[Stoves] Retted Switchgrass Fireball Test

[Crispin at newdawn.sz]

Dear Martin and Friends

>...the DEOM-Turbo-stove.

I just checked my files and didn't find it but I remember looking at that
site.  I remember it being quite large.

>I am curious... if some of the air came from oblique above,
> and ...a grate ...

There is probably going to be a demand for this in the londer run because a
lot of institutional stoves are going to have chimneys.  The problem in
Swaziland and a few other places including Lesotho and parts of South Africa
where three legged pots are most common.  The pots are themselves a problem
because they are not suited to being inside a stove.

I predict a better pot and chimneys will become the norm even at the low
cost end of the institutional market.  The addition of a cast iron, glass or
advanced ceramic grate will accomplish the charcoal chunk burning we speak
of.

>...the DEOM-stove ...can cleanly burn very different fuels

This is the present need.  We need to burn large chunks of wood and that
requires a grate.  Perhaps by then it will no longer qualify to be called a
"Rocket".  People complain a lot about fuel restrictions on the Rocket Stove
and its variants.

Almost all the physical damage occurring now is in the fuel entrance as
people use the tunnel as a wood breaking mechanism.  Henry The Builder and I
have made a design change to address this which will pop on line in a couple
of weeks.  The entrance is widened into a Y shape horizontally and
additional brick added to add strength but still allow air preheating. There
are about 10 Lion stoves of the new design curing now, the first to be used
next week.

Simon Mortimore is doing a paired site fuel consumption survey to verify the
fuel savings over an open fire.  In fact he got up at 3:30 this morning to
get to a site and weigh the wood before the 'first match'.

An interesting aspect of wood supply by volunteers to orphan care points is
that they tend to get large amounts of wood all at once which means a tree
is dumped on site and broken down.  It is a great deal of work to split a
tree into Rocket Stove fuel.  They really have to alter the fuel collecting
pattern to avoid this work.  Because people are used to wasting wood, they
source larger pieces.  This means we have to change the fuel strategy, the
lighting, tending and refueling skills in order to use the stove properly.
The potential fuel saving by the hardware+software combination is perhaps
80%.

Regards
Crispin