Cheap, clean stoves were supposed to save millions of lives – what happened?
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I'm not sure how it is "undeveloped" countries but around here is quite illegal to make your own fuel in this way however... it is, after all, the "A" in BATF. It seems that without addressing such issues, the "clean" stoves will not be popular because locals would need to keep paying some "authority" (government or otherwise) for access to the fuel, and money is much more scarce than dung in many places.
Not sure what you mean by "in this way", but it is quite legal to make ethanol fuel for your own use in the US.
If so, this has fascinating implications; apparently much more of the plant world is edible than anyone has made use of so far. Not directly edible, of course, and the calories in alcohol are empty; but still, an interesting thought.
A word of caution however, the ethanol that you can buy for camping stoves and such is NOT the same thing... by law it is denatured (mixed with toxins to render unsafe for drinking)
And cattails BTW are directly edible... the roots produce a lot of starch and can be cooked or ground into flour if that's your thing. Some of those ponds they grow in are pretty murky though, and you might want to make sure you're not near a septic system if try them :)
But still, you answered my question with what I was asking; thank you!
> Although these cookstoves produce fewer emissions than open fires, burning biomass fuels in them still releases plenty of toxins
For toxins that actually matter, that's smoke in layperson terms.
So what if the benefits are only partially there. It still rocks.
It makes me suspicions that the study where all the stovetops were no longer being used, was just picked as an example because it failed.
And as to electricity and gas being better, that's nice, the doers can continue down the biomass efficiency road while this is still being discussed.
They had an idea to fix a problem, it worked but not as well as hoped, so now they're learning and iterating. Sounds like any experimental project (or startup).
They got 28 million stoves out with a budget of $10m/year (times 5 years?). Big deal if they haven't saved the world yet.
My understanding is that rocket stoves[1] are extremely efficient and non-polluting. Is that incorrect, or are rocket stoves not profitable for the concerns promoting this sort of effort?
> “With their system of government, they can kind of dictate what happens,” notes Jim Jetter, a senior research engineer who tests cookstoves for the EPA.
Well, yes, it helps if one can sentence holdouts to the laogai.
> much like some American cooks like the flavor of meat grilled over charcoal.
Only some? I'm pretty sure that everyone prefers the flavour of food cooked over good lump charcoal.
No, not really. Since the obvious solution (i.e. the one that has worked everywhere in the world it's been tried) is affordable grid scale electricity - which at this point means fossil or nuclear - and the west is apparently hellbent on preventing the devolping world from having this, it's unlikely any future research will come up with anything of any actual utility.
There isn't really a grand conspiracy to prevent the developing world having fossil fuels either. Developing world countries aren't not building power plants because of the Kyoto agreement, which barely binds them, they're not building them because of the usual mix of disorganisation, corruption and lack of access to capital.
Maybe instead of trying to give them bits of civilization in the wilderness, we ought to just bring them out of the fucking wilderness entirely and be done with it.
These people are living two centuries in the past so proved, simple and local solutions would be the best.
"Even if people are aware of the health risks of cooking over open fires (and many are not), they are reluctant to abandon cooking methods embedded in their culture."
"Women had stopped using the stoves because they didn’t like the design or because the stoves broke, burned more wood (not less, as intended) or didn’t get foods hot enough."
"Indian women surveyed by the Stockholm Environment Institute said they prefer to cook roti, a flatbread eaten with every meal, in a clay oven using a mix of firewood and cow dung because they can both fry and bake the bread and the fuels improve the taste — much like some American cooks like the flavor of meat grilled over charcoal."
"The affordable ones are inadequate, and the good ones are unaffordable.” (How do you expect a group of people unable to afford a stove to afford retrofitting their home with a chimney?)
Your chimney solution solves none of these problems. When attempting to address an issue in developing nations, it's importent to analyze exactly how people are implementing he solution on the ground. Cultural grandstanding as seen in these comments does nothing to solve the problem.
Now * How do you expect a group of people unable to afford a stove to afford retrofitting their home with a chimney? *
I am from nation with very poor and repressed background, but we managed to do that.
For building a functioning oven with a chimney you do not need a lot of fancy material - just bricks, mortar (or can be even made from clay rich earth) and a iron plate.
Of course these gadgets are expensive and stupid and this was my original criticism.
* Your chimney solution solves none of these problems. *
We do not know that as it was not even considered as it seems to me from the article. Instead they tried to sell complicated industrial products.
Raised platforms for building cooking fires are also very 17th-century; they let you cook standing up, instead of squatting and ruining your back like the woman in the article. (There's a nice illustration of this in Braudel's _The Structures of Everyday Life_.) Smoke hoods were also available at that time.
See, there is your problem and a big fat hint for a solution.
Most countries in northern hemisphere solved this problem more than century ago and it amazes me how this solution is not even mentioned once.
A tangentially-related but nonetheless interesting video of a guy making a hut with chimney from scratch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL3sho1CpkI
One problem is that ceramic stoves with a large thermal mass may take a lot more fuel to fire. In colder northern regions with plentiful fuel, the high thermal mass is an advantage because it can help keep the house warm. But in a tropical setting, open indoor fires may be more efficient at quickly heating food, especially when deforestation is a problem.
This is true but does not change anything as even now the exhaust would get out of the building, just more inefficiently. It is staying likely closer to the ground for longer too.
Of course for long term solution a concentrated and well filtered power plant with an accessible grid would be a best solution. But even then an exhaust hood above the cooking place is needed.
Chimney has two effects mainly: exhaust to the outside and above the buildings such that the wind can dilute it enough.
Chimney's work because a column of hot air rises which sucks in more air. When building a fire they take a while to work because there filled with cold air and they remove the smoke's heat. Which is why it's easy to fill a room with smoke when starting a fire. In cold areas where you generally keep a stove running most of the day and produce significant heat this works really well. In hot places where your trying to use the smallest fire possible they don't work very well.
Further, they generally work better the taller they are which gets expensive. Ideally you want several vertical feet between the entrance and exit. Though there are ways to shortcut this, such as the blower over many stoves in the US.
PS: A solar powered exhaust fan could help, but IMO building an actual electric grid is probably better than a long list of solar powered devices. And at high density's your just exchanging smoky air with all your neighbors which has limited value.
Admittedly, the argument isn't very strong (the grid may be dirty, but it's not _that_ dirty); but it's interesting and strange that it can be made at all.
Still, at least India has a rocket going to Mars even if its children don't have toilets and clean water.
Of all the (many, many) things that are worth criticizing about Hillary, I'm not sure this is one of them.
Fallacy of Relative Privation?
Let me put this into perspective for you, even distributing 1 billion dollars to its citizens barely makes each person richer by only a dollar!
I'm sure spending $1bn on clean water and sewage in the some of the most populous cities on earth would be equally pointless.
These arguments are the worst as it conveniently misses the mark of the real world conditions. Yes India did spent on the Mars mission (a whopping $74mil) and in turn it actually got contracts to do launches for other countries and private corporations. So all in all a positive return on Investment. You see you start with $X and you make $X*2 which would now serve your purpose better than it would have before.
Well on the bright side atleast you dint say lets decommission the NASA until we solve the problem of homelessness in US.