The Summer Stove Camp will take place July 22 – 26, 2013 at the Aprovecho Research Center’s four-acre campus in Cottage Grove, Oregon. If you are able to fly to Eugene, we’ll pick you up.

Co-hosts are InStove, Dr TLUD (Paul S. Anderson, PhD), and Aprovecho Research Center.

For local info and reservations, please contact Mike Hatfield by telephone (541-767-0287) or at his email address: apromike@gmail.com

This summer’s stove camp will focus on the design and delivery of stoves that meet the IWA standards being established with help from the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. We will be testing stoves featuring institutional, TLUD, fan stoves, etc. and gaining hands on experience with the various tiers of performance. We will explore the holistic considerations for producers interested in building/selling health protecting stoves.

The InStove team will demonstrate their (Stove-Factory-in-a-Box) production methodology, and conduct workshops on adapting this “flatpack” method for local manufacturing of institutional and household stoves. InStove will lead workshops on improving stove safety, briquette making presses, autoclaves for hospitals, and water purification systems.

Dr. Paul Anderson (Dr TLUD) will host intensive seminars on TLUD (Top-Lit Up-Draft) stoves and demonstrate the state of the art of this clean cooking technology. TLUDs are recording some impressive results in the stove world. Come and learn how to make great TLUDs. Make some bio-char!

The team from Aprovecho will lead the emissions and fuel use testing with lots of opportunities for stove developers to conduct emissions testing “under the hood,” in the test kitchen, and in simulated field conditions. ARC staff will show how they tune stoves to make less CO and PM and use less fuel.

The week-long Summer Stove Camp 2013 costs $300 which includes camping on our lovely campus. Walk to nearby restaurants or cook using various improved stoves. Two parties with music under the stars and fancy donuts and coffee are included. The Aprovecho band CoGro will rock the evening.

Win the $500 best TLUD prize (most votes from participants)! Let’s make Dr. Kirk Smith happy and create super clean $5 stoves.

• Charcoal to extinguish hot charcoal:
  When dealing with small amounts of hot charcoal as in the residential TLUD stoves, one easy way to extinguish hot charcoal is to dump it into a somewhat larger amount of already extinguished (cold) char. The cold char takes up much of the heat, extinguishing the hot char. Be sure that it is well mixed and sufficiently cooled to avoid re-ignition. This is best done in containers that can be sealed. Containers of metal or ceramic are best, but even wood could be used if the quantity of cold char is sufficient to prevent the hot char from reaching the sides. As always, be careful because oxygen to a small hot ember can lead to much greater combustion.
• “Space fillers” in loose fuels in TLUD devices:
  General note about fuel in TLUDs: In general, dry biomass fuels in TLUDs need to appropriately fill most of the air-space in the fuel chamber. This is accomplished with smallish pieces such as wood chips, pellets, short-cut twigs, and shells of seeds. Also, careful packing with vertical wood-segments or straight-ish reeds can occupy the space. But twisted sticks and long-ish pieces that bridge inside the fuel chamber leave too much space unoccupied. In those cases, the space can be appropriately occupied by adding small pieces, as named above. Shake the TLUD to assure that the pieces have settled in well, and add more as needed. These fillers will also pyrolyze and become charcoal.

  Inert materials as “space fillers”: Technically, the space fillers could be inert materials such as ball bearings or pebbles (of rock that will not shatter with this heat) or fired clay balls. Although they could function effectively, they would require separation after the batch is unloaded and cooled. But there is one material that solves these inconveniences and costs. It is charcoal.

  Charcoal as a space filler: TLUD stoves make charcoal. Therefore, charcoal is not a fuel for TLUD stoves. However, small pieces of charcoal (but not charcoal fines) can also be used as “space fillers” to solve the need to restrict air flow in the fuel chamber. The char will not pyrolyze and will not burn (char-gasify or oxidize) as the pyrolysis front moves downward through that biomass fuel.

  a. Char is abundant for TLUD users, and at no additional cost, and is not consumed.

  b. Unlike small pieces of biomass as fillers, char pieces cannot catch on fire and then fall down to the lower areas of the fuel chamber and igniting fire there.

  Charcoal as a reducer of thermal output: Clearly in the above statements when charcoal is used as a space filler, the fuel chamber contains less biomass and therefore less heat will be generated (which is desirable for simmering and some other cooking needs).

  Another variation is to have well packed (mainly straight) wood or reeds or stems as a vertical bundle in the middle of a TLUD fuel chamber. Then load in small charcoal all around the bundle to fill in the remaining space. When used (pyrolyzed), the fuel will yield heat in proportion to its cross-sectional area of the fuel bundle, not of the entire cross-sectional area of the fuel cylinder. This is because the annulus of char is essentially non-combustible at the pyrolytic temperatures in the TLUD reactor.

  Variations of all of the above need to be tested and even measured. (This will be utilized at the Stove Camp at Aprovecho 22 – 26 July 2013).

  Note: Credit for much of the above goes to Dr. Jack Bacon, a senior scientist at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX. Jack, a leader in the local chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB-JSC), suggested charcoal as fillers during discussions in April 2013 with Paul Anderson about an EWB project to use TLUDs for heat in a fruit dryer in Rwanda.

PDF Document: GIZ HERA Cooking Energy Compendium Brochure

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[1] Dr TLUD is a trademark (TM) of Paul S. Anderson, with all rights reserved. The trademark is written with or without one blank space between its two terms, Dr (with no punctuating period) and TLUD. The standalone term, TLUD, is an acronym in the public domain which refers to Top-Lit UpDraft (a technology and a stove type).

Upcoming Schedule for Dr TLUD

11-13 April 2013
Engineers Without Borders at NASA (Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas)

25 April 2013
University of Dayton, Ohio

9-29 May 2013
Kampala, Uganda (Africa)

14-18 May 2013
Lusaka and Livingston, Zambia (Africa)

30 May 2013 – 16 June 2013
Normal, Illinois (Home Base)

14 June 2013
Midwest Biochar Meeting (Champaign, Illinois)

17 June 2013 – 10 July 2013
Kampala, Uganda (Africa)
Includes 2-3 day Dr TLUD Workshop in Kampala
Possible Trip to Rwanda (no dates yet)

18-31 July 2013
Drive to Aprovecho Research Center in Cottage Grove, Oregon
Stove Camp at Aprovecho is 22-26 July 2013
(Includes 2-3 day Dr TLUD Workshop)

1-30 August 2013
Normal, Illinois (Home Base)

31 August 2013 – 4 September 2013
Biochar Stove Camp at The Farm in Summertown, Tennessee
(Includes 2-3 day Dr TLUD Workshop)

5 September 2013 – 10 October 2013
Normal, Illinois (Home Base)

11-19 October 2013
Drive to Amherst, Massachusetts for North America Biochar Conference (13-16 October 2013)
Possible 2-3 day Dr TLUD Workshop (17-18 October 2013)

Labor Day Weekend
30 August – 03 September 2013
with Dr. Paul S. Anderson (Dr TLUD), Eng. Bob Fairchild, Albert Bates, Eng. Frank Michael and others

For the second consecutive year, The Farm will be hosting a Biochar/Gasifier Stove Camp during the Labor Day weekend.

The five-day Camp features hands-on experience plus theory & instruction on gasifiers of numerous types, but focusing on pyrolytic top-lit updraft (TLUD) technology for cookstoves (and larger devices for thermal energy and biochar CHAB). Each Camp is a structured learning experience, where the technical foundation, practical skills and fabrication methods of constructing biomass-fueled devices are taught and put into practice with hands-on efforts by the participants.

The Farm’s Stove Camp starts with a social gathering Friday evening, followed by three days of structured learning, building, and burning. Typical days are divided between discussing combustion concepts, learning fabrication techniques while building small prototype devices that demonstrate the concepts, and operating the devices on both supplied and locally available fuels. Evenings are either social gatherings (including one meal prepared on the stoves) or additional time to fabricate and operate biomass-burning devices, collaborating in small groups of 2 to 5, and learning from insights and experiences of fellow participants. The final two days feature focused applications of the acquired skills to individual circumstances dictated by personal interests, unique fuels or culturally specific opportunities (determined based on participant interests for each camp). The instructors work in conjunction with small groups of “makers and testers”, with supplies available to prototype concepts and verify designs.

Workshop topics include:

• Theory and Practice of Biomass Gasification: TLUDs, Retorts and Gasifiers
• TLUD Micro-Gasification: Cooking with gas from biomass
• Running a GEK: using gasification vapors and modifications for making biochar
• Joy To The World 5-gal TLUDs to Jolly Rogers 55 gal TLUDs and retort combinations for biochar production
• CHAB Devices: Heat, Heat Transfer, and Heat Exchangers; Capturing and using heat from batch and continuous TLUDs
• Dealing with special fuels such a Jatropha seeds, rice husks, leaves and briquettes

In 2011 stove camps were located in Australia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Honduras and Uganda, and in 2012, camps were offered in Massachusetts, Tennessee, Honduras and Kenya. Each Stove Camp has sufficient differences and updates to merit repeat attendance. Camp sizes are limited to 15 to 30 participants (subject to change in special circumstances).

Tuition does not include transportation, lodging, and most meals, but a lodging and meal plan is provided by Youre Inn at The Farm. An airport shuttle may also be possible.

Reservations and pre-payments of tuition are appreciated to assist efficient running of the Camp. For those who desire, tent & RV camping is available, without RV hook ups but both with showers and toilets.

Each participant will have ample time to pursue specific interests, including the making or use of stoves and CHAB devices for specific purposes, such as: residential cookstoves, including the combustion device and the stove structure; Institutional cookstoves, in 55-gallon drums or in alternative structures; the Chip Energy Biomass Furnace (200,000 Btu/hr plus biochar) and the Biomass Grill/Stove; we expect to have some 50 samples of fuels, ranging from llama dung to briquettes, chips, pellets and Jatropha seeds. Well-dried fuel will be supplied at no charge.

For more information and complete details about registration, costs, lodging, and meals, please visit this link: http://www.thefarm.org/etc/stovecamp/

• Part 1 of 3: Introducing TLUD Stoves For Use In Charbriquette Production Plants
• Part 2 of 3: Development Of Two Charring-Drying Modules Using TLUD Technology
• Part 3 of 3: Development Of Charbriquette Dryer Using TLUD Technology

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Challenges and Solutions about TLUD Stoves – 2012 to January 2013

PowerPoint Presentation: Empowering The Poor Through Small-Scale Gasification

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