[Stoves] MCS Cooking techniques

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Friends

I have received reports of fuel burning techniques with the Maputo Ceramic Stove.  The idea is of course to burn enough fuel in a minute to deliver enough heat to cook the food on hand.

In general people automatically put too much fuel into the stove (which is understandable) and we are encouraging them to put in less, leaving a 50mm clear space between the charcoal and the bottom of the pot.

When trying to demonstrate the stove we have run into low power problems because not enough surface of fuel is burning.  This is also understandable.  It only needs a low rate of burn compared with the steel stoves so less fuel is put in.

So far the best technique is to put in more fuel than you need, then to extinguish it with sand when cooking is completed.  In this way the power level is quite high, and the overall consumption is low because the heat transfer efficiency is good and a lot of the fuel remains unburned.

This is not what I foresaw as I expected people would be trained to break up the charcoal into smaller pieces which results in the same burn rate in gm/min.  This gives the same cooking experience, with the added advantage that during simmering, there is less volume of fuel and therefore a lower surface area burning.  The fuel efficiency in this condition is many times higher than the traditional steel stove.

Without any training the use pattern still is delivering higher than hoped for savings so I can't complain. The next initiative is to increase the production rate for the stoves.  We are going to 'jigger jolly' them next.

Regards
Crispin
GTZ/ProBEC
Mozambique