Turbo Stove Group – Winter 2012

Background:

In many parts of the world, finding sustainable sources of fuel to cook food and heat houses is a problem that is becoming increasingly serious. For example, in the last 80 years, Haiti has gone from having 60% of its land covered in forest down to only 2%. With environmental concerns like this in mind, the goal of our group was to build a stove that would efficiently burn agricultural waste that would otherwise be burned in the fields after harvest. Most specifically, we wanted to reengineer the Mayon Turbo Stove to create a stove that was easier to build and more efficient to operate.

What we did:

Over the course of 10 weeks, we researched combustion and stove construction, experimented with three different stove prototypes, and gained quite a bit of knowledge about what it takes to have a successful burn.

Our results are broken down into four different sections

1. Research
   This section contains notes from our discussion with Dr. Thatcher as well as all of the research we did leading up to our first stage of testing the turbo stove.

2. Testing Stage 1
   During our first stage of testing, we attempted burns in both the Mayon Turbo Stove and the newer prototype known as the Burninator. We found that the Mayon Turbo stove lit easily and burned pretty consistantly, while the Burninator struggled to light and would not stay lit once the rice husks were ignited.

3. Testing Stage 2
   Our objective during the second stage of testing was to take what we learned during the first stage and make modifications to the Burninator with the hopes of getting a successful burn. During our research and experimentation, we learned the importance of controlling airflow through the system so, with this in mind, we hoped to modify the Burninator in a way that would do a better job of channeling the flow of air through the fuel and out the stack in the chimney. In order to do this, we modified the inner cone on the upper stack to make the seal airtight and made adjustments to the feed and carburetor so that more fuel could be concentrated in one area.
4. Testing Stage 3
   In the third and final stage, we gathered our observations from our previous experiments and used what we had learned to design a new stove, completely from scratch.

• Final Presentation Powerpoint:
  Final Presentation.pptx

Other resources:

• Turbo Stove Group – Winter 2011
• Dr. Thatcher, Civil and Environmental Engineering – tthatche@calpoly.edu
  Her CP page

Group Members:

• Erika Union – Junior, Economics/Finance
• Mike Deagen – Senior, Materials Engineering
• Ali Brozek- Senior, Business Administration/Accounting
• Will Hitchcock – Senior, Graphic Communication