COMMUNITY : FORUMS : GREEN

Hi this is rajesh im also looking for distribution if know the address of manufacturing please let me know and advice in this

See my reply to salim_s3

A couple of Web sources report:

BP Mag. article

and

The Economist report

OR

this article, that I am not so sure about...

and

one on the sales end (2008)

and also

this article may be of some help...

Kiteman, you have to be the first person I've virtually met who claims to have
not just a built in spectroscopic analyzer, but also trust the Internet to faithfully reproduce colors. <shrug>

_and_ you appear to think of yourself as a universal engineering genius. How did you learn or get all this stuff implanted?

Expand your mind with the views of people who have spent years and years of their time and money trying to help the poor of the world have a way to cook a decent meal without putting their health and pocketbook at risk. Risk a look over at the stoves section of

http://www.bioenergylists.org

and expand your mind a little bit.
_

your version of SS is only slightly less distasteful than that of the Nazis.
Large herbivores of any kind contribute significantly to the amount of global warming by the unconscious application of methane to the atmosphere, which some say is at least ten x more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2.
And then, just imagine how many elephants there would have to be to not only allow over a billion people to cook but also be warm until bedtime, all the while smelling sort of "cow-barn-y".
I once kept warm between two milk-cows for the night in a Swiss cheese-making chalet, but I don't want to recommend my experience as a requirement for all-- especially the relatively poor people who are greatly helped by such a stove.

I've tried hard to be nice to you. Please think a little more.

ornrie.ronnie....

LOL - that's the second time I've called Godwin's Law this weekend!

"Please think a little more"

Oh, the irony...

I say one thing: the SS for pooh stick, tongue in cheek. You ignore the challenges to think in the rest of what I wrote. So, just be offended, sorry! However, I received confirmation of how I was reading your original comment. I'm building a similar stove. But I won't post a picture of it here-- wouldn't want to try twice to challenge your perfect perception of the world...

What challenges? I offer up a renewable energy resource that is being successfully used in parts of the third world by villagers living sustenance-level lives with herd animals, and you try and tell me that it's no good because you can't have a billion elephants living with people?

I really do think that you need to "expand your mind a little bit" - the effects of GW will not be defeated by a single design of stove being used by a relatively small "target consumer". Instead, a wide range of tactics need to be employed in a coordinated, concerted effort by people at all levels - from individual to governmental.

And, before you tried to cast aspersions about my technical and scientific acumen, you should have tried reading the whole thread, including my other posts from April 9th (hint: the scroll bar is to the right of the screen).

What challenges? I offer up a renewable energy resource that is being successfully used in parts of the third world by villagers

The challenge to go to bioenergylists.org for instance,

for some other alternatives. I wasn't pooh-poohing your idea for the people already using it, rather questioning the global usefulness and ultimate supremacy you were claiming over against the BP-developed product, which is being marketed with a great deal of thoughtfulness re. things like marketing strategy, social effects, sustainability, etc. I know that because I read several articles posted in the Internet by various Indian newspapers and other sources to confirm the validity of the story's particulars before adding keystrokes to a public forum.

The thing I found much more irritating was your picture analysis and the "they're lying for profit at the expense of the poor" attitude. The quotes /*if they even come out that way in .html, don't know, might be italics...*/ are not meant to quote you, but give an impression of the attitude that seemed to me to be a knee-jerk response even in light of the fact that I had already read to the bottom of the page, although hadn't read the print on the labels, since they were showing up too small to read easily on my monitor.

Many serious scientists have been working on the problems of sustainability with reference to biologically based fuels since at least back in the 70's. Also during and after the Second World War Swedish and German scientists had worked out a way of using WoodGas to do things like drive industrial plants, power automobiles and tractors, etc. But oil was cheaper in the short run and in a lot of industrial settings, it still is, but advances in biofuels will eventually have to overcomes the short-term financial advantages.

The BP stove in particular is targeted on a population in India that has a mean adults under one roof/ being cooked for on one fire of 4-5. Usually several children come within the pall of such a social group as well. The people in the area are _very_ eager to get hold of one of the stoves because although there is a government subsidy program, it's only good for a limited number of liters of liquid or gaseous fuel in a given month and they have to make up the balance out of pocket or with foraging. If they burn wood, then typically in a fire that is in some way very primitive and therefore bad for their lungs, eyes, health and children.

Alone the stoves list at the abovementioned organization has almost 3000 members, many of whom are full-time professionals working on this issue.

I'm not claiming that the effects of Global Warming

turn on tongue in cheek mode /*or do you mean George Walker*/

will be defeated by any single design of stove. I was merely poking some fun at your pooh-poker as what seemed to be at least as globally offered as you wrongly assumed that my defense was. The SS thing is just a word play on another morphological variable for pooh, also consisting of 4 letters and ending in "t", I hope very plainly that I can urge you to fill in the rest of the blanks without being accused of making comparisons of you, which I was not, with the second most effective global murderer of the last century.

The scroll bar is something I'm acquainted with since way before the awful flood of windows almost universally swept the field of other operating systems.

Correct me if I am wrong, but nowhere in this thread, either in what was written before or since my comment have you made any admission that you were wrong about source of the flame color (which by the way could very well be influenced by the color of the lady's clothing) nor made any moderation of your accusation that BP and everyone else connected with the stove in question was lying about the fact that it is fueled by a natural, biological fuel. This is my chief beef with your stance and remains unchanged so long as you don't admit making an eensy-weensie error.

My statement that you appear to perceive yourself as a universal engineering genius was not a claimed statement about your real genius, to which I have been exposed in only a very limited context. Namely this thread and a glance at your profile. I am not qualified to make any value judgement about your other areas of technical and scientific acumen.

I do know that if you play around with a search engine and something like youtube for a while ( use variables like WoodGas, Campstove or biogas and flame) , that _EITHER_ you'll be convinced, as I am, that it is possible to turn dry or nearly dry biological woody mass into a very high percentage of gas by the addition of heat and then in a second step, by adding more air than in the first step, namely at a ration of circa 6 to 1 and that you will be able to burn the gas with a very nice flame that during parts of the process will look very much like a propane or other "earth gas" flame _OR_ that your level of paranoia is far off my scale of prior experience among the considerable number of people that I have come to know over the course of the last nearly 60 years...

Furthermore, it is my opinion that efforts that bring positive results in a sustainable manner need not necessarily be connected to a "coordinated, concerted effort....etc." Each person who quits using a smoky fire and whose child can learn to read because Mom and Dad don't have to make him or her take part in the foraging for fuel so that they can survive will make a real, positive difference. There are many ways to do this, there are many societies and clumps of situations/variables that cry out for a whole array of creative solutions.

(and what on earth is this "SS of poop sticks" you keep banging on about?)

"SS _for_ poop sticks" see above post.

I'll see what I can do when I get some more progress made and can either purchase or borrow a camera. Thanks for the interest. There are lots of links at bioenergylists.org or the like.

How about a simple explanation of how your stove works ?? and what is your target group ??

In the case of this specific stove, which if I understand correctly is a variant of a Top-Loaded-Upside-Downdraft, the fuel (pellets or a range of other biomass) is loaded into the container. A small fire from either twigs or leaves or possible special inflammable-soaked cloth, parafin-dunked cotton balls, etc. is ignited. Once this has started to burn a bit of the fuel, the blower is turned on. Then pyrolysis starts (depletion of the gases in the fuel until almost pure Carbon is achieved). This is very hot and produces smoke gases by heating the fuel which is not yet combusting. The important part follows: air enters the bottom of the fuel chamber (primary air) and through other holes towards the top of the fuel chamber (secondary air) in a ratio of roughly 1:6 (respectively). The primary air contains just enough oxygen to get the fuel warm enough for it to "off-gas". The resulting wood or biogas is then still hot enough when it reachs the top of the fuel chamber and is mixed with the rich oxygen of the secondary air to ignite and burn almost completely. This is what gives the characteristic yellow to blue color, which you don't get from a normal wood-based fire because the uncontrolled access of the air makes the fire so hot that the speed of the gases overtakes their ability to oxidize before they get too far away from the hot-spot for the endothermic chemical reactions to have enough energy free close enough to cause reignition. The mix of air correct for this process to continually be carried on through the complete burn of the fuel is exceedingly difficult to control in such a compact space without the use of some forced air system... My immediate target group is a group of children at summer camp as a consciousness raising workshop. (the theme of the summer camp is "Ghetto") in addition to trying to improve the heating in my apartment. I have a large Kachelofen, which I can't afford to use because of the massive amounts of wood necessary to fire it properly. When it is fired properly-- such that little soot and smoke is produced it is much too hot for comfort in the living room and the surrounding rooms.

I think poop sticks are a horrible idea. You are burning organic fertilizer. I think it is worse to burn high nitrogen material than to burn wood. Also I looked at the eden project website. These places are so fake! I went to one in Wales and one in Ireland with my pulser pump idea. It is impossible to get these "amusement parks" to research or even demonstrate new ideas. They have a feely good formula and they stick to it! In the irish one, I made a model, bought all the material for it (one of the volunteers was dead keen on it) but the administrators blocked it from being put up for public viewing!

These places are so fake!

What? You expect a real tropical rainforest in a Cornish claypit?

If you like, think of Eden Project as a habitat zoo - they're demonstrating something that most Brits hear loads about on TV (either because they're cutting it down or because there's something cool living there), but which most of us don't get to experience for real.

I don't know about the Welsh and Irish sites you visited, by EP is very into new ideas (have you seen their plans for their expansion?), and do a lot of work to raise the public conciousness about environmental issues (all the ingredients in the restaurant are sourced locally, for instance).

Have a look at some photos I took there.

Actually it is burning vegetation, it's a pellet stove. But yeah, the power fan run off rechargeable batteries seems like it could be better engineered. Once the batteries go bad, there's some heavy metals that need disposal.

Anyways the purpose of this stove is to improve air quality for women, a crap fire might be nice to camp around, but not if you're spending every day of your life cooking over it.

stove

There is another type of stove being used with thermal accumulators, but the issue of the rechargeables having to be "disposed" is, I think, overstated. They will certainly have a means of getting rechargeable batteries handed back in for a partial recovery of their costs. Lots of thought, development and market studies, etc. went into the program and they called in a bunch of good engineers and marketers to custom fit the project for the target area. If I remember correctly the initial planning was in 2001. Your last sentence and first sentence find total agreement with me. :)

...the power fan run off rechargeable batteries seems like it could be better engineered.

How about a Stirling engine? It could run off the flame.

Lots of stirling engine programs have been proposed and even contracted in the last ten years and even longer, but very few have been successfully brought to fruition. I don't know why, but the theory is a lot easier than the actual execution. do a google search for phoenix turbine builders or have a look at sredmond.com for some egs.

I've wanted to do this for a while. I initially imagined a steam engine running off a solid fuel burner (charcoal would be best but a tad expensive) with either a dynamo and electric fan or a belt-driven fan tapping off a small amount of power to "blow" the fire- essentially a turbo/supercharger for a steam engine :) Then when I found out about Stirling engines it became even simpler- either use a fan to force aspiration to the fire, or even better use it to evaporatively cool the "cold" end. (I wonder if it's possible to run a Stirling engine entirely below room temperature using evaporative cooling?)

Perhaps...I'm no expert on Stirlings, but since they run off a heat differential, I would think that cooling one side would work. Evaporative cooling won't create a very large difference, though.

Some stirlings run off a difference of just 3 or 4^oC, apparently.

There's an Instructable on them somewhere, and an article in Make.

I've also seen some of these on the net, they can be very large or very very small. The size to temp-differential gradient seems to be inverse. Large size slow revs smaller temp diff. and vice versa.

And they all have moving parts which will fail, not to mention the cost if you think the average human can afford one, think again.. This is why they are only used in low temp Thermal imagery, nuclear subs, and industrial waste heat recovery systems.... A large chunk of the worlds population lives for less then $2 USD per day......

As I mentioned in a comment to Kiteman above there are some people who give advice and offer kits that an average person in the developed world would be able to afford if he could scrimp for a while and do much of the work himself or in teamwork with friends. The "large chunk..." you mentioned could use some of our time and effort and in my opinion, prayers. It would really be cool if everyone could suddenly have smoke and poison free heat, clean drinking water, equal access to health care (and _enter_ _tongueincheek_ _mode_ a Porsche Carrera) But since that probably won't happen in my lifetime, I'm thinking about a trip with one of the stove projects within the next five years to actually do something concrete. It won't change the world a lot if I take part, but my idea is that if I do what I can, someone may be helped by it in a lasting way. It's also possible to support such efforts financially.

All I'm pointing out is some of the major drawbacks to using a sterling type device for power generation, and yes while there is cheaper models available, if you look at it as a tool which one would expect to get 10 years service life out of, (( My coleman gas stove is about 50 years old and still works great )) will the sterling keep up ?? And honestly I don't even know if your using a sterling because you don't say much about your stove, so please tell us more... And you should post your stove ideas on instructables, you would be surprised at the info you might get to make it better, make it more efficient, or even how to make it cheaper.... There is also several people who are in areas that could use this type of info, using instructables and maybe you could be field testing them sooner then you though ??? Who knows .... I know I have built several of the stoves showen in instructables to see how well they work in the real world ....

A stirling motor is a definite possibility for generating power. It doesn't even necessary need a heat source, just a temperature differential. One solution I saw uses liquid Nitrogen for the source of differential temp. When the N warms up due to atmospheric exposure, it expands and drives the motor.
I think it's called N-gine. You can feed that into a search engine and see what you get.
The stove I am thinking about is not for power generating it is about getting heat out of wood or biomass. For cooking or warmth. Not for electrical or mechanical generation.
I ran across the instructables site googling for the oorja stove and this is almost my first exposure to it, so it will take a while before I get geared up to post the project.
I have had some extra time on my hands because of sick leave, so I will be somewhat more rare the next days.
One clarification: For a wood gas stove of the magnitude of the typical gas or electric stove range, you need about 1.5 - 4kW. The amount of power for the ventilator for this size is miniscule= c. 1-3W. The typical ventilator for an older CPU is more than enough air motion.
A sterling motor for something like this magnitude of power is mega technological overkill. I'm thinking of dimensioning a plastic pipe with a hole hooked to a tube hooked to the base of the cooker and dropping a gasketed weight through the pipe to exhaust the air at an appropriate velocity to fan the flames at the right level... It doesn't have to be high tech or even electric... The pipe wouldn't have to be plastic, but they're cheap... at least here. In Botswana they'd probably cost an arm and a leg.

The N-Gine isn't a stirling engine - it's the same technology as the air-engines used in toy cars and planes (see Air Hogs), but instead of compressed air, it used liquid nitrogen to get a higher energy-density in the tank. It's nothing to do with the delta-T.

Stirlings are sealed units - the gas is not used up, but the temperature difference makes it expand and contract, which is what drives the mechanism.

Actually, Oildrum has been looking at compressed-gas energy-storage recently.

I have mistakenly conflated stirling and the n-gine in my mind, sorry.

So would it not be easier to use a $5 pelter ?? to generate that couple of watts with no moving parts ?? using only the temperature differential... Ok only the fan would move, which if it's a good fan should run for tens of thousands of hours before requiring any service...... (( And I can't speak for Botswana but in Zambia the price of a pelter was the same as it is in the USA, they come from China.... ))

Too many unknown variables for me. I'm not any kind of engineer, but am weakest in electrical stuff, last education I had in that was 6th or 7th grade and the filter of 14 years of further education makes my mind a little fuzzy on that stuff. Additionally, there may be an electrical firm nearby that is getting a tax break by the government for participating in the program, which has the additional positive incentive that another local business is profiting, short transport ways, etc. There may be business networking issues involved-- and remember that the end-user cost of the stove is very low: circa 17US$ at the time the articles I read were written. The engineers involved might just be caught in the box of "use what you already know". There are way too many factors unknown for us. Like maybe the Chinese wanted a higher price because they're under government pressure to discriminate against India for offering the Dhali Lama refuge, who knows? The world was a very complicated place in its pristine state-- and then man showed up with characteristics like curiosity, love and hate. If you want search on Pelter and biogas stove, I'm pretty sure that one of the competitors is using this option, but I haven't gotten that far yet as I've got plenty of rechargeable batteries around... and I'm trying hard not to order anything other than absolutely essential metalworking tools due to budgetary and time constraints.

China, when it comes down to the almighty buck, they don't care who your hiding a dollars a dollar, there is also US companies that make pelters and why can't India make them, India is capable of making lots of other devices similar to them, And no I have not seen one that uses a pelter... Most manufactures make them as cheap as possible which is a false economics to start with, even if you use rechargeable batteries they to have a very short life when compared to a solid state pelter thermocouple (( 1000 recharges and that being generous because real world it should be more in the 300 area, VS 100,000 hours a pelter will easily last )) and a cheap set of NiCd batteries outputting 5 to 6 volts DC is about $2 and you need a set every year and NiMH is about $5 and you need a set every two to three years, LiION are more and the charger is expensive but they last a little longer, and SLA are about $10 and you'll get 5 years... Now a Pelter is around the $5 mark and you'll get 27 years or more... And the use what you know theory is great so I let you know this, you take a pelter device and you heat one side of it and cool the other side, and you take the red wire and hook it up to the red wire on the fan and you do the same for the black wire, and you'll notice right away your generating power.... So now you know..... And a word of warning they are fragile when they are not mounted to a heat sink or metal plate, but when mounted they are fairly tough......

China is _not_ free trade in any means. The last character is a PERIOD I was _not_ making factual statements, merely theoretical examples of the kinds of factors that _may_ have made some contribution to the decision to use batteries rather than pelters. You don't have to convince me. I think a pelter would be great, _BUT_ I have a spare battery/accumulator right here in my kitchen and some wire and a spare computer fan, so I will use the accumulator for my experiments. And for a pelter I would have to go at least as far as Conrad.de which is much too far for me in part time mode and I'm not a scientist or that much of a perfectionist and I don't have __any__ money to invest in this, etc. Partly because I made a mistake some time ago and purchased a 9V accumulator / rechargeable battery. I thought I needed it but didn't. Is that Okay with you? They claim 1000 recharges for the battery I have. The stovemakers claim c. 10 hours of fan power per battery charge. Man, that puts me into at least 2010 or 13. According to the following: If my stove only puts out 6kW then I need 3 hrs 36 minutes to raise ONE TON of H20 from 12 to 90 ° C /*kiteman, I'm leaving out the heat loss to the atmoshere, i.e., disregarding heat loss completely*/ This is plenty of heat to procide for a single family house on avg. in the winter here in Bavaria-- southern Germany foothills north of the Alps. I may very well be dead by then! I know what a pelter is, the engineer probably know what it is, too. They just use what they know from a _practical_ _experiential_ standpoint. The real world sometimes demands sub-optimal solutions because of the pressure to get to market or maybe there's a delivery shortfall, man, who knows?!? And there _is_ a pelter powered device on the market. I'm just too tired after work to go there at the moment. Go to this months archives at bioenergylists.org to the stoves section and look at the archive for July. If you read through the hundreds of messages you will eventually find one that refers to a pelter or other thermo-couple driven fan in a currently marketing design. It's 1:07a.m. Good Night Children! Good Night Papa! cheers.

((( just a though ))) several companies making Pelter devices do offer FREE prototyping samples, Melcor is one example of such a company you do have to email then and maybe phone them as well, and you'll need some Aluminum heatsinking, Wakefield engineering is another great example you can ask right on there website... They even pick up the shipping cost as well..((( And not to support just one company there is others that produce these items, These are just the first to pop into my head ))) Maybe then you could build a stove that is affordable, easy to produce, and produces smoke free, poison free heat (( and maybe a Porshe Carrera <> I don't know about that one but it would be nice )) And China may not be free trade, but any country that will ship arms to a country that is about to commit genocide, will surely ship a few pelters to make stoves with....

Or you could just power the fan / charge a battery by using a pelter junction / thermocouple device, they are cheap enough now and they will more then likely outlast the fans they are powering .........

Hi,
as part of my further search and with the help of the bioenergylists.org site, I ran across:

http://www.research.philips.com/password/archive/28/downloads/password28.pdf

there you will see a report about a stove such as you are describing. It has a battery accumulator to drive the ventilator until the stove is hot enough to power the fan over the thermal generator(s) after that point, the thermals recharge the battery.

Philips is looking for people worldwide to build and market these stoves.

I don't know what their conditions for use of intellectual property / technology are.

regards,

...And consume power, thereby utterly defeating the point of a Stirling being powered by evaporation.

Ok now your thinking about using it for cooling some thing, which strangely enough you can also do with a sterling engine if you turn it ... When you create a temperature difference on a pelter/ thermocouple, by heating one side and having a heatsink on the other side. They will produce power, they are just like a sterling but they produce electrical energy not kinetic energy.. However with a sterling engine you then have to either use to run the fan or turn it into electrical energy to run a fan, and honestly you pretty much have to go with a generator , battery route, unless your willing to wait for every thing to heat up before your fan starts. Pelter junctions normally start producing power quicker, and to add a battery to pelter is only one part to fail, but to add a generator and battery to a sterling is two.. Keep in mind most people can buy and replace a couple AA rechargeable batteries, but a generator is a whole new story... (( it's only two / three bolts and one / maybe two plugs on most cars but how many people can do it ?? )) And now Pelter devices are Cheap, easy to get, and last forever... And unlike a sterling engine they contain NO moving parts... Also to reduce the amount of heat that might other wise be wasted pulling it threw a pelter and heatsink you could always run the fan over the heatsink and back into the combustion area, returning most of the heat back to the stove to be used for cooking, just a little preheating of the air.... ((( This is true for both technologies, I just wanted to point it out to improve efficiencies )))

Dude, that is genius!! I was thinking hand crank blower.

I like Stirlings, and I think of ways to put them in everything. One of these day I'll actually build one.

Oh, that's much more impressive.

The campfire was really just reminiscing - Poop sticks are burned in specially-designed, but locally-built brick stoves designed to concentrate the heat on the cooking pot, and the fuel is free.

> ... designed to concentrate the heat on the cooking pot ... . Yeah. Not to knock the BP project, but there's a lot of heat being wasted up the sides of that pot.

Ah!

Found my sources (Eden Project, Cornwall):