Designing, Simulating and Manufacturing of Improved Charcoal Stove
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Date
2020-12
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Nearly 2.7 billion people in the world depend on biomass for cooking. Charcoal fuel is a solid
biomass fuel which is widely used in urban and semi-urban areas of Ethiopia. However, these
fuels are combusted inside thermally inefficient stoves. One solution to such problem could be
designing, manufacturing and disseminating improved stoves. Thus, this study aims at
designing, simulating and manufacturing an improved charcoal stove to maximize the thermal
performance. Designing the stove has been performed by solid work. Besides, simulation has
been performed by CFD module which is found in COMSOL Multiphysics software. This
module includes coupled sub models representing fluid flow and heat transfer. From the
simulation temperature distribution, velocity distribution and pressure distribution in the grate
holes and on the combustion chamber of the stove were analyzed. The simulation shows that
the increased temperature results in higher firepower, which leads to higher thermal
performance of the stove.
The prototype was tested using the Water Boiling Test (WBT) protocol. The simulation results
were compared and validated with experimental results. Based on simulation thermal
efficiency obtained was 34.7%. With regard to experimental investigation, the thermal
efficiency of the stove is 32.6% and its specific fuel consumption is 56 g of fuel/ liter of water.
The study showed an improvement in thermal performance of the charcoal stove. The specific
fuel consumption of the prototype charcoal stove shows 70% improvement compared to the
three-stone fire. Generally, the new prototype charcoal stove has better thermal performance
compared to the previous designs proposed by other researchers. Therefore, disseminating our
improved charcoal stove at a larger scale in Ethiopia will be beneficial in preservation of forests
and associated ecosystem services and will improve health for households.
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Keywords
Computational Fluid Dynamics, Charcoal stove, Water Boiling Test, Simulation, Improved cookstove, Design principle