[Stoves] The PROTOS Plant Oil Cooker

[Keith Addison]

Hello Michael

Thanks for this.

>Dear Keith:
>
>I have tried coconut oil -100%  75 %  and 50 % essentially do not work at
>all
>in a regular "Dietz" type lantern   By the time you get to about 75%
>kerosene and 25 % coconut oil
>it will work-- poorly. The small cost saving at that point along with  very
>poor lamp performance make it
>all a moot point anyway..

That's a useful result. I'm not sure that having to buy 25% less 
kerosene would be only a small cost saving, in many cases. We've had 
quite a lot of emails at Journey to Forever from people from or in 
poor communities asking how people in their villages can use 
vegetable oil to reduce or replace the cost of kerosene used for 
cooking and lighting.

A "Dietz" lantern might be easier to modify than a wick stove, if you 
can let a little more airspace into the weave of the wick somehow, or 
replace it with something looser. Winding the wick up and down might 
be troublesome, beyond a certain point. Worth messing with?

The Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) in India developed 
a pressurised mantle lantern that uses 60% of the kerosene used by 
ordinary Petromax-style lanterns and will also run on diesel fuel or 
ethanol and can be used as a cooker. See:
http://nariphaltan.virtualave.net/lantern.htm

I don't know if they've tried it, but it should also run on biodiesel 
without problems, since pressure kero stoves run well on biodiesel. 
The same goes for ordinary Petromax-style lanterns too. Both might be 
able to use a proportion of vegetable oil.

But I think there are far more wick stoves than pressure kero stoves 
in use, and far more kerosene wick lanterns than pressure lanterns, 
and wicks are more difficult.

Thanks again Michael.

Keith



>Michael N Trevor
>Enemanit
>Marshall Islands