CFD analysis of a flat bottom institutional cookstove

Abstract

To study and analyze the performance of a Flat bottom Institutional Cookstove, a water boiling test experiment was used to test for the stove's power and efficiency followed by a computer modelling analysis with Computational Fluid Dynamics using ANSYS Fluent simulations. The computer model was validated using statistical evaluation with four metrics. A combination of absolute value error statistics, percent bias and normalized goodness-of-fit statistics were considered. The results obtained from the water temperatures for both the experimental and numerical simulations were analyzed. The power of the stove was 11.5 kW and the efficiency was 47.4 %. The mean absolute error (MAE) value was 5.55 °C, the Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) was 0.89, the Root Mean Square Error- (RMSE-) observations standard deviation ratio (RSR) value was 0.1097 and the percent bias was -3.7561. All the error validation values confirmed that the model and simulation performance were good. The model was used to improve design of the stove by introducing fins on the pot surface. The temperatures of the water of the new models showed an increase in temperature of 28% and 68% in Design A and Design B respectively over the original design. Thus, the ANSYS Fluent CFD simulation for the stove was well validated and can therefore be used as a complement to conventional methods of assessing and improving the Flat Bottom Institutional cook stove design.