Effect of air intake and exhaust system on the performance of a biomass cook stove

Abstract

The aims of this project include the design and evaluation of biomass cook stove capable of improving the combustion processes in traditional stove designs. This includes improvement concepts of the design, construction and evaluation of the cook stove. The chimney height and the opening of the air intake port of traditional stoves was identified as the cause of combustion inefficiencies and major health concern and became the focus of the project. Previous studies of Stone and Shelton (2007) mostly dealt with different chimney height. Therefore, present thesis aims to focus following unexplored but important points concerning both chimney height and air intake port opening to evaluate their effect on biomass cook stove. In addition, the designs will focus on improving the fuel efficiency, thermal efficiency and the health issues. This will be approached in the following ways:

To accomplish the goals, at first, an improved cook stove is constructed based on the design from the literature. Secondly, chimney height and percentage opening of the air intake port had varied to assess and compare indicators of improved stove performance. Next, an experimental set up is constructed to evaluate biomass cook stove of different chimney height and percentage opening of the air intake port. Experimental observations are explained in terms of mathematical predictions. Finally, all the values of experimental data and calculated data of the biomass cook stove is compared in order to observe the effect of different chimney height and percentage opening of the air intake port.

The experimental procedure developed to evaluate the behavior of biomass cook stove with the chimney have been achieved a fairly good process. Specific fuel consumption, fuel burn rate, fire power and thermal efficiency values obtained through the experimental test results are useful for selecting the effective height of the chimney and percentage opening of the air intake port on the biomass cook stove.The developed biomass cook stove can be implemented to optimize the performance of the cook stove and reduce the amount of harmful emissions. So this study may be of great use to optimize cook stoves performance. The results of the research can be used to modify the intake and exhaust port size to optimize the performance of the existing cook stove.