4 ms·

Low Tech Magazine, one of my favorite sites online, has written a few articles on wood and biomass: - Well-Tended Fires Outperform Modern Cooking Stoves: https

• jeffbee 6y ago
  Low Tech Magazine is pretty much bullshit from cover to cover and these articles are great examples of the genre. Read the first one with a critical eye. It doesn't make any sense. It's just a deceptive argument constructed to make performative primitivism seem competitive with modern technology, which it isn't. An electric induction cooker is superior to any kind of fire, in all aspects and ways, by large margins in every direction.
  • rlonn 6y ago
    Try roasting marshmallows on your induction cooker.
    • FlyMoreRockets 6y ago
      Wouldn't a cast iron skillet on an induction cooker radiate enough heat to roast marshmallows?
    • jeffbee 6y ago
      I can easily heat a carbon steel crepe pan to red hot on an induction cooker. Roasting marshmallows is no problem. Is there anything else you haven't tried that you'd care to opine on?
  • jefft255 6y ago
    I agree that this article paints an unrealistic picture, and that broadly speaking an induction stove is "superior". But I disagree with "in all aspects and ways, by large margins in every direction". Cooking meat on a wood fire gives a very distinct char and flavor which I don't believe you can replicate perfectly on an induction stove. I personally love that taste.
  • 2Xheadpalm 6y ago
    'An electric induction cooker is superior to any kind of fire, in all aspects and ways, by large margins in every direction.' - except in running costs, I have no idea but assume they draw around 2000 watts for each plate. Alternatively, I can collect enough firewood in a few days of my spare time, I would have spent in the woods anyway, that will heat my modestly sized house cozily and cook all my meals for at least 6 months of the years in temperatures that can drop to as low as -40 Celsius for days at a time. All it cost me was a bit of sweat and hard yakka in the autumn.
  • petertodd 6y ago
    If you actually read the article you'll see that by "outperform" they're comparing the efficiency of a wood stove in converting biomass to useful heat, against the efficiency of a power plant and electric stove in converting fuel to useful heat. It's no surprise that a wood stove did better in that comparison. It's one conversion vs two. It's a perfectly reasonable comparison to make in many circumstances, eg in poorer countries with less well developed electricity infrastructure who still need to transition away from fossil fuels. From the article: > This means that if your electric stove is operated by electricity from a biomass power plant -- a fast growing "green" trend nowadays -- the power conversion efficiency is three to four times lower (11-14%) than the authors of the study assume, and thermal efficiency drops to about 5%. This is similar to the thermal efficiency of a neglected open fire, and one-tenth the thermal efficiency of a rocket stove. Likewise, a cookstove which uses coal or gas directly to heat food is much more energy efficient than a cookstove that runs on electricity produced by a coal or gas power plant. Re: air pollution, they're completely right to point out that cooking itself - regardless of the heat source used - generates tons of indoor air pollution anyway, making the air pollution concern of wood fired stoves not as clear as you'd expect. You should be ventilating all cooking to the outdoors. > Any biomass stove design with a chimney basically achieves the same. If a chimney is added to an indoor biomass stove, indoor air pollution drops to almost zero. They're also quite clear that these trade-offs differ for poor vs rich countries: > Although it's remarkable how the proposed solutions for this energy inefficiency differ for poor and rich countries. In the developing world, the focus is mainly on designing more efficient biomass stoves that produce fewer pollutants. While achieved savings as a result of switching to biogas would be larger, its investment would be 30 times higher compared to the distribution of improved wood cooking stoves.
    • jeffbee 6y ago
      I did read the article and it is intentionally misleading. They count the loss of heat radiated away from the cooking vessel against the efficiency of an induction cooker, but don't mention (or perhaps don't know) that because of the nature of induction heating you can actually use insulated pots with them. You can wrap a pot in your sweater if you want, because there's no open flame.