Dissertation
GASIFICATION AND COMBUSTION STUDIES IN TOP LIT UPDRAFT GASIFIER COOKSTOVE
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
01/2018
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/112180
Abstract
Around half of the world’s population still rely on solid biomass for the cooking. Poor operation of biomass cookstoves lead to 2 million premature deaths each year due to indoor pollution. In addition to the human loss, this inefficiency has taken a great toll on the environment in form of deforestation for the fuel needs and the release of black carbon to the atmosphere. The top lit updraft gasifier (TLUD) cookstove has emerged as the leading candidate in the field of improved cookstoves. To understand the science of operation of improved cookstoves, the present work aims to analyze the gasification and combustion in these devices. The work is divided in two categories. The first part is devoted to the gasification process and understanding the effects of primary air on TLUD operation. The influence of combustion chamber geometry was also studied. The second part focused on combustion and the role of secondary air. The secondary air was characterized in terms of volumetric airflow, ratio of secondary to primary airflow and the
jet velocity. To understand jets in crossflow, experiments were conducted to understand the temperature and gas distribution in the combustion zone. The studies provided valuable insights on the operation of forced TLUD stove.
The results show that primary air is most dominant in the gasification process. The effectiveness of TLUD was found to be maximum for the lower primary air. In addition to the primary air, the secondary air does have a significant impact in the operation. The use of secondary air results in high power and combustion efficiency as high as 99% and significant decrease in CO emissions. The results of jet velocities show that high velocity secondary air jets impinge at the center of the combustion chamber and the resulting radial jets influence the fuel bed and consequently increase in the gasification rate was observed.
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Details
- Title
- GASIFICATION AND COMBUSTION STUDIES IN TOP LIT UPDRAFT GASIFIER COOKSTOVE
- Creators
- Yogesh Mehta
- Contributors
- Cecilia D. Richards (Advisor)Robert F. Richards (Committee Member)Prashanta Dutta (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 151
- Identifiers
- 99900581421101842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation