From the American Chemical Society it seems that newer is not always better. Even Yale environment360 bought into this idea. I should add that I’m all for reducing carbon soot, but in the zealous rush for solutions, sometimes too many cooks spoil the soup.
Right: Primitive stoves and open fires pose serious health risks, particularly among women and children. Image: angelic_shrek/flickr. Left: Envirofit says its cook stove will cut smoke and carbon emissions by 80 percent. Image Envirofit
Some ‘improved cookstoves’ may emit more pollution than traditional mud cookstoves
The first real-world, head-to-head comparison of “improved cookstoves” (ICs) and traditional mud stoves has found that some ICs may at times emit more of the worrisome “black carbon,” or soot, particles that are linked to serious health and environmental concerns than traditional mud stoves or open-cook fires. The report, which raises concerns about the leading hope as a clean cooking technology in the developing world, appears in ACS’ journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Abhishek Kar, Hafeez Rehman, Jennifer Burney and colleagues explain that hundreds of millions of people in developing countries in South Asia, Africa and South America are exposed to soot from mud stoves and 3-stone fires used for cooking, heating and light. The particles can be inhaled deeply into the lungs and have been linked to health problems similar to those associated with cigarette smoking. In addition, black soot released into the atmosphere is a major factor in global warming. Aid agencies and governments have been seeking replacements for traditional cookstoves and fires to remedy those problems, with ICs as one of the leading hopes. Until now, however, there have been little real-world data on the actual performance of ICs — which have features like enhanced air flow and a battery-powered fan to burn wood and other fuel more cleanly.
The researchers measured black carbon emissions from five IC models and traditional mud stoves. They did the test in real homes as part of Project Surya, which quantifies the impacts of cleaner cooking technologies in a village in India. Forced draft stoves burned cleaner than any other IC. However, black carbon concentrations from all ICs varied significantly, even for the same stove from one day to the next. Surprisingly, some natural draft stoves occasionally emitted more black carbon than the traditional mud cookstove.
The researchers acknowledge funding from private donors, the National Science Foundation, the Swedish International Development Agency, the United Nations Environment Programme, the Vetlesen Foundation and the Alderson Foundation.
The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 164,000 members, ACS is the world’s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
==============================================================
“Real-time Assessment of Black Carbon Pollution in Indian Households Due to Traditional and Improved Biomass Cookstoves” Environ. Sci. Technol., 2012, 46 (5), pp 2993–3000. DOI: 10.1021/es203388g
Abstract
Use of improved (biomass) cookstoves (ICs) has been widely proposed as a Black Carbon (BC) mitigation measure with significant climate and health benefits. ICs encompass a range of technologies, including natural draft (ND) stoves, which feature structural modifications to enhance air flow, and forced draft (FD) stoves, which additionally employ an external fan to force air into the combustion chamber. We present here, under Project Surya, the first real-time in situ Black Carbon (BC) concentration measurements from five commercial ICs and a traditional (mud) cookstove for comparison.
These experiments reveal four significant findings about the tested stoves. First, FD stoves emerge as the superior IC technology, reducing plume zone BC concentration by a factor of 4 (compared to 1.5 for ND). Indoor cooking-time BC concentrations, which varied from 50 to 1000 μg m–3 for the traditional mud cookstove, were reduced to 5–100 μg m–3 by the top-performing FD stove. Second, BC reductions from IC models in the same technology category vary significantly: for example, some ND models occasionally emit more BC than a traditional cookstove. Within the ND class, only microgasification stoves were effective in reducing BC.
Third, BC concentration varies significantly for repeated cooking cycles with same stove (standard deviation up to 50% of mean concentration) even in a standardized setup, highlighting inherent uncertainties in cookstove performance. Fourth, use of mixed fuel (reflective of local practices) increases plume zone BC concentration (compared to hardwood) by a factor of 2 to 3 across ICs.
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Electricity is of course the best way to go. Next would be gas, then oil, then high grade coal and lastly wood and dung…the dirtiest and environmentally most destructive fuels. This creative band-aid crap is annoying. With the money that we’re throwing at many places in the Third World, much more could have been done by now. It’s time to bypass the NGO idealists, the UN bureucracy and the layers of cleptocrats and to provide aid directly, without dirty local intermediaries.
Any one who thinks this ICS stuff is any good needs to read Stepehen’s article.
Stephen Brown says:
April 9, 2012 at 1:58 pm
A lot of you are behaving like idiots.
Most of the world is NOT LIKE the USA or Canada or the UK or France etc etc
Most people live in abject (power) poverty. Oh yes; an ICS would be great if you’re off camping; but it is pretty much naff all use if you have to
walk 5 miles to get water
spend 4 or 5 hours finding something to burn
do some basic subsistance farming (that’ll be another 4 or 5 hours)
hope some family member somewhere else in the world will remember to/be able to send a few $ (Rand/Kwacha/Ruppee/Nira – what have you) more than once a year so you can replace the importent things in life – baterries to power a cooker are NOT importent; school uniforms and text books are.
Not only does that dung/wood fire provide energy for cooking with it also provides HEAT for the shack. It can get damn cold at night in a lot of places where day time temps are in the 30C range. (Put your AC up to 35C – spend all days indoors – then turn it down to 15C – bloody cold is what that 15C is).
This is as bad as OXFAM used to be – send tractors to peasents who couldn’t GET deisal – never mind afford it. Everyone in the West in the 50s knew that sending tractors would solve the famines – right ?
AS another poster notes above; a cooking fire is damn all use if it can only cook one item at a time (try this at home folks; liver for just a week on 3 varietes of veg; odd scraps of meat; all cooked in just ONE pot; and now work out where to bake the bread).
How to solve the BC problem — get sustainable jobs into the area (old use of the word sustainable; not the new fangled political inverted meaning in use wrt power generation). When there is a little bit of money in the area get cheap power into the area and encourage small local industries – tailoring; brickmaking; etc etc. Get the tourists in.
When their standard lf living has increased enough then the BC problem will have auto magically disappeard,
“How you’d rather your children grow up?”
My mother left Mississippi before I was born and rarely went back. I have visited there since (as a truck driver mostley) and it is pretty puch as I remembered it as a child except some of the streeets and roads are now paved. But I believe that central Mississippi my be the most economically and socially depressed area of its size in the Westerjn Hemisphere (thinking now of Detroit, I might have to re-think that.).
My children are all grown and are varying degrees of successful in spite of the best efforts of government.
I certainly would not have wanted them to grow up there–indeed I cut short a visit with them there when they were little because I did not want to expose them any more to what we saw.
And if you didn’t see views like thid article has at its head, you weren’t paying attention.
“Well, is it? Sheesh. I bet you have a PhD, too, doncha”
I have a BS in Managment from Golden Gate University. A BSBS, if you like. So no, I don’t have a PhD. As you can see–I can still observe reality as a result..
Teg Power
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmHCIBvI6vE&feature=player_embedded
http://www.tegpower.com/products.html
Can they afford it and does it do the job?
Big questions
In the end any proposed solution that does not free the women of the developing world, from the highly unproductive *labor* and drugery of cooking over a fire, washing by hand, and spending much of their time cleaning their homes and getting food [and fuel] for their families is no solution at all. In the developed economies of the world this transition was accomplished generations ago, we now take it so completely for granted that we can no longer see what the real problem is.
The loss of human productivity, and waste of human potential that poverty and lack of developement represents, is in my mind the single greatest challange that faces humanity at present. All other challenges become much simpler when this issue is addressed. I’m saying this as someone who has lived with indigenous people [North American indigenous people] and spent two years living in a tipi, cooking every meal over a small wood fire, gathering wood, hauling water the whole nine yards. The idea of ‘living simply’ takes on a whole new kind of meaning when you are socked in for three or four days in a South Dakota blizzard and its snowing INSIDE the lodge whole time.
At the moment I happen to live in a town on the western bank of a long tidal river, very environmentally conscious, very progressive, very smart, very well educated population as a whole, [no fewer than five colleges and universities in the area for a population of some 100k], where one enterprising group of people created a business where people will come along and cart away your trash for a fee in grey plastic bins bungeed to a trailer towed behind a bicycle. They call themselves “The Pedal People.” They are very nice people, very well spoken, very earnest about what they do. They consider themselves to be doing a tremendously good thing for the world and for humanity. When I point out to them that what they have actually succeeded in doing is turning human beings back into DRAFT ANIMALS, they get a little upset. When I point out to them that they have also succeeded in setting civilzation back A THOUSAND YEARS, they get even more upset, I’m not sure why, this seems to be exactly what they set out to do in the first place.
Let’s try and solve the right problem.
W^3
“Larry Sheldon says:
April 9, 2012 at 6:26 pm
Blah, blah, blah . . .”
Yet you never answered the question, Larry. Would the removal of regular, reliable electricity from the poor of Mississippi be a boon or bane for them? And if a boon, why deny it to the rest of the world’s poor? Is it REALLY better for the world’s poor to continue to subsist for cooking and heating fuel on dung rather than electricity? Because that’s what you advocated.
So, sir?
The more I read this, the angrier I get. On the one hand I see pictures and descriptions of people living in what I would call abject poverty, but not clearly showing any signs that they have a problem with that. Me thinking there is a problem with that (and I do) is one thing–them thinging there are more important things to worry about (and I fear that they may be right) is anothere.
On the other hand, I see people who see the problem as a trip to the wildeness at the end of the block, and the problems of preparing their freeze-dried packets of Beef Bourgoin with [anything but] Wild Rice with the bottled water they brought with them,
I am going to guess that the child is quite comforatbly operating his stove, while the device with the fires, LCD displays (how do they in the humidty?) might not be in his comfort zone. And will it keep hiom warm tonight the way the warm stones will? (I’ve actually been where I needed to heat rocks in the fire to keep my daughter warm through the cold night. I don’t see your Gaz stove doing that.
BTW, I’m also a big fan of thermo-electric devices and look forward to cheap IR photovoltaics that will harvest waste heat from just about anything you point them at. Back when I was in the turbine engine industry I worked for a company that, in the 1950’s, produced a thermo-electric generator device for backcountry use based upon the Seebeck Effect called a ‘Seegenator’ which consisted of about 4k chromel/alumel T/C junctions brazed to an aluminum tube, set a candle underneath the ‘chimney’ and you get enough DC to power a transistor radio. Very handy, you could store a candle right inside the chimney – never caught on.
W^3
Sorry boston, I keep forgetting your impediment.
I do not see that eit did much good, created more problems than there were and see no bais that it would make significant difference to the people who don’t live in Jackson, Meridian or Philadelphia.
No, can we get back onto the issue? No? OK–I’m out.
You reckon the candle gadget failed because it didn’t solve any problem anybody had?
Larry Sheldon,
Ah Ho! about the warm stones, and God bless the man who invented the hot water bottle! [need two of these at night below 0°F]
W^3
Thanks, moderators for fixing my typo’s. For some reason I can not see them until too late.
[De nada. It’s a service we (occasionally) offer. ~dbs.]
Not saying they “needed” a forge, just as many above are trying to point out, these people are not stupid. They know full well what they can afford and what is possible with their local resources. If they needed a forced draft for a hot fire, they have known how to do that for generations, using easily available local technology.
As you say, one of the most effecient ways to cook is to bring things to a boil then cover and let them simmer over a very small fire while they do other critically important jobs like gathering water, fuel for fires or tend to their herd or what ever other critical survival tasks are highest on their agenda at the moment.
I agree many of the commenters here simply have no grasp of true poverty, and subsistance living.
Just pointing out they are suggesting cadillac solutions for sharp stick problems.
Larry
The ‘Gasifier’ stove in the above video costs about $5 made locally by ‘tinsmiths’, and burns local grass stalks, or wood chips or other waste. 1kg grass replaces 3kg wood. Here’s a more detailed video of its structure and function. Turns organic fuel into methane, which is what flames at the top of the stove:
David in Georgia says:
April 9, 2012 at 1:44 pm
Wow, I”m a little surprised at the variety of comments here. Several people have chimed in about the batteries. Those little fans can be driven by a very small amount of electricity, and that could easily be supplied by a couple of AA rechargable batteries.
Never actually *lived* in a Third World country, have you, Dave? Chinese-made alkaline Double-As (if you can find them) usually last for about an hour in a small flashlight — if you want rechargeables, you’ll need both a reliable transformer and a friend in the US who won’t mind paying forty bucks to have DHL deliver five dollars worth of batteries…
Bill;
Not to mention a handy 110V 60Hz socket to plug the transformer into.
Dubble-Duh, Dave!!
How about providing these new third-world stoves with a bellows and a butt-pedal to power it? Rise up four inches and the spring-loaded bellows pops up and quickly “inhales”; sit down and the bellows gradually exhales. (The exhalation rate could be adjusted by twisting a valve on the end of the bellows.) A stove-tender might be able to build up a regular rhythm if the bellows also had a valve to adjust the inhalation rate.
If that approach didn’the work well, then maybe if a “bladder” or compressor tank were added the stove-tender could occasionally bounce up and down in a regular rhythm for ten seconds (say) to fill the bladder or tank, then relax for 30 seconds or so.
A metal tube would lead from the bellows to a port or air-hole on the stove, so this gadget could be an “aftermarket” add-on to existing stoves.
PS: Maybe this butt-bellows could work with traditional mud stoves too.
It is great that the discussion morphed into one on how the developed world has forced poverty onto these communities by acting like do-gooders while conspiring with the leadership.
I eventually figured out that most of what we “democrats” were pushing was actually some elitist totalitarian utopia that we dreamed up in our dreams, to solve a host of problems we manufactured in our nightmares.
no third-world country ever came to the U.N and said, ‘hey, do y’all know why our waterline has disappeared due to a 1 mm rise in the ocean lately? They never trekked off to the U.N. and said, ‘hey, breast-feeding is so over-rated – what do y’all do over there in the developed world? Formula? Hey, sounds great! Send us all you got!” They never strolled into the next U. N. meeting and said, “gee, harvesting seeds is just so much hassle – have y’all figured out a way to grow crops year after year without having to save seeds? Genetically modified crops where we have to rebuy seed year after year, instead of just saving the seeds from one year to plant the next? Wow, that totally solves a major problem for us!”
To my credit, when I mentioned a solar stove, I did mention that it ought to be followed by a plan to make these locally.
A decent solar oven is realtively expensive. But instead of the aide we do give, we ought to pour that money into giving away zillions of $100/piece solar ovens at no cost, and with basic directions. THen, when there is some critical mass of knowledgable users, developing local manufacturers, and our elistist educated developed world role morphing to a matter of supplying the decent glass (from China). Then, at some point, figuring out how to ‘source’ glass, metal, etc. as local as possible.
This builds trade networks, and builds wealth in the impoverished.
But don’t be fooled – our govts and the U.N. and such don’t really want to end poverty, in my humble opinion.
My crazy solar oven idea could be done by private charity and circumvent the intl NGO machines. As a private citizen, I have already donated money to private intl charities doing things I approve of.
>Peter Kovachev
“Electricity is of course the best way to go. Next would be gas, then oil, then high grade coal and lastly wood and dung…the dirtiest and environmentally most destructive fuels.”
++++++
Please understand that a fuel that ‘burns dirty’ is not necessarily ‘dirty’ at all. If a stove is not designed to burn a fuel (an open fire is not a stove) then one can expect a poor combustion efficiency. Coal has been demonised as ‘dirty’ meaning that coal fired power stations and household stoves emit a lot of smoke (PM). That is cherry picking. The cleanest natural draft (chimney) coal stoves currently available are so profoundly low in their emissions of PM that they are literally cleaning the ambient air that goes into them. The labelling of coal as ‘high quality’ has nothing to do with the quality per se. It has to do with rating the volatile content. If a coal has high volatiles (‘low quality’) it is far easier to light and burn cleanly, though most stoves don’t do that. But they could.
Lignite buring improved stoves are now burning so cleanly it is becomming difficult to measure the smoke mass even with sensitive instruments. Ulaanbaatar is the most heavily polluted capital in the world – largely caused by domestic coal stove emissions. This winter 72,000 new stoves were sold (subsidised) which is about 1/2 the need, and those stoves produce less than half of one per cent of the smoke emitted by the traditional (wood) stove in which coal is burned. You don’t put diesel in a wood stove and you don’t put coal in your car. The fuel, the stove and of course the pot operate as a system. Many so-called ‘dirty’ fuels burn very cleanly. Paraffin is often characterised as ‘smoky and dirty’ but it burns very well in a jet engine or any of the new stoves generation of paraffin stoves permitted in South Africa.
The variation in test data from these stoves could be moisture content in the fuel, patty a tad fresh, or if wood, the variation in which different wood burns is huge. Lining these stoves with refractory material would enhance the performance. If a fan is needed a wind up clock work is the best option, they have had wind up radios in Africa for years thanks to some very good altruism I think from an Englishman. Batteries are a no no it makes them poorer.
Best option for all western countries giving aid, tie it to a project and oversee it and build the dams and power stations and really help these people. The time from poverty to well being is very short if done right. Then the aid can be directed else where rather than have an ongoing night mare.
kbray in california@April 9, 2012 at 10:30 am has the right idea. Better the WWF, et al, buy and distribute portable nuke plants in and around densely populated areas. Cooking is only a minor issue without clean water and power. Physics will, like Darwin, always win out. That part that’s such a big topic on climate sites – thermodynamics. Without Harry Potter’s magic wand, it’s like using super glue to weld trains together.
And do it one nation at a time. If one has power plants operating then one will have stable governements, foundations for an economy and all the other things that actually allow them to solve their own problems.
An efficient stove that can be made locally and quickly out of a tin can is a much better solution for the third world. Tin cans are found worldwide. What is required is training. Unfortunately there is no profit in the device and thus it is unlikely to be promoted by aid organizations.
http://www.bioenergylists.org/wendelbopekope
Anything that costs $$ and/or requires batteries is simply a waste of aid money to supply to the third world. It isn’t that they can’t learn technology. The problem is that there is no infastructure to support the technology, so minor problems quickly lead to failures and abandonment.
A tin can that can be quickly cut with a knife to function, then fueled with any biomass at hand, that saves fuel for a given amount of heat produced will be adopted because of the fuel savings, not because of the smoke reduction. If you live anywhere there are mosquitoes, it is standard to gather up the fallen palm fronds and leaves and burn them to make smoke. Malaria and dengue are real problems that affect people today.
Crispin,
I stand corrected, partially, in that I agree that coal-burning technology on an industrial scale has come a long way in reducing emissions of pollutants. I imagine practical and economic improvements are still possible and the benefits of affordable fuel outweigh those of fuel poverty. At a consumer level, though, the case for coal appears to be harder to make. There seem to be a number of advanced home units on the US market, but they are expensive and the improved stoves don’t appear to offer a significant difference. Unlike the EPA, I don’t count CO2 as a pollutant, but CO in an enclosed environment, particulate matters and sulfur are problematic.
The only info I was able to find on Ulaanbataar and “improved stoves” was a 2005 report whose conclusions are not a glowing recommendation. Analysing reports like this one is not in my bag of skill sets, but I wonder whether the negative assessment is due to overly high standards set by activist agencies, inferior technology of the “improved stoves” supplied for the study, ones possibly designed to be affordable, the researchers’ concerns and politics over CO2 and greenhouse gases and lack of comparisons with the alternative…fuel poverty and the environmental and health effects of chronic exposure to cold and the burning of dung in an open fire pit, which I imagine would have been the norm among herders in tree-poor environments. The bottom line, I think, is that coal is an improvement on wood and raises dismal life expectancy levels among the fuel-poor. I have my doubts, though, that it’s an ideal fuel for individual home use on a mass scale, in cities and in the West, even with the current types of stove technologies. Perhaps you can take a peek at the article; I’m not sure if these are the stoves you mention, as the report is from 2005. I pasted the abstract below, but you’ll have to search the article its it by title on the site I’ve cited, as the URL is ridiculously long and would bugger-up the page here:
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, is the coldest capital city in the world, with average winter low temperatures of –20° Celsius. Many families there live in gers, traditional
Mongolian dwellings consisting of a wooden frame beneath several layers of wool
felt. In the ger districts of Ulaanbaatar, cooking and heating energy is provided
through indoor coal combustion in metal stoves with chimneys, and in wintertime,
such stoves may be in use both day and night. Over the last several years, new stove
designs with improved fuel efficiencies have been introduced into many homes.
To test the impact of the improved stoves on indoor air quality, 24-hour monitoring of
particulate matter (PM) and carbon monoxide (CO) was done in 65 Mongolian gers.
The primary analyses focused on 58 households, 20 with original (or traditional-type)
stoves, 18 with the improved stove type TT-03, and 20 with the improved stove type
G2-2000.
In addition to indoor pollutant concentrations, information on other relevant factors
was collected, which included home sizes, indoor and outdoor temperatures, age of
stove in use, amount of fuel used and number of refuelings, position of monitors
relative to chimneys, and number of cigarettes smoked in the home. Analysis of
variance showed that these factors did not differ significantly by stove type except
that traditional stoves tended to be older than improved stoves. Multivariate
regression methods were used to test for statistically significantly different indoor PM
and CO concentrations between homes with different stove types while controlling for
selected characteristics.
In homes with all stove types, the average level of indoor concentrations of PM and
CO exceeded Mongolian national standards for 24-hour concentrations, and in the
case of PM, the excess exposure was large. The Mongolian national standard for 24-
hour CO is 2.6 parts per million (ppm), and the average of 24-hour CO concentrations
over all households was 9.5 ppm. The Mongolian national standard for 24-hour
average total suspended particles is 150–200 micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m3),
and the average 24-hour observed PM concentration was 730 μg/m3 over all
households. The indoor pollutant levels also exceeded air quality guidelines set by the
World Health Organization and standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency.
For both PM and CO, no statistically significant decrease was found in homes with
improved stoves for 24-hour average concentrations, 15-minute maximum
concentrations, or 2-hour averages during the morning refueling period. However,
there was a nonsignificant trend toward lower CO levels with improved stoves, which
would be consistent with an improvement in combustion.
Although the number of refuelings during the day did not vary by stove type, coal
consumption was significantly lower in households with G2-2000 and TT-03 stoves
than in households with unimproved stoves, with an average decrease of 5 kilograms
per day seen in homes with improved stoves.*
*Shannon C. Cowlin, Rachel B. Kaufmann, Rufus Edwards and Kirk R. Smith, “Impact of Improved Stoves on Indoor Air Quality in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia,” (Energy Sector Management Assistance Program [ESMAP], 2005). Source: http://www.esmap.org/
Crispin Pemberton-Pigott, SeTAR Centre, Univ of Johannesburg says:
April 10, 2012 at 12:34 am
Please understand that a fuel that ‘burns dirty’ is not necessarily ‘dirty’ at all.
+++++++++
good post, worth reading. it is the technology used, not the fuel that makes something “dirty”.
Unless of course you measure CO2. Then coal is inherently dirty and oil and gas is clean, and CO2 taxes can be used to increase the profits of oil and gas companies at the expense of coal companies. So if you are a billionaire buy oil stocks in venuezula and promote carbon taxes via your man in the white house. Shoot down the XL pipeline as this would reduce your profits.
http://radio.foxnews.com/2012/01/18/audio-was-george-soros-behind-obamas-keystone-pipeline-decision/