“Ambitious student with strong work ethic who seeks opportunity to continue to self-challenge and learn and experi­ence more in the res­tau­rant industry.” So said the resume that Duncan McMil­lan (then a junior at Vashon High School) shared with me at our open house in April. Duncan volun­teered six hours a day for four days a week this summer and would do any­thing that needed doing. His first task was to cut fuel­wood for stove testing, using a table saw and chop saw. 

This summer, Duncan re­searched the effect of fuel size and fuel tending (push­ing in and adjust­ing the wood sticks in the fire) on cookstove per­for­mance. Most cook-stoves are developed and tested using fuel­wood of precise sizes. This is neces­sary for us to test the effects of stove ge­ometry. If the wood we use wasn’t consistent, we would not know whether dif­ferences in perfor­mance were due to changes in stove ge­om­etry or differences in wood from one test to the next. By using identical wood for all the tests, we can opti­mize the stove design.   

In the development process, we build stove prototypes and put them in people’s homes in the country of use. With this approach, we get feedback from prospective stove users (and buyers) about how suitable the stove is for local conditions. One big difference between the tech­nician oper­ating the stove in the lab and a woman using it in her home is that she has other things to do besides carefully tend the stove. As a result, the stove might be tended every minute in the laboratory, but only once every five or ten minutes in the home. Also, home cooks do not use perfectly uniform small sticks.   

The testing aimed to find out in the laboratory how the cookstove would perform when it’s tended at home. Surpris­ingly, this is ground-breaking work in stove research. Differ­ences between lab test results and in-home test results have been discussed for years, but very little has been done to examine the differences, in particu­lar fuel size and the frequency of fire-tending. 

Duncan’s research will help BDL to work more efficiently and will help the larger cookstove com­munity to better understand the difference be­tween laboratory and in-home stove performance. Pretty good for a high-school internship!