Energy performance of biomass cookstoves using fuel briquettes

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn this study, the energy performance of an improved cookstove (ICS) is evaluated and compared with the performance of a charcoal stove and the three-stone fire using two biomass fuel – rice husk and sawdust briquettes. The performance of the cookstoves is evaluated based on the standard testing protocol of water boiling test in three phases – cold start, hot start and simmering. The energy performance of the cookstoves is compared using analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results of the study show that the ICS performed better in the cold and hot starts as opposed to the simmering phase. ANOVA shows that the thermal efficiency, firepower, specific fuel consumption, time to boil, burning rate and the turndown ratio of the three cookstoves are significantly different (p < 0.05) from one another for each of the fuel types. In the high power phase, the ICS offered superior energy performance over the two conventional cookstoves with the use of rice husk briquette as fuel. However, the performance of the ICS is low compared to that of the two conventional cookstoves in the simmering phase. The ICS offered better thermal efficiency over the traditional cookstoves and some other ICSs in the literatures.