[Stoves] Coal stoves

[nari phaltan]

Dear Crispin,

Thanks for a positive response. I am delighted that you are actively trying
to solve this problem. If you have a developed device then maybe I can put
you in touch with some the coal stoves people in India.

In Kolkatta there are large number of roadside vendors who use coal
briquettes in rudimentary stoves. They also use old computer fans to fan the
stoves. Obviously all the stoves are updraft ones and hence during start up
they put out quite a lot of pollution - much less nevertheless than the
stoves without fans. Also the Indian coal has very high sulphur content
which makes it really dirty.

All the best in your work. Anil


On 2/27/08, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Anil
>
> +++++
> >Last week I was in Eastern India visiting the rural areas of West Bengal
> and
> Jharkhand states. I travelled in 300 kms radius of Kolkata. Most of these
> areas were extremely polluted with smoke from coal stoves. The air was
> difficult to breath and the eyes burnt with the smoke.
> +++++
>
> I am working on exactly that problem.  Fortunately we have support from
> all
> over to get something done here in Ulaanbaatar.
>
> The basic requirements to make an improvement are:
>
> 1. A testing protocol that produces useful numbers for space heating (in
> our
> case) including combustion efficiency, thermal efficiency, emissions
> factors
> and stack loss. It is all but impossible to burn coal properly without a
> chimney or a fan, one of the two.
>
> 2. A stove designer or trainer who can introduce very different, more
> modern
> and cleaner burning technologies
> 3. Fuel assessment to see how cleanly the fuel can be burned so as to
> provide a benchmark against which improved stoves can be rated.
> 4. Producer training and support to test new devices, both for emissions
> and
> thermal performance and user acceptance.
> 5. Possibly fuel processing, be it sizing, grading, briquetting,
> devolatilisation, semi-coking, drying (etc?).
>
> The main challenge is to transform people from batch lighting and
> re-loading
> to a 'little-by-little' (LBL) approach where the coal burns at a given
> rate
> and is constantly refuelled by gravity or burns downwards in a cartridge.
>
> Technologies suited to this are down-draft and side-draft stoves, or if
> they
> are batch loaded, top lit updraft stoves like John Davies' packed bed
> gasifier.
>
> It is most likely that side draft stoves will in the long run be the
> simplest to build and easiest to light and run.
>
> Their emissions are determined by the combustion efficiency (which can be
> a
> dramatic improvement) and sulphur content about which not much can be done
> as it is in the fuel already.
>
> We are fortunate here in that the local coals have very low sulphur
> content.
> It is likely you are smelling unburned coal as much as you are smelling
> sulphurous things.
>
> One of the main polluters in Viet Nam and China is the bottom lit
> briquette
> stove.  One way they can be improved is to have two types of briquettes:
> one
> for lighting (higher volatiles) and ones for refuelling (more like
> anthracite) so once the initial smoke plume is lower; there is not much
> produced with adding a briquette.
>
> There are about 300 years' worth of stove designs for coal, some of which
> fall into the categories described above.
>
> Regards
> Crispin
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Stoves mailing list
> Stoves at listserv.repp.org
> http://listserv.repp.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_listserv.repp.org
> http://stoves.bioenergylists.org
> http://info.bioenergylists.org
>



-- 
Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI)
Tambmal, Phaltan-Lonand Road
P.O.Box 44
Phaltan-415523, Maharashtra, India
Ph:91-2166-222396/220945
e-mail:nariphaltan at gmail.com
          anilrajvanshi at gmail.com
http://nariphaltan.virtualave.net