[Stoves] Fuel Testing

[frank at compostlab.com]

Stovers,
While growing up in a small New England town where we used fire wood for the
kitchen stove for cooking this is what I learned about fuel and fires.
1) I would cut down the oak, maple, ash, beech, birch and elm for fire wood
and leave the pine, spruce and hemlock. The fire fuel is a mixture of the best
available in my area and the 'list' of properties does little good.
2) When starting the fire I took wood from the dryer two year old side and not
the 2 week old side because water has a big effect on the fire. 
3) When I want the fire to be fast and hot I pick the small sticks with lots
of carbon surface area. That starts the larger slower longer burning logs.
4) To help get the fire going I arrange the fuel in a crisscross fashion. 
Once it is going I can throw them in a stack manner. 
5) At the lab I have tested a lot of manures and found the wet sticky stuff
attracts dirt and stones when it hits the ground, and depending on how it is
handled can accumulate over 75% by dry weight of dirt.  

These are the properties that with your help I am attempting to quantify using
simple tests.

If I worked in a stove lab that tested stoves where the stove could be used in
many parts of the world I would test using one inch pine. It would be oven
dried to remove the water variable and cut into one inch - eight inch long
sticks. The heat and CO-PM would be standardized and air flow etc. could be
adjusted tfor best performence. 

If I wanted to pick a stove for an area I would take several to the area and
test using the fuel at hand. Just what is being done.

We cannot expect the stove in the field to work the same as the stove in the
lab. And the field crew wants the lab crew to make changes to improve the
stove the lab will now need to use the fuel with the same properties of that
area. This is when I think means to measure the above parameters will be useful.

Frank
 













On Sun, 1 Oct 2006 15:35:18 -0700, Tom Miles wrote
> Frank,
> 
> You may also be interested in fuel properties. You have probably 
> found the links on the stoves site at: http://bioenergylists.org/en/node/569
> 
> Among those, the appendices to our Alkali Deposit Investigation 
> (1995) has complete analyses for many biomass fuels: proximate,
>  ultimate, heating value, water soluble alkali and elemental ash composition.
> http://www.trmiles.com/alkali/alkali.htm  These were mainly 
> industrial boiler fuels. You'll find the biggest differences are 
> between woods and grasses. As Dr. Karve and others have pointed out 
> lots of grasses find their way into stoves.
> 
> We didn't analyze manures in this study because only one plant was burning
> manure in the US at the time. Besides our manures won't be 
> representative of dung and manure used in rural areas of developing 
> countries. You can find analyses of poultry litter, turkey litter 
> and swine solids that we've worked with at: 
> http://www.brbock.com/TRM_BRB_.pdf
> 
> Tom
>