[Stoves] Understanding "charcoal making" stove s. Was: energy lost in charcoal making and br iquetting

[Kevin Chisholm]

Dear Jeff
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jeff Davis" <jeff0124 at velocity.net>
To: "Discussion of biomass cooking stoves" <stoves at listserv.repp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 08, 2006 12:38 AM
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Understanding "charcoal making" stove s. Was: energy 
lost in charcoal making and br iquetting


Steve wrote:
> But the prime useful output is the rotary motion, as
> currently accepted..
> So it isn't a stove.

>Hi Steve and All,

Steve has a good point.I vote with Steve, against you. Since there are only 
5 people participating in this thread, we have 60% of the votes in, and by 
teh opinion of the majority of the voters, an engine is not a stove. ;-)

> Just because I use a screwdriver as a pry bar does not change the fact
that it is a screwdriver.

Exactly. Thge purpose of a screwdriver is to drive screws. The fact that it 
could be used as a prybar, or an icepick is irrelevant.

> Motion is heat and heat is motion. So I could be wrong when I said that
the engine is 70% stove, this would make it 100% stove.

Similarily, the purpose of an engine is to provide shaft power. Recovery of 
waste heat is a secondary feature. Your logic is such that I could call a 
coleman lantern a stove. Sure, I could cook with the heat off a coleman 
lantern, or I could also cook an egg with the waste heat of Doug's gasifier 
cooler, but in no way does that make either of them stoves. In the same 
manner, if I fry an egg on the exhaust manifold of an engine, that does not 
in any way make it a stove, any more than using a screwdriver as a prybar 
makes the screwdriver a prybar..


> An IC engine would NOT work if it were not a stove. The reason it works is
because it heats air.

An engine does not heat air. The fuel heats the air, and the engine 
harnesses the expansion of the air to generate shaft power.

> Like wise a biomass stove (cooking appliance) would not work if it were
not an engine. The cook stove creates motion and this motion is called
draft. Kevin improved a stove by adding a chimney. He made it a better
engine!

Mere motion is not an engine. The system that harnesses motion to do useful 
work is an engine. A stove is not an engine, in that it does not harness 
motion to do work

> The trend is for engines to become better stoves and stoves to become
better engines. For example the engine is performing cogen, of course for
many years it has heated the cabs of cars and trucks. Take a look at the
"center-in injector" cook stove and you will see the stove becoming a
better engine (lots of talk on the list for more fanned stoves).

> So how do we convert a stove (large cook stove) into a 100% prime mover?
Answer: Hot air balloon.

With the accepted definition of a stove as a "device that burns a fuel for 
the purpose of cooking or heating", a hot air baloon is not a stove. Did you 
ever hear of a hot air balloon being used to cook up a meal?

I think you are doing some big stretches, and that you are looking at the 
problem throuigh the wrong end of the telescope. :-)

>Full steam ahead,

Be careful of those damned torpedos!! :-)

Best wishes,

Kevin


-- 
Jeff Davis

Some where 20 miles south of Lake Erie, USA