Development, design and performance analysis of a forced draft clean combustion cookstove powered by a thermo electric generator with multi-utility options

About 2679 million people across the world are using biomass fuels to meet their energy requirement for cooking. Due to incomplete and poor combustion, these cookstoves are causing indoor pollution and perform at a poor efficiency. There is a need to develop efficient and affordable clean combustion cookstoves. Improved cookstoves working on the natural draft mode perform at a lower efficiency. The forced draft cookstoves work at higher efficiency with clean combustion, but requires power to operate a small blower. The forced draft cookstoves need a battery backup to provide continuous power supply to operate the blower. To overcome this problem, thermo electric generator (TEG) is considered to generate the required power for the fan. In the present study, design parameters of the TEG were optimized to maximize the power output. A forced draft cookstove powered by TEG was developed to provide clean combustion and higher efficiency. The performance of the TEG and the cookstove were analyzed. The power output of the TEG was 4.5 W at a temperature difference of 240 C. The TEG powered cookstove performed with an efficiency of 44%. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.