Cookstove testing protocols: a laboratory based comparative study of national and international testing methods
Student name: Ms Prachi Das
Guide: Dr Suresh Jain
Year of completion: 2013
Host Organisation: TERI University
Abstract: Food is the most essential part of human life and the main purpose of all human activities can be said
to be the procurement of food. And to prepare food, the two most important things are fuel and the
device. The traditional cookstoves, which use biomass as fuel, have been criticized over the years for
being highly polluting, very low on efficiency and taxing on the women folk as well as the natural
resource base. In view of these concerns, governments and special interest groups have endeavored
to promote improved cookstoves. Testing protocols have been developed side-by-side to assess the
‘improvement’, if any, in the new version of the cookstove as compared to the conventional models.
VITA was the first to come out with a cookstove testing protocol which was a simple test and which
simulated the common cooking cycles in basic two steps. This protocol, known as the WBT or the
Water Boiling Test, has been revised and updated several times by different organizations. Other
country-specific protocols were also developed around the same basic idea. One such protocol is the
Indian Standard on Solid Biomass-Chulha Specification, designed by the Bureau of Indian
Standards. Though both the Indian protocol and the WBT involve boiling and heating water, there
are several fundamental differences between them, which also affect the stove performance results
obtained from the two testing methods. Moreover, the BIS protocol was drafted in 1991 and has not
been updated even once till date and, in that time, a lot of new stove designs have been developed
and the understanding of stove dynamics has become more enhanced. Therefore, a series of tests
were conducted on two cookstoves using the two protocols to compare the performance by following
the protocols and by subjecting them to certain methodological variations. It was found that the two
protocols show variations in emission parameters. Methodological variations also induced changes
in emission performance of the cookstoves. Based on the results it can be concluded that the BIS
protocol cannot be successfully followed in the modern scenario. The need for a universal testing
standard has also been recognized by many stakeholders.
Keywords: Improved cookstoves, Improved cookstove programs, Cookstove
testing protocols, WBT.
