The Potential of Charcoal Making Stove to Enhance Energy Efficiency

Copyright © 2014 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT: Wood and charcoal are the frontier energy sources in developing countries mainly for heating and cooking. However, the achievable efficiency of woodstove is limited due to the poor combustion characteristics of wood in its natural form; and production of charcoal on the other hand dissipates major portion of the primary energy on the kiln site as smoke. Hence, this paper assesses the likelihood of integrating charcoal making with cooking in a charcoal making stove to enhance energy efficiency by attaining better control over combustion and increasing energy availability for end use. The scenario was demonstrated by using a Top-Lit UpDraft natural draft (TLUD-ND) gasifier stove which employs flaming pyrolysis that generates and combusts wood-gas for cooking and then recovers charcoal as a byproduct. Through standard procedures of Water Boiling Test (WBT) and proximate analysis, the average values of cooking efficiency and energy recovery in charcoal were found to be 18.05±1.53 % and 31.75±2.40 % respectively. The results achieved were slightly higher than the algebraic sum of an independently operating woodstove and charcoal kiln, thus showing a potential of over 50 percent saving in fuel wood consumption. Furthermore, a loose (r 2 = 0.3098) relationship was observed between cooking efficiency and charcoa