Micro-gasification: Cooking with gas from biomass - Amper

Micro-gasification: Cooking with gas from dry biomass
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 use 10
A single cook-stove design would be bad genetics 11
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
10 Dean Still in http://www.charcoalproject.org/2010/06/to-achieve-cook-stove-scale-we-need-standards/
11 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
HERA – GIZ Manual Micro-gasification Version 1.01 January 2011
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