link to wilz place   Wood Gas Stoves

        Wood gas stoves are stoves that heat wood or other biofuel, and then burn the flammable gas that is released.  This essentially burns the smoke , resulting in a fire that is at once much cleaner and much more efficient than conventional wood  stoves.    This process transforms most of the fuel into charcoal,  which can then be burned as fuel at a later date or  incorporated into soil where it can greatly  increase fertility and sequester carbon for thousands of years.  Wood stoves have leapfrogged from being among the world's biggest ecological problems to being a very important part of the solution .   I've collected some resources to help people understand this process and the promise that it holds.
       
TLUD stands for Top Lit Up Draft and is an important term and concept for wood gas stoves.  This video silently explains the concept and application.  It's by Paul Anderson,  a retired geography professor who has worked a lot with stove designs for Africa.  Here is a link to his page on stove design.

Here is the description for this video:
"Top-Lit UpDraft (TLUD) stove designs use modern gasification technology in small containers for exceptionally clean burning of inexpensive or free chunky, dry, biomass fuels. This helps overcome the fourth worst health problem (respiratory diseases) in Least Developed Countries (LDC). "

 
Folke's Stove           To understand this process,  it helps to start with a simple model such as   Folke Günther's  simple charcoal retort.   On his site he shows how  h e fills the smaller can with wood blocks, then turns it upside down on top of a couple of bricks he has spread apart a bit, and then he  and then he turns the bigger can upside down over top of it.  Then he cleverly puts his hand underneath the wood and the other on  top of the big can and flips the whole arrangement.  He fills the gap between the cans with kindling , lights it from the top and leaves it for a while.  When he comes back the flame is no longer smoking as it is fueled by burning wood gas instead of wood,  and he gets a wok and cooks up a beautiful meal   right out of the garden that the whole operation takes place in.   After the fire cools,  he has a signifcant amount of biochar in the small can,  so the meal  carbon negative and he makes fertilizer in the process.  
         Here is his page on  Carbon dioxide negative cooking




This is a very good intro into the vast world of recycling various sizes of empty food cans into various sizez of stoves .  This guy has some other nice videos, and if you click on the up arrow at the bottom right  of the screen, then coose the lowest icon, a scrolling list of related videos comes up. Click on one and it opens here.  There are  forges, home heating stoves, cook stoves, and camp stoves made out of all manner of recycled containers.  

anila diagram

The anila stove was develped by Professor U.N. Ravikumar of Mysore university in Tamil Nadu which is being promoted in south Asia andAfrica by developmental agencies. This  site explaining the anila stove was done by our friend Folke Gunther from the previous panel,   for  a n organization addressing climate change in Africa.  The  page gives good instructions and detailed plans  for making the stove and explains the need that it fills.   Great site!  I think it's funny Folke used a decorated  christmans tree image to illustrate a tree,  given the context. 


This is Larry  Henson's  cool little pop up wood gas stove.   His description says:
 "Compact biomass cooking stove needs only 150 grams of wood to cook 1.1 kilo of rice. It is a natural draft clean burning design, easy to use and easy to build from 4 cans. Designed for people in developing regions and for camping, emergency, disaster and survival situations, also for outdoor, off-grid cooking and green living."
Check out his other videos.   In this one he uses a larger stove made from metal buckets rather than cans.  He uses 500 grams of wood cooks 7 liters of pintos for 3 hours......... Given the volatility of this meal when run through the average human's biodigester,   i question the carbon negative rating!


woodgas camp stove Dr Tom Reed, a professor of Chemical Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, has been working on wood gas stoves since a visit to Africa in 1985 when he discovered  that much of the third world cookied  on smoky, inefficient wood fires, often indoors.  The smoke caused many serious health problems and the inefficiency cased the over cutting of forest resources.  Dr Reed was a specialist in Wood Gasification, and realized his gasification knowledge might provide a solution to problems of developing world cooking.
            Over the years, he tinkered with various solutions, and by 2000 had built early prototypes of the WoodGas campstove.  His company, Biogas Energy Foundation, now sells two sizes of stoves starting at $55.  They use two AA batteries

Rocket+woodgas_Hybrid+Stove This is one of the many stoves designed and built by  Dr Sai Bhaskar Reddy Nakka.  Check out the  stoves and articles on his website. He is  founder of the Geoecology Energy Organisation (GEO) "An Initiative to Mitigate Climate Change  through  Adaptation. "  The GEO has projects throughout India promoting better stoves and biochar production. 
Notice the optional seconday woodgas frame at the top of the stove.  With this added it burns the smoke and woodgas.  Without it,  it is a rocket stove.