COMPARATIVE STUDY OF WOOD - BURNING STOVES OF DIFFERENT SKIRT HEIGHTS

Abstract

In Ethiopia a widespread degradation on the existing natural forest is causing an extensive demand for fuelwood. This study conducted a comparative analysis of between the fabrication skirt stoves with different skirts height including one conventional stove (Cs) then attempted finding out better cooking performance stove. The fabrication includes design, metal sheet, and welder to integrating the skirt stoves with skirts height 0, 4, 7, 10, 13 cm under the symbols of S1, S2, S3, S4, S5 in their increasing skirts height order of the same diameter and identical pots for all skirts. The demonstration of the fabrication skirt stoves tested in Haramaya university main campus. This research examined the stoves performance with regard to onset cooking time temperature (temperature =75 0C), maximum temperature, and effective cooking temperature time (temperature ≥ 75 0C) for each stove. Plots temperature versus time area for foods rice, stoves body and smoke outlets were made. Excel software for plotting the graphs and ANOVA software for pair comparisons tests showed for significance differences (at p = 0.05) between among different fabrication stoves including conventional stove were used to determine starting cooking time temperatures, maximum temperatures, and effective cooking time temperatures. The experimental testing, using rice food temperatures in the pots, body temperatures of the stoves, smoke outlet temperatures were used to identify the comprehensive performance of the stoves in terms of starting cooking temperatures, maximum temperatures, and effective cooking time temperatures. The higher skirts which were 10 and 13 cm skirt stoves (S4 and S5) made a significant performance in effective cooking time temperatures. On other hand, Cs (conventional stove) and S1 (zero skirt height stove) were better in starting cooking temperatures time and in maximum temperatures value, but they exhausted bigger temperatures through smoke outlets in cooking time.