Development and Performance Evaluation of an Improved Thermal Performance Wood Stove using Skirt

The importance of heat energy source from wood to humanity cannot be over emphasised since many depend on it for their heating needs. In this work, a wood stove was designed, constructed and tested without a skirt and with a detachable skirt of height 120 mm (same height as the pot used for the experiment) to ascertain the influence of the skirt on the stove in terms of thermal performance in a water boiling test. Thermal efficiency and specific fuel consumption were evaluated. It was found that the stove tested without a skirt gave an average thermal efficiency of 31.33% and an average specific fuel consumption of 0.14 kg/l. When tested with a skirt, however, the stove gave an average thermal efficiency of 38.65% and an average specific fuel consumption of 0.09 kg/l. This signifies an improvement in thermal performance by the use of skirt on the stove designed. Keywords: Humanity, Globally, Detachable-skirt, Thermal performance, Wood stove