Improvements on thermal efficiency of a biomass stove for a steaming process in Thailand

A new steaming stove is designed and constructed to use biomass as fuel. The new design aims to increase the overall thermal efficiency over a conventional stove. The thermal efficiency of the stove is determined and compared with a conventional stove in the standard water-boiling test using Eucalyptus wood as fuel. The stove has a double-wall construction filling with rice husk ash as an insulator. The results show that the thermal efficiency of the conventional stove is 15.17% while the new stove's efficiency is 21.21%. The fuel consumption decreases by 15.20% (25.8 g/kg-product) equating to a fuel cost saving of $190/year. The total cost of the stove is $268 resulting in a payback period of 1.2 years. In addition, the saving of fuel would be equivalent to greenhouse gas emissions mitigation of 9.9 t CO2/year.