Micro-gasification: Cooking with gas from dry biomass
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This module gives an insight on existing and potential applications of micro-gasifier burner units in cook-stoves. Please remember, that a burner unit is not yet a ‗cook-stove‘. It is only the heat-generating core element of an appliance that can be used for cooking. There are some basic principles for stove designs that can be adapted to a variety of different user needs and fuel situations all over the world. Many leading personalities in the ‗stove development world‘ agree that as a consequence, these applications have to look different too: There is not one cook-stove-solution, there are many, depending on their use10 A single cook-stove design would be bad genetics11 One size fits some (not all). It is important to first identify groupings of users with similar cooking preferences, fuel, availability of electricity, etc., and to ...define a ―cook stove user space‖. 12 Micro-gasifier burner units are fuel-flexible heat generators and offer a wide variety of cleanburning fuel efficient applications to complement or substitute existing cook-stove-solutions for ‗conventional‘ wood fuels (such as ‗stick‘ firewood) or charcoal. In the following section existing and potential micro-gasifier applications are presented by categories according to their relevance for a project: 2.1.
Factory-finished gasifier stoves commercially available from a known address
2.1.1. Cook-stoves suitable for daily domestic cooking a) For chunky dry biomass fuels b) For rice husk fuel 2.1.2
Campstoves to start experimenting with biomass gasification
2.2.
Prototypes with certain field testing and potential for local adaptation and production
2.3.
‗Tincanium‘ and low-cost prototypes to demonstrate the principle and create awareness
2.4.
Other inspiring concepts with potential to develop further for specific applications
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Dean Still in http://www.charcoalproject.org/2010/06/to-achieve-cook-stove-scale-we-need-standards/ Nathaniel Mulcahy from WorldStove at the ETHOS conference 2009 in Kirkland, Washington State 12 Steven Garrett in the report to the US State Department on Next Generation Cook-stoves in November 2009, document under http://www.pciaonline.org/files/Cook-stoveResearchRoadMap.pdf 11
HERA – GIZ Manual Micro-gasification Version 1.0 January 2011