Hi. Sorry if this has already posted, I did a quick search and did not see anything similar. There's been a stove comparison led by a guy of Johannesburgh university about paraffin stoves. It's targeted at low-income households, as in the south-african context paraffin is their number one fuel. http://ujdigispace.uj.ac.za:8080/dspace/handle/10210/2560 You'll find a Primus 1 and a Primus 5 in the lot, as well as a comparison with a few modern camping stoves. Efficiency comparisons with the camping stoves are stunning. The Omnifuel seems almost twice as efficient as an XGK with synthetic paraffin... I won't start any kind of rant hopefully, but I thought some of you may have been interested. Cheers ! Matt
I agree with Ross. I think alcohol stoves make a hell of a lot more sense than kero burners. Stoves like the CleanCook stove. Project Gaia seems to like them. Link Thanks for the link. Interesting. Cheers, Jeff
Jeff, you may be on to something. The study, in Chapter 3, quotes research by an individual by the name of Turan as follows: "the best of the alternative fuel types are the ethanol gel appliances for both cooking and heating." Apparently the preference for gel is that a) it is less likely to be confused with a beverage and b) that it will not flow when spilled. Interestingly, the study seems to be quoting our sponsor (Base Camp): "The paraffin (kerosene) pressure stove first appeared in 1892 when a Swede, Frans Willhelm Lindqvist, registered his 'Sootless Kerosene Stove'. The design burned paraffin gas which was vaporised from the liquid fuel in tubes forming the burner head. His design was so successful a company was formed to manufacture the stove, and 'Primus', Latin for 'first', appeared to the world. (Base Camp, 1999)." HJ
Yeah indeed I've taken too much of a shortcut in my introduction. Actually the study covers mostly locally produced paraffin stoves, and a few low-cost foreign stoves. Many of them wicking stoves, a few of them pressure stoves like the Primus 1 and 5. The reason for this being that it's actually what these guys use at home, paraffin is described as the main fuel for cooking and heating poor households. The modern camping stoves are addressed just for comparison purposes, and are a marginal topic in the study. Cheers, Matt
Hi Matt, Interesting. I've not had the opportunity to read the entire report, but a quick glance down the index shows that the Parasafe stove does not appear to have been included. This is curious as it was specifically designed for SA as one of it's primary markets very much with safety in mind. Cheers, Graham.
The results in the graph, original topic, are quite surprising. The efficiency ranges from 25% to over 90%. But what do they mean by efficiency? I know what it means to me, but how did they measure it? In chapter 5 of the article there is an explanation, and it is very odd. It appears to be a measure of how much water can be vaporized per unit of fuel consumed while running the stove at full blast. The water is first heated to boiling and then the test is performed. I am sure this is a valid measure for certain industrial uses, but I hardly think it is a relevant means to evaluate cooking stoves.
I wonder what the difference was between the first test and the second? The numbers seem quite a bit higher on the second. HJ
Any paraffin stove would be an improvement over what they use now to cook with and heat their dwellings. Which is whatever combustable material they can pick up. Bits of wood, old tires, plastic bags, dried dung. This is a recent photo of the air pollution in Pretoria, South Africa. The rural areas don't have the same air pollution issues but being able to afford a parrafin stove and the parrafin to run it would go a long way to improve the quality of life there.
Hi Hi Itchy. They use the word "efficiency" in the context of thermodynamics, where it always designates a ratio of energy output versus energy input. The idea behind efficiency here is to find a repeatable way to compare how well the chemical energy that's waiting in the fuel is transferred as heat by the burner and the rest of the system. It's to be taken as one of the properties of the stove, a raw physical figure. Obviously it is not enough by itself to qualify a stove, but it contributes to it, it's closely related to fuel consumption and to some extent to the quality of the combustion, and that's why I thought it was worth sharing this kind of comparison that is not that easily available elsewhere. The first test is on a low simmer, the second test is with the stove running on full power. If you talk about cars or planes for instance, every vehicle has a speed (under given circumstances) where its fuel efficiency is the highest (mileage/gallons). These stoves just appear to be more fuel efficient when the run on full power, which seems to be a decent design choice to me since their most demanding use is probably to melt snow in large quantities. The discussion you quote says . I do not know about the timeline of all these events, but the guy who wrote that report that I linked tells about such a stove design competition that was ongoing. I can only suppose that the Parasafe was released shortly after as a result of this competition. Cheers all Matt
