Dear Alemayehu >Would tell me about Controlled Cooking Test (CCT) developed by JP-Morgan-Climate Care >which has got "Internationall acceptance as a standard technique."
Many claims are made about 'international acceptance'. As there is no mechanism for such acceptance, not body to approve it, it is unlikely that it is a 'standard technique. As most observers will know, there are so many problems associated with stove testing that we are still in the 'early days' of working out what to test for, how to express the result, and what the meaning of the result is. It is well and good for people to say 'this stove uses less fuel that that one'. Fine, but that is not really a 'test'. That is a comparison with validity in certain circumstances. These days people are asking for GHG emission comparisons. That means testing the particulates (black carbon and otherwise) plus CO and CO2. Stoves that use 'less fuel' do not necessarily produce a similar reduction in GHG's. Some reduce emissions spectacularly. Some increase the CO dramatically in an effort to get an increase in heat transfer efficiency with little net change. So as it is a 'ClimateCare' statement, perhaps it is focussed on GHG's which principally are reduced by increasing the heat transfer efficiency and to a lesser extent, by increasing the combustion efficiency. It is very likely that James Robinson (who reads this list) from the SeTAR Centre in Johannesburg can give you the contact address of someone at Climate Care dealing with this issue. James? It should be remembered that a reduction of CO2 emissions is often created when fuel is dried before use. Thus projects interested in CO2 often evaluate the 'intervention' not just the stove/device. This means anything that the project is doing in training and 'household management' is 'part of the intervention'. A stove may not by itself change things much if it is not operated properly. Look at an open fire: you can teach people to run much better open fires without changing the 'device' at all. Woodland dwelling natives in North America, and Boy Scouts, learned how to build smokeless fires so they could move around undetected. There are 'kitchen performance tests' but I feel they are not as representative of stove performance as an Uncontrolled Cooking Test (UCT). A UCT is a test by a number of householders who use the same device and fuel. The observers record everything they do and weigh everything they cook and the fuel consumed. The evaluation is principally the mass cooked (that went into any pot) divided by the amount of fuel used (corrected for charcoal remaining and its initial and final moisture content). This gives a 'specific food production' figure, meaning how much food is prepared per kg of fuel used, or per MJ. When you plot a chart of fuel used against meal mass (on the X axis) it is usually possible to see a trend line with increasing meal mass being more efficient (more meal per MJ, for example). The observer does not interfere in the cooking - only records what they do. As people cook a wide variety of meals this gives a performance review across a range of circumstances. We create a trendline and compare the trendlines for different stoves to see what the average saving is for average meals, or meals within a certain range. One could say that the rating of a stove is the formula for the trendline, but I think it is premature to do that. It is just that a reasonable prediction of performance in the field can be made from such a study. ProBEC did several like this in Mozambique in order to establish the fuel savings of some stoves. I believe Nathan at the University of Iowa is using a version of a UCT to determine emissions. Regards Crispin +++++++++++++++++ For me it is the first time to hear about it. Some one asked to conduct the CCT field test with it. Regards TUFA, ALEMAYEHU ZELEKE P.O.Box 21931code 1000 Addis Ababa Ethiopia Tel: +251 911 626207 (Mobile) _______________________________________________ Stoves mailing list [email protected] http://listserv.repp.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_listserv.repp.org http://stoves.bioenergylists.org http://info.bioenergylists.org
