Sheet Metal FES Stove Design and Construction

The EWB ATDT stove group had a fantastic month, with some teams designing, some making, some assembling, some testing, and some taking new stoves to Darfur, Sudan.

The purpose of this particular post is to educate myself (and preserve the information on the web), and perhaps you too, about Fuel Efficient Stoves (FES) for developing countries. More information is never a bad thing, so ATDT members who want to know a little more deserve a resource. The focus here is on details of metal stoves (a subset of FES) - design, cultural and functional assessment, local resources, quality control, initial introduction, social analysis, continuous improvement, diffusion based on merits, sustainability, benefit analysis, project documentation, etc. Because we have another round of stove design going on right now - to make changes based on more feedback from Sudan - I will start with very design oriented links, and then more general ones will be added for completeness. No need to look at all of these - just the ones that catch your attention.

There have been sheet metal stoves in the past, and the one being developed here for Sudan is special because it has been optimized for the local cooking conditions and culture. To get a glimpse of just how many FES stove types have been named (like butterfly species?) and listed and linked - there are at least two current tabulating sites (numerous older stove pages have gone defunct over the years) that show the diversity of this genus:
http://www.repp.org/discussiongroups/resources/stoves/StovesA_Z.html
or by country: http://www.repp.org/discussiongroups/resources/stoves/Countries/country.html
http://bioenergylists.org/en/stoves

But zooming in to just the very specific arena of metal FES - of course there is a blog just on metal FES stoves! What could be more specialized, the nitty gritty details of home diabetes treatments for cats? Scattered through these pages there are important tidbits of information on every aspect of offering new stoves to people in foreign countries. You know I like a good concise blog...and we similarly find a manageably sized chunk of information on the rest of the web - some of the classic stoves that are in use all over the world include:

• A short video of the assembly of a sheetmetal stove (the VITA) that is somewhat similar to the Berkeley/Tara stove is here - everyone should take a quick look at this: http://www.aprovecho.net/stoves/web-content/media/vita/vita.html. Perhaps the original smudged and photocopied notes about the VITA stove (1987), rolling up a pre-cut sheet of steel; he understands the gap!: http://www.repp.org/discussiongroups/resources/stoves/apro/VITA/vitastove.pdf
  
• I am not quite sure what these guys sell, but for some reason they evaluate 4 different cylindrical sheet metal stoves from Niger, Gambia, Uganda, and Kenya http://www.newdawnengineering.com/website/stove/singlestove/ and one even has a price - 250 Rand.
• Here is a stove from Finland stove, with very simple (low grate open area) perforated parts:http://www.index2005.dk/Members/nyshobhumy/homeObject. They had the same vision that we do – shipping flat stoves in bulk to be assembled near the point of use.
• Here is a truly beautifully first world version of a metal stove! http://www.permapak.net/volcano.htm
• A metal Cambodian rice husk metal stove is described here: http://www.reap-canada.com/bio_and_climate_3_3_1.htm
• An all metal design that the mind of Jonathan might have developed – but his is even better so he should patent it quick! http://www.pyromid.net/info/index.html and you can even read the manual at: http://www.pyromid.net/support/PyromidManual.pdf
• And the word from Eritrea (right to the east of Sudan) is: http://www.punchdown.org/rvb/mogogo/MogogoEval200108.html where from March 2000 to August 2001 the efficient stove program funded by the Eritrea Technical Exchange resulted in over 3000 stoves being installed in 15 villages at a cost of approximately $25 per stove. Could you possibly have a more relevant report title than "Design, Promotion, and Dissemination of Energy-Efficient Stoves"?
• Maybe an even better name is "Cooking Options in Refugee Situations", by UNHCR: http://www.repp.org/discussiongroups/resources/stoves/Refugees/CookOptionsRefugeeUNHCR.pdf
  

Getting a little more specific here, with links just pertaining to metal stoves in Sudan/Africa:

• http://www.chfinternational.org/content/general/detail/2927
• http://yoomi.bethechange.org/?p=77 – a delightful informal article on evaluating stoves in Darfur by cooking, and the cultural situation there.
• A good overview article on selecting metal stoves designs for Mauritania, plus doing the training on the ground (with good photos): www.sunsmiles.org/slide_showMauri/PhotoWeb/MauritaniaReport.doc
• The recent analysis by Prof. Gadgil is here:http://www.darfurstoves.lbl.gov/d/LBNL59540.doc
• a good general article on the situation in Darfur: http://www.refugeesinternational.org/content/article/detail/7099/?PHPSESSID=5ce00f92779c166324e1d
  
• Just on the issues of women collecting firewood is this site - supremely detailed and readable: http://www.womenscommission.org/pdf/df_fuel.pdf
• An analysis of some aspects of the stove situation in Darfur last fall, by Aprovecho: www.bioenergylists.org/stovesdoc/ETHOS2006/Langol/LangolETHOS2006.pdf

In this post I have sucessfully avoided all mention of technical things like the size of the stove-pot gap, the exact optimal range of the grate "open area", the sensitivity to the grate-pot distance, heat transfer aspects of the different thickness of steel recommended (and the overall mass of the stove), the diameter or volume to efficiency relationship, the possible unimportance of the Biot number, the relative or absolute amount of particulates and CO emitted (and even efficiency details - or at least what method to use when measuring), how to effectively use these stoves in the field (and how to teach people how to use them), maintenace and repair, construction details (Who, how, where, and when?), libertarian assumptions, dissemination dilution and dispersion methods, viral distribution tendencies when provided free, and so on; so far this isstill all just light background reading. And itis possible that no one in history has yet solved many of these problems. But they might have - those of us who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.