STUDY OF THE EFFECT OF MOISTURE CONTENT OF BIOMASS FUEL IN THE PERFORMANCE OF DIFFERENT TYPE OF COOKING STOVES

Abstract

Current attention to improved cook stoves (ICS) focuses on the “triple benefits” they provide, in improved health and time savings for households, in preservation of forests and associated ecosystem services, and in reducing emissions that contribute to global climate change. Despite the claimed economic benefits of such technologies, however, progress in achieving large-scale adoption and use has been remarkably slow. This paper shows a simulation analysis to evaluate the claim that households will always reap positive and large benefits from the use of such technologies. Our analysis allows for better understanding of the variability and benefits of ICS use in developing countries. This paper is an attempt to address such a need and endeavors to improve on the technological development of cook stoves. In our experimental program comparing the performance of a household traditional cook stove in Bangladesh with an improved cook stove, showed that the thermal efficiency is almost doubled which has been evaluated in this paper. The effect of moisture content of biomass fuel on the performance of both type-cooking stoves was also included in the evaluation.