[Stoves] Safety of stoves and conflicts of interests

[Paul S. Anderson]

Crispin, Ken and all,

I find your info (in both messages) interesting, but not totally 
convincing.  It
is good that I am writing to friends, because by the end of this message my
passions and perspectives about stoves are showing.

The Lily burner provides heat to the pot which sits on a Lily stove 
structure. The burner is from tincans.  Therefore, the existing 
manufacturing capabilities
of the tincan companies could easily come into line to manufacture Lily 
burners
by the tens of thousands.  Holes punched out in the production process, not
drilled into existing cans.  The top sealed with the same quality of sealing
found in any can of soup or condensed milk.  Some safety components (such as
for stability) could be worked into the burner or into the stove 
structure. And on and on.

But the liquid alcohol must become vapor in small quantities, and that 
requires
heat reaching selected parts of the can.  The entire can does not reach the
vaporization temperature.  Most of the liquid is probably below 50 deg C.  A
certain wording in the regulations can be the death-blow to a technology or
device, but other wording could allow work to continue.

The cell phone technology is great, but it took 100+ years to evolve from the
earliest telephones.  And with great investments, especially because 
the people
who wanted the telephone first were those with the financial means.

Well, in the world of stoves, the wealthy already have their modern 
stoves.  The
energy used by one electric stove could probably serve a whole village with
basic electricity needs.

I have received a few dollars of donated new tincans and ceramic fiber from
manufacturers.  But otherwise, there is absolutely zero (that is 
ZEROOOO, as in
nada, or nothing) from any source except my own resources.  Maybe the Lily
burner is not worth anything, or maybe it really is a crucial stage in the
"self-pressurized alcohol stove" evolution.  The proposed safety 
standards will
make it harder to get this stove into use so that important feedback could be
obtained.  South Africa seems to be out to the question.  The money that would
be needed "to do it right and with industrial quality" is absolutely NOT in
sight.

Alcohol stoves are a side-line from my work on the biomass gasifiers.  
But to me
the Lily burner shows tremendous potential.  I know of only one person who has
made something like it.  He/she only saw some Internet pictures, never
contacted me, got discouraging emissions results, and who does not write to me
about how he/she actually made it.  The size and number of the holes is
extremely important, and I told the hole size at the ETHOS meeting, but the
size was not in the PowerPoint document, so that detail was missed.  (I 
am only
guessing about why he/she had poor results with his copy, but he/she has not
written or sent any photos, although I have requested that info.)

And now you (Crispin) are enlightening me about the safety requirements being
layed out in South Africa, with hopes of spreading them elsewhere.  Good
intentions by all.  But potentially smoothering.  You are essentially saying
that without substantial business/government/investment support, new products
aimed to assist the very poor should not allowed to reach them unless those
products meet the standards established by the business/government/investment
leadership.  Maybe I am overstating it (but only slightly overstating 
it?):  If
an inventor or innovative product cannot get "approval" by the powerful, the
initiative is virtually dead or illegal!!!   Perhaps that is okay in North
America, Europe, (and South Africa), but that is "total rubbish" if applied to
appropriate, sustainable, low-cost advances for the moderately poor people of
this world, and even worse for the destitute people.

Alexander Graham Bell (inventor of the telephone, although another person was
also at virtually the same stage) spilled acid on himself and exclaimed "Dr.
Watson, come here, I need you."  (possibly part of corporate mythology, but a
good story.)   Did anyone ever get electricuted by early telephones?  Or what
other problems existed?   If regulations had been in place prohibiting the
early telephones, somebody could have lived.

Personally, I will be very sad when I hear that someone died or lost 
their house
or something else bad happened because of a Lily burner.  The burner is
basically quite safe, but poor usage will sometime occur, with disasterous
results.  I am prepared in my mind to loose one or ten or one hundred 
people or
homes because the Lily burner does not meet the "perfection" specifications
being considered.  My consulation for that terrible loss will be that 
thousands
or even hundreds of thousands of people and households will have received
cleaner air, and LESS deaths than would have been caused than if those people
had continued to use their current stoves or even some "improved cookstove"
that is not as good as the Lily burner.

Paul
-- 
Paul S. Anderson, Ph.D., Geography professor - Emeritus
Telephone:  USA-309-452-7072 (residence and office)
Internet site:  www.ilstu.edu/~psanders
For my gasifier stoves info, go to:
http://bioenergylists.org/contributors#Paul_Anderson


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