CFD study of an improved biomass cookstove with reduced emission and improved heat transfer characteristics

In this paper, in an effort towards reducing indoor air pollution (IAP) exposure for cookstove users, an improved biomass cookstove has been proposed. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) combustion study has been carried out for the proposed cookstove to analyze the combustion and heat transfer behavior using ANSYS Fluent Simulation. The wood combustion phenomenon inside the stove is modelled as gaseous combustion of volatiles generated by pyrolysis. Temperature gradients, velocity profiles and combustion product concentrations are presented. Based on comparison of CFD predicted results with a popular commercial improved cook stove (ICS), it was concluded that the proposed cook stove yields reduced combustion product concentrations as well as faster cooking resulting in better energy efficiency and a health friendly cook stove.