Additional

I previously wrote about my disappointment in the solar cooker challenge to store energy at night to help deforestation in Rajistan, India.

I'd like to add some additional thoughts to that.

Looking at the photos  that were part of the E4C challenge, there are two photos of people cooking. It seems that they cook on what I would describe as an “half-open barbecue pit”. It appears to be about a foot square, and have about 8 inches of room for the fuel. Iron griddles and large earthen pots are propped up on the bricks directly over the flames. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/44221799@N08/6768398249/in/set-72157629047928423)

Following Kent Beck's motto “Do the simplest thing that could possibly work” it seems that trying to address this with a solar cooker is a mistake. What these people need is simple a wood-burning stove. I do not mean a large free-standingstove, but more like a camp-stove. On YouTube you can find plenty of videos about two stove technologies, the “rocket stove”  and the “gasifier” . I suspect both of these approaches, or perhaps extant stoves, would use the fuel twice as efficiently. This is the simplest way to decrease deforestation: give these people stoves.

Why was this not part of the solution? For two reasons. First, it isn't fun to try to raise $100,000,000 dollars to buy a lot of existing technology. That is not a problem that appeals to engineers like myself. However, we can't let this blind us to the truth: sometimes the best way to help people and improve the world is NOT to invent something, it is just to share more.

Secondly, it is embarrassing to say to poor people “You are harming the earth (though much less than I, who flew here in a jet), so please take this stove and burn less wood.” Worse, it is a violation of their free will, but not even in a way that aligns with any social compact. I don't mind if mankind chooses to tax carbon, and makes even the very poor pay the tax, as long as the rich must also pay the tax.

But I do not want to give a $200 iron stove to someone who might say to me “Thanks, but I don't want a stove, at least not know. You see, what I really want is to send my daughter to school, so I will sell this stove and pay for her to go to school for 2 years.” I think the poor people should just be given money, and allowed the freedom to decide what to do with it.

I am in inventor. I have always been an inventor. I knew when I was very young boy that is what I am supposed to be. If you like, you can say that is what God put me on Earth to do. (Granted, I am not a good one---I haven't invented much---but, obviously, I'm working on it.) If I spent my time raising money for poor people, I would not be a happy or fulfilled.

Therefore I am sticking to my original idea for a solar cooker to be used by people that I know and understand, here close to home, where I have some hope of success. Building a solar barbecue grill for use in Austin, Texas, is perhaps too humble a project but if successful it will improve the world, at least a little.

“Think globally, Act locally.” – Buckminster Fuller.

Some friends recently pointed me to slashdot article about a challenge on Engineering for Change.

https://www.engineeringforchange.org/workspace/view/22/1#tabs=/workspace/activities/22/1.

I was delighted to find E4C, as it is very similar to what I want to do with the organization I am trying to start, Public Invention for All Mankind (PIFAM). I have now joined E4C. Following Buckminster Fuller's dictum of non-competition, I would certainly prefer my energy to strengthen E4C than to run PIFAM just for the purpose of self-aggrandizement.

However, after some time reading on the site, I think it may be too soon to assert that PIFAM is completely irrelevant. The recent solar cooker idea that I proposed demonstrates some differences with E4C. Firstly, that particularidea, of placing a cooker in a public park in Austin, Texas, doesn't really help anyone in the third world, or even the part of the third world that we have here in the back-alleys of America. Secondly, I don't want to design for a low-cost solution, I want to design for an effective solution. Although I applaud E4C's design principles, there is room for projects that don't follow them. If we can successfully construct the public park solar cooker, we will not have achieved the benefit that E4C aims for of changing the whole world, but surely we will have made the world a better place. As Buckminster Fuller said, “Think Globally, Act Locally.”

I want to be perfectly clear that I applaud the challenge that was proposed and all the attempted solutions. Good work, engineers! However, I'd like to express some critical thoughts---but a critique rather than a criticism.

The challenge was carefully crafted to make cooking work for the people in India, without asking them to change their habits. This is great. Often I find myself playing what I call the “'Fonly” game. 'Fonly those people in India would learn to cook in the middle of the day! 'Fonly Americans would start riding their bikes to work! 'Fonly people would invest the 100 hours it takes to learn Esperanto! There are worse games in the world---cockfighting comes to mind---but the 'Fonly game doesn't lead anywhere.

However, I just don't believe this particular challenge is really possible. (I've looked over about half the 10 papers that were selected as solutions to the challenge.) I think, and many of the papers point out, that sensible heat is just too hard to store for a long time for one to be able to collect heat energy at noon and then cook in the morning with it. Some of the papers use either a battery or, somewhat exotically, molten salt, to store energy. But this seems to be counter-productive to me. If I am going to pay the price of converting sunlight to electricity (by which I mean both the cost of the photovoltaic arrays and the fact that only 10% of the energy will be converted), then I have simply created an electrified village. The idea of using a phase change material for storing heat could work---but the particular design seems so complex that again it would be easier to just electrify the village, or put the same resources into something else.

I have read some of these papers, particularly the one for University of Iowa. I would like to suggest a different approach, although I don't want to take anything away from those students. I wish I could have been on their team. They were constrained by the fact that they were working within a semester. However, reading their paper, I think they did too much design, and not enough building. Since I wasn't there, I can't really be sure what they did or why they chose to do it, but I'd like to describe the approach that I would take---and will take, on my own solar cooker project, if I can get anyone to join me. A lot of this design methodology I owe to Kent Beck and the other creators of the Agile software design methodology, which I personally believe can be applied to physical inventions as well.

• Nobody is likely to change the world in one semester. We have have to think in terms of multi-year projects.
• You go fast by taking small steps as rapidly as you can. No “Big Design Up Front”. If we are honest, none of us are likely to succeed in a challenge like this based on a single design. If you are skeptical of this, read the history of the Wright brothers and note all the baby steps they took before the Wright Flyer flew on its own power. It is an inspiring testament not to brilliance, but to persistence.
• You cycle from theory to test to theory to test as quickly as you can. The Iowa team does not appear to have done this---their paper makes no mention of intermediate results. For that matter, it makes no mention of final results either. I suspect their device simply doesn't even come close to satisfying the challenge---I hope I am proved wrong by them soon.
• You don't invest in building a giant collector when you can test a design be building a tiny collector.
• In the case of the system, they had independently tested systems, and they modeled them theoretically, but made no mention of an attempt to test them. For example, they do not mention testing there heat-storage system independently of a the solar collector. But surely this could have been done by just putting a heater inside the system, raising the temperature to an expected level, and seeing how hot it was hours later.

What does this mean for Project Idea #5, the Public Park solar cooker? Here is what I want to do. (Please, somebody, join me!)

• I will build a miniature model of the Compound parabolic collector with cardboard and aluminum foil. We will test the ability of this to collect light by direct measurement of both light and heat at the exit pupil. If we can't build a tiny CPC that will get an insulated box up to 500 degrees (F), then we should abandon the project. First you melt chocolate. Then you melt cheese. Then you toast bread. Then you cook an egg. If we can't make a little thing that will cook a thimble full of egg-white, we have no business building a big collector.
• If we can past that test, we can build a big collector out of sheet aluminum and rivets and test that.
• If that seems to work well, we will first build a properly scaled non-functional insulated box with a glass window and see that we can make it hot enough. If we can't do that, we need not waste time designing a convenient cooking surface.
• If we get past those steps, including an evaluation of how hard or easy it is to manage aiming it at the sun, we can design the insulated cooking chamber in miniature. If that seems to function, we can build a life-size model.
• We can then build the mounting post, spindles and counter-weights needed to make it truly function at a convenient cooking height.
• Then we get other people to test it and carefully note the problems and successes they have. We make improvements based on this information.
• We then test it in a real-world setting. This means we fill it up with pigeon crap and see how that affects it. We drop leaves in it and see if there is a danger of spontaneous ignition. We figure out if there is any way someone could be blinded by it or burned by it.

I'm forced to write this in a linear fashion---but it isn't really a linear approach. It's more a loop, or a helix: one step on the drawing boards, one step in a real world test, and repeat. Hopefully real progress is constantly being made, but APPARENT progress comes in fits and starts as you complete a test.

Most importantly, we do this PUBLICLY. That is why I call this “public invention”. That means that we post copiously, richly, voluminously. That means we publish our failures. We publish every step along the way---even when this exposes us to embarrassment and the possibility of ridicule.

As of right now, this blog has a tiny number of readers---three, on a good day. But I am trying to put the energy into these posts as if was widely-read, in hopes that content will eventually lead to readers. Please, if you have a related blog or some other venue, help me publicize this blog.

However, I soon hope to begin trying to recruit people here in Austin to help me directly---I don't intend this blog to be my only approach to getting PIFAM started---but it, and other web-related materials, will remain very important.

Project Idea #5: A Sturdy Solar Cooker for Public Use

There is a rich technology of solar cooking. I don't claim to be an expert on it, however my basic opinion is that it works, but is inconvenient.

I would like to try to change that by presenting a specific challenge. Here in Austin, Texas, we have recently been a severe drought so severe that charcoal fires in public parks have been disallowed due to fire hazard. In Austin's large central park, Zilker Park, there are normally large groups and families picnicing, complete with grilling hotdogs, fajitas, and, of course, veggie burgers.  The same outings are happening now without the grilling.

I would like to try to build a sturdy solar cooker that is so convenient that people would be just as happy to use it as a charcoal grill. This is, I think, quite a challenge. In general solar cooking requires a lot of attention, adjustment, waiting, and modifications of cooking practices. For example, when I was working with some wonderful people who were trying to do it in the ramshackle colonias of South Texas, they had an oven that worked for cooking beans and other slow-cooked foods, but was not terribly convenient.

There is a good reason for not focusing on convenience; the people who have worked on solar cookers so far have been coming from two angles: how can we help the poor who can't afford fuel for cooking, and how can we help the backpacker who can't carry fuel for cooking?

These are both noble goals. However, I am proposing something slightly different: a luxury cooker, in which we do not worry about money or weight, but focus on convenience.

One might attack this project by saying “What is the point of having rich people cook with solar energy? They will burn more fossil fuel driving to the park than you could ever save cooking.” This is, of course, true enough. However, as Dave and Pearl, my friends who tried to work with the people in the colonias, it can be a powerful symbol to start with a luxury good, because people want to emulate it. Although PIFAM is trying to be altruistic, I hope we will not be slavishly so. I am sure that succeeding in the challenge will help the next project that aims for a low-cost cooker.

So here is the challenge:

Let's build an installed cooker at Zilker park (how we get permission to do this, I don't know---don't bother me with details!) that:

• lets you cook at the same working height as the existing charcoal grills,
• cooks 6 hot dogs at least as fast as a charcoal grill,
• is safer to cook on than a charcoal grill,
• is less likely to ignite a fire,
• is wind-proof and vandal-proof,
• is fun to use.

This will be a significant challenge, but that is what we are here for.

If I can get a serious volunteer to assist me with this project, I will fund the project it up to $20,000.

What I really want is a team of workers, perhaps with someone else ready to lead the project, although I will be available to lead it until someone else comes along who wants to take charge. I think it would be really fun to have a number of people working on this project. Here are the kinds of help we could use:

• A team leader (I am a professional manager, but will bow out as soon as someone steps up to this),
• A test-cook (Enthusiasm counts more than skill---we're talking hot-dogs here!)
• An artist/designer to make sure it is beautiful (my weakest skill).
• A CAD designer to help us make computer designers (I can do this, but am no expert.)
• A heat/optics/mechanical engineer to design the collector and do the calculations to assure that on a sunny day we can beat a charcoal grill in cooking time.
• A metal-worker/fabricator to help us build the thing (I am pretty good with aluminum and pop-rivets, but I don't know how to weld, for instance.)
• A secretary/web designer/writer/videographer to document our progress.
• An electronics/microcontroller expert to apply temperature sensors, timers, and perhaps other control mechanisms to make the cooker more convenient.

I can do all of the these things myself, if I have to, but I know from experience that is a lonely business, and I need other people to keep my motivation going, and to help me tell a crazy idea from a good one.

If you think this would be a fun project, please contact me at the email above (read.robert at gmail.com), and let's get to work!

Here is an initial design that I would like to work from, though of course the reader may be able to think of improvements and elaborations:

* * *

This is just a short addendum to explain my relevant experience to this project. About 8 years ago I worked with a group of Gifted and Talented kids at Zilker Elementary building box-style solar ovens. It was not very successful, in terms of cooking, but the kids had fun and some of the parents thought it was a good project. Just for fun I built a circular compound parabolic collector out of cardstock and silver paint, which concentrated light sufficiently to burn the skin of your hand.

I own a patent http://www.google.com/patents/US6966661 of my own invention related to solar energy collection (though not directly related to solar cookery), and in developing that invention I learned a great deal about solar energy that will be relevant to this project. For example, I understand Roland Winston's compound parabolic concentrator (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonimaging_optics#Compound_parabolic_concentrator) very well, and also understand the theoretical use of waveguides and fiber optics.

Basic physics of heat and energy do not elude me; I have a certain judgment about what will function and am capable of doing the math to work out the actual expected performance of a particular system, to a first order approximation (reality tends to be more complicated than theory, which is why engineering is interesting.)

I can build computer simulations of almost anything including a solar oven/cooker like I would like to build or that others may suggest. I have a PhD in Computer Science, and am a professional programmer including a solar oven/cooker like I would like to build or that others may suggest. I am pretty good at working with aluminum (due to my experience with the Mefluke, mentioned previously in the blog.)

I enjoy teamwork and cooperation, and motivating a team, although I don't claim to be a master of it.

Significantly, I'm willing to pay for whatever we need within reason.

Finally, I bring the most important and scarce resource to the table: energy and enthusiasm.