Sustainable Energy Cookstove Producing Biochar: Modeling, Testing, and Design
I am looking for 1-3 students to join work on the modeling, design, and testing of cookstoves that use biomass fuel to produce both biochar and heat for cooking. In recent years, there has been much interest in designing improved cookstoves for use in developing countries. Improvements have focused on reducing harmful emissions and improving efficiency. We are working on a different type of cookstove, which produces both heat and biochar. Biochar is a carbon-rich residue of combustion, similar to charcoal, that has been shown to have beneficial effects on soil fertility. Biochar in the soil also sequesters carbon, thus potentially serving as a net sink for CO2. We use numerical modeling to optimize the stove geometry for heat transfer and fluid flow. We must also consider factors that make the stove convenient to use, safe, and economical. For instance, we ask questions like: How easy is it to load the fuel into the stove? Can the heat output be varied for different cooking tasks? Can we guard against dangerous pyrolysis products? How can the stove be manufactured in Kenya?
The project is part of a large project based in Soil and Crop Sciences and involving collaborators at other universities and abroad. Our prototype stove has recently being tested in 30 households in Kenya, including air pollution measurements by collaborators from UC. While these tests go on, we have several related activities: 1) Analyzing patterns of cookstove use based on surveys and temperature monitors, 2) performing lab measurements of how cookstove emissions depend on fuel type. 3) adapting our current design drawings so that they can be fabricated more easily and more inexpensively. 4) improving numerical models of the complex heat transfer, chemical reactions, and fluid flow in the stove for further improvements in performance.
Students with an interest in numerical modeling with commercial software can contribute, as can people who are interesting in designing, instrumenting, and testing a prototype cookstove. There are interactions with faculty, students and staff in MAE and in Soil Sciences. I have a preference for students wishing to start a 2-semester project. Work on the cookstove project can be used for M. Eng. or senior design credit, or can be taken as independent study (MAE 4900).
DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS: familiarity with heat transfer, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, and basic chemistry. Desirable, but not necessary: experience with FLUENT, CFX, or COMSOL software, hands-on lab work, coursework in combustion or numerical modeling, fabrication skills, knowledge of Labview and Matlab.
FOR MORE INFORMATION: e-mail Prof. Elizabeth Fisher, emf4@cornell.edu, 289 Grumman, 5-8309