EXPERIMENTAL PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF CHARCOAL-STOVE

ABSTRACT

An experimental evaluation of the performance of a charcoal stove designed to reduce human labour and health hazards associated with frying in open fire was carried out.  The channel- type metallic stove was lagged with 2.54 mm thick glass wool.  The charcoal grate is 160 mm from the floor and has 44 holes of 12 mm diameter each to serve as air holes and provide passage for ashes, drilled in it.  The charcoal bed is 230 mm from the bottom of the pot and the channel gap is 8mm.  A 300 mm high chimney of diameter 50 mm to enhance draft was incorporated.  The stove has an internal diameter of 417 mm and a height of 460 mm. Water boiling tests were carried out in order to generate the data required for assessing the stove’s performance indices such as fire power, specific consumption and percent heat utilized. Evaluation of performance indices shows an average fuel firepower (f.p.) of 7.59 KW, an average specific fuel consumption (s.c.) of 0.11 Kg/kW hr, and an average percent heat utilized (p.h.u.) of 15% (or 15% thermal efficiency). The recorded experimental data shows that an average amount of 0.43 kg of charcoal would be required to be burnt for an average of twenty nine minutes to bring 3.6 kg of water to boil. The tests yielded an efficiency of 15%. Based on the results of the study, it can be seen that the performance of the charcoal stove is better than the traditional three-stone open fire reported to have efficiency of about 10%.