarterback, I agree that implementation(marketing) of an invention is a hard question. The Patent offices are filled with good ideas that never caught on, and we are forced to choose between often mediocre products because of superior marketing and market manipulation (Microsoft comes to mind). The world is also littered, quite literally, with the cast offs of usually well intentioned development and aid projects, much like the heavily subsidized wind and solar farms that are being rammed down our throats.
The customer needs to want the product and it needs to make economic sense or it will fail. If it needs a subsidy, it doesn’t make economic sense. Poor shouldn’t imply absence of income, intelligence, pride or dignity. If a given product passes a poor consumer’s cost benefit analysis, a way will be found to pay for it.
In the case of cooking stoves, there are dozens of possible solutions for any given situation, but the successful solution will meet the local buyer’s requirements. Many successful implementations of improved cooking stoves have been local adaptations of good designs, variations of the “rocket stove” and TLUD gasifying stoves being well represented.
Kerosene and Propane stoves have seen much more widespread acceptance, though the fuel is often subsidized (heaven help anything combustible when the subsidies are dropped. Weren’t some people burning their books to stay warm in England when the electricity failed or they could no longer pay for it?). I will give a shameless plug for solid wax as a fuel — safe, non-toxic, easy to transport and store.
An improved cook stove in every household may not solve chronic poverty, but I am convinced that it can ameliorate some of its symptoms, so it is certainly worth some effort, but there are probably more appropriate places for carrying on the discussion than WUWT.
I’m thinking a small metal grate at the bottom for greater oxygenation of the fire/coals and finning on the chimney inside to improve thermal efficiency via greater surface area. Good idea.
Jeff Carlson says:
May 11, 2011 at 11:35 am
Thanks, Jeff. The gasification of wood was used in WWII by the Germans as a way to power trucks. They used that process because (obviously) wood doesn’t fit well into the cylinders of an internal combustion engine.
However, while gasification provides energy in a different form, I’m unaware of any study showing that gasifying wood provides more energy than you can get by simply burning the wood. If anyone is aware of any, I’d love to see it.
Finally, the cookpot I’ve shown above can be used with any fuel—wood, propane, wood gas, natural gas. It’s just an efficient way to transfer heat from hot gases to a pot.
w.
johanna says:
May 11, 2011 at 1:09 pm
Johanna, you claimed that technical progress was of absolutely no use to the poor. Your words were:
Chronic poverty can certainly be ameliorated by technical innovations (your “better mousetrap”). The number of examples is large. I gave some in my reply.
So … in answer to your question, your fantasy is that chronic poverty is not ameliorated by technological advances. That’s what makes you an armchair expert, no matter how much time you’ve spent in the field.
If you don’t see that the lives of the poor have been greatly improved by a host of “better mousetraps”, innovations in a variety of fields from medicine to energy over the last three hundred years, you’ve “had the experience, but missed the meaning”, as T. S. Eliot remarked.
w.
johanna says:
May 11, 2011 at 10:57 am
“Did you think I would not understand the reference?”
Actually I didn’t think you would misunderstand, but apparently you did misunderstand.
I was not referring to any specific quote, but rather the relationship.
The specific quote that springs to my mind, when thinking of those two, goes like this:
Lady Astor: Winston, if you were my husband I’d poison you.
Winston: Lady Astor, if you were my wife I would drink it.
I think the quote you were referring to went:
Lady Astor: Winston! You are drunk!
Winston: Yes, and you are ugly, but in the morning I shall be sober.
There were others, for when those two got together the sparks flew. Lady Astor could drive Churchill wild. For example, she travelled to Russia and on her return she spoke glowingly of all the good things communism was doing. Churchhill knew about the famine she wasn’t shown.
When sparks flew between them other people hushed, and watched, because it was apparently good fun. Despite the fact they were miles apart, politically, and quite rude to each other, they apparently liked each other. There was no false-front smiling and back-stabbing later. Each was bluntly honest, and appreciated honesty. When they conversed people shut up, because they said things “one simply doesn’t say in public.”
That was what I was referring to, when I commented on the exchange between you and Geoff.
I’m sorry if you thought I was saying you were ugly. That was not my intent.
Willis,
You said, “I’m unaware of any study showing that gasifying wood provides more energy than you can get by simply burning the wood. If anyone is aware of any, I’d love to see it.” I don’t have the references at my fingertips, but IIRC, the gasifying stoves get more heat out of the wood by burning flue gases that are normally wasted. That is not to say that other stove designs cannot be as efficient, but there are not very many.
Proponents of gasifying stoves will also state that their stoves can cook the same amount of food as conventional wood burners for the same, or less, amount of wood, and leave the user char which can be used for other purposes, including, dare I say it, carbon trading, if the char is buried.
Another positive of gasifying stoves is their ability to successfully utilize unconventional bio-fuels, such as rice husks and other agricultural waste.
You brought up an important point when you wrote, “It’s just an efficient way to transfer heat from hot gases to a pot.” Heat transfer is at least as important as efficient combustion in reducing fuel consumption. The addition of a pot skirt to a three-stone fire may reduce fuel consumption as much as some improved stoves, though perhaps not as consistently. Separating designs for heat transfer from combustion give the cooking stove designer more flexibility in meeting local requirements.
Using a Hay box (poor man’s crock-pot?) in place of simmering can also reduce consumption significantly.
Please go to http://www.bioenergylists.org to find reports and documentation on gasifying stoves and many, many other designs. You may enjoy reviewing Micheal Trevor’s work on Majuro in the Marshall Islands. http://www.bioenergylists.org/en/taxonomy/term/1155
Roger Carr says: May 10, 2011 at 3:38 am
We put rubber tubes into the ‘wood chip water heater’ [modified gas cylinders] for 5 years while the Centre for Appropriate Technology sent the same design for use all over the desert communities of NT/SA/WA.
Hot water in 10 minutes.
The ironic thing was that SANTOS was to our south! And Mereenie fields to the NE. http://www.santos.com/exploration-acreage/production-processing/mereenie.aspx
Our solution saved taking the Toyota out and pushing down mulga with the bull bar to cart back to the community. That was hard work on a cold night, such are desert nights. Aerial photography of the communities will [perhaps] show the dust bowl effect due to loss of vegetation that occurred as women went (or begged those with vehicles) to get fuel for cooking and heating purposes.
John Marshall says: May 10, 2011 at 3:03 am
I think you are switched on!
Johanna
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/10/the-magic-cookpot/#comment-658100
Correcto.
The reason that many women DO NOT use these technologies is that they are in a vulnerable situation.
Cooking for the family in the family home, with daughters and young children about is a sole female occupation.
Observe any such situation.
Is there a spear, long handled knife in the picture? A gun?
or even better a long length of burning firewood? Or hot saucepan?
No.
No.
No.
Is there a number proportionally larger than is expected to prepare a simple meal? Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes.
Nice try fellas and much appreciated. But your examples are for the camping, nuclear types. The types that are educated, employed and don’t need to rape women and kids for their next land conquest. Or satisfaction.
Go try wearing a frock and living and feeding your kids (and elderly parents) in a tribal village or refugee camp.
You’d be better off designing for women that would serve both [real] hunting and protection purposes.
Simply excellent
Geoff Sherrington says: May 10, 2011 at 6:56 pm
In our home, we have a middle aged, attractive lady to make cold food and liquid warmer. How she does it is her business, but she is very good at it. She is also more shapely than a chip heater and does not smoke. We have not had to think about this before, but I think we would call it “civilisation”.
That is a very funny comment Geoff.
I realised when reading ALL the links and videos on the ‘bidet’ blog the cognitive differences among the view of bloggers. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/23/new-mystery-appliance-is-the-antithesis-of-the-green-dream/
For instance I was reading the comments and something didn’t seem quite right.
It was then I realised that the ‘model’ in the picture that I thought after viewing the picture ‘crikey, that model with the remote is sure hot, good spotting there Anthony’ was in fact not the model being referred to in the post.
C’est la vie.
False positives?
Anyway, an excellent post Willis, yet again. Thank you.
In response to Phil’s Dad http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/10/the-magic-cookpot/#comment-657140 and
ws briggs http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/10/the-magic-cookpot/#comment-657129
Smoke also seems to serve a purpose of equality in ‘smell distribution’ in some environments.
Realities are:
– Unwashed bodies (including the numerous infants) due to various reasons;
– Infections with a high detectable smell factor (granuloma inguinale, pseudomonas, http://www.pseudomonas.com/p_aerug.jsp trichomoniasis etc);
– Food preparation in such closed/populated areas requires ammunition (wood missiles are generally retrievable). Cooking attracts scavengers (human and animal) into the near vicinity of the household (eg anyone reading NT News will have read of the campdogs pulling down and attacking humans), though h/hold pigs are shocking and as rightly pointed out
– Smoke minimises mosquito loads.
Interestingly electricity including the powering of running water may serve to reduce all these realities whilst cooking. Possibly a hugely boring and tedious daily task (s).
A TV could also be plugged in to keep the little hordes in one spot and under watchful eye! As would a fan to mimic seasonal wind direction and serve as a crude damper as a replacement for physically moving the ‘kitchen’ with the seasons.
While some will go on with endless discussion of cultural (voodoo) factors as to the cultural purpose of smoke, this is generally because maths and science was not taught (or actively eschewed for a variety of reasons) in these environments. The lexicology and use of the word ‘no’ (positive/negative) has in my experience proved useful.
Many bloggers possibly enjoyed the spectacular sunsets of the tropics in the burning off season.
Jenness Warin (Jessie)
Dave Wendt (question on need for LED brightness on the bidet model). Assuming you are male, I suggest a few test runs (could try double blind randomised). The designers most likely factored this in when designing the model. 🙂
Willis,
Your posts I always read because you deal with real people, their lives and deliver good ideas.
Here is an accurate account of ‘the rocket’ as we used to call it, which heated water.
http://ramblingsdc.net/Firewood.html
Note no women (or kids) in the blurb.
Interestingly ‘the rocket’ was used in the general area where the Blue Streak Rocket (Woomera, South Australia) is situated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Streak_(missile)
I would upload some photos of students learning to use laptop computers for the first time in their adult lives many years later in my remote work, but I haven’t learned how to upload as yet. The female students used to go back to their wood fires to prepare the evening meal and heating up 1/2 44 fuel drums to wash kids. The washing of kids in hot water (which only occurred for a short time) significantly decreased skin diseases.
Then the women returned to study in the evening, where we powered up with a little sine-inverter generator to use computers, projector, fluoros, fans (keep mozzies at bay) etc.
I was grateful to have a local leader (and some other men) support the inclusion of women being educated, fighting (nicely) over various matters as we did do at times!
On consideration, I think the local leader had never had a woman tell him he had enough lovely wives and me being a fourth would just give him more headaches. Or something along those lines. He agreed with that observation in the end. So we happily called each other by name only, rather than having to be fitted into a kinship system. With all the exhausting factors of such a system.
The best for Africa may be very simple, because:
– needs to be low cost
– needs to be light for portability (which works against durability I suppose), because many people there are nomadic by tribal nature or by forced displacement
– needs to be easily manufactured locally (I guess cast iron using sand molds would be though not light, aluminum is castable but more expensive, similarly the pottery device someone described herein )
– using empty food cans may help facilitate in some areas
– with the lack of a justice system in so many places theft will be a problem
with the lack of a justice system in so many places
– it is also a bad environment for learning, though the people are keen (recall the US Olympic runner who was taught school by older boys in a refugee camp, sitting on the sand using it as slates, with one makeshift blackboard hanging on a tree).
As for building a fire in a hole, don’t you need an air inlet at the base? Otherwise it sounds useful to contain the fire, but needs something to sit on top to support the container for cooking?
But a solar device sounds useful in the dry country of Africa.
However from the variety of designs noted in this thread it appears technology is not the holdback – see my comment about society in a previous post.