A stove or range is a device that generates heat inside or on top of the device, for local heating or cooking. Stoves can be powered with many fuels, such as electricity, natural gas, gasoline, wood, and coal.
Due to concerns about air pollution, efforts have been made to improve stove design. Pellet stoves are a type of clean-burning stove. Air-tight stoves are another type that burn the wood more completely and therefore, reduce the amount of the combustion by-products. Another method of reducing air pollution is through the addition of a device to clean the exhaust gas, for example, a filter or afterburner.
Research and development on safer and less emission releasing stoves is continuously evolving.
Pottery and other cooking vessels were later placed on open fire; eventually, setting the vessel on a support, such as a base of three stones, resulted in a stove. The three-stone stove is still widely used around the world. In some areas it developed into a U-shaped dried mud or brick enclosure with the opening in the front for fuel and air, sometimes with a second smaller hole at the rear.
In 1795, Count Rumford created a particularly popular version, featuring a single fire source, but allowing for the temperature to be adjusted independently for numerous pots at once, all while heating the space. Its main disadvantage was that it was too large for most residential kitchens. Isaac Orr of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, created the first circular Cast iron stoves with grates for cooking meals on them roughly five years later. The Potbelly stove traces its origins to the early 1800s, inspired by the Franklin stove developed twenty years prior. Jordan A. Mott designed the base-burning stove for burning Anthracite in 1833. In 1834, Philo Stewart created the Oberlin Stove, a small wood-burning cast-iron stove. It was a compact metal kitchen stove that was far more efficient than cooking in a fireplace due to its improved heating capacity and allowance for record cooking durations. It was a major commercial success because it could be formed into desired shapes and forms and could survive temperature fluctuations from hot to cold readily. These iron stoves evolved into specialized cooking machines with chimney flue pipes, oven openings, and water heating systems.
As central heating became the standard in the developed world, cooking transitioned to the primary function of stoves in the twentieth century. Iron cooking stoves that used wood, charcoal, or coal tended to radiate much heat, which made the kitchen unbearably hot in the summer. They were superseded in the twentieth century by steel Kitchen stove or ovens fueled by natural gas or electricity.
Modern implementation in the US dates from the early 1970s, with work done at the Research & Development Center of Westinghouse Electric Corporation at Churchill Borough, near Pittsburgh.W. C. Moreland, The Induction Range: Its Performance and Its Development Problems, IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, vol. TA-9, no. 1, January/February 1973 pages 81–86 That work was first put on public display at the 1971 National Association of Home Builders convention in Houston, Texas, as part of the Westinghouse Consumer Products Division display. The stand-alone single-burner range was named the Cool Top Induction Range. It used paralleled Delco Electronics transistors developed for automotive electronic ignition systems to drive the 25 kHz current.
Westinghouse decided to make a few hundred production units to develop the market. Those were named Cool Top 2 (CT2) Induction ranges. The development work was done at the same R&D location by a team led by Bill Moreland and Terry Malarkey. The ranges were priced at $1,500 ($8,260 in 2017 dollars), including a set of high quality cookware made of Quadraply, a new laminate of stainless steel, carbon steel, aluminum and another layer of stainless steel (outside to inside).
Production took place in 1973 through to 1975 and stopped, coincidentally, with the sale of Westinghouse Consumer Products Division to White Consolidated Industries Inc. Modern-day induction stoves are sold by many manufacturers, including General Electric, LG Corporation, Whirlpool Corporation, IKEA, and Samsung.
This is because coal stoves are fitted with a grate so allowing part of the combustion air to be admitted below the fire. The proportion of air admitted above/below the fire depends on the type of coal. Brown coal and lignites evolve more combustible gases than say anthracite and so need more air above the fire. The ratio of air above/below the fire must be carefully adjusted to enable complete combustion.For detailed description with drawings of various coal stoves for heating in general use in that era with methods of operation, see
Coal, particularly anthracite coal, became a popular option during the 1800s in the United States because it burned at a high heat while also producing little soot. By 1860, as much as 90% of United States homes used anthracite coal as a solution for the fuel crisis that the United States faced. One major issue with the use of coal burning stoves in the 1800s was limitations of storing the material over time. A division between the wealthy and poor in using coal stoves was that many poor families could not afford to store the volumes of coal needed to heat homes for long periods of time. Therefore, while wealthy families could store large amounts of coal in cellars, poorer families often had to purchase coal in smaller quantities. Therefore, difficulties surrounding the storage of coal helped push the use and development of gas stoves.
By enclosing the fire in a chamber and connecting it to a chimney, draft (draught) is generated pulling fresh air through the burning fuel. This causes the temperature of combustion to rise to a point () where efficient combustion is achieved, the enclosure allows the ingress of air to be regulated and losses by convection are almost eliminated. It also becomes possible, with ingenious design, to direct the flow of burned gasses inside the stove such that smoke particles are heated and destroyed.
Enclosing a fire also prevents air from being sucked from the room into the chimney. This can represent a significant loss of heat as an open fireplace can pull away many cubic meters of heated air per hour. Efficiency is generally regarded as the maximum heat output of a stove or fire, and is usually referred to by manufacturers as the difference between heat to the room and heat lost up the chimney.
An early improvement was the fire chamber: the fire was enclosed on three sides by masonry walls and covered by an iron plate. Only in 1735 did the first design that completely enclosed the fire appear: the Castrol stove of the French architect François de Cuvilliés was a masonry construction with several fireholes covered by perforated iron plates. It is also known as a stew stove. Near the end of the 18th century, the design was refined by hanging the pots in holes through the top iron plate, thus improving heat efficiency even more.
In 1743, Benjamin Franklin invented an Franklin stove with an attempt to improve the efficiency. It was still an open-faced fireplace, but improved on efficiency compared to old-fashioned fireplaces.
Some stoves use a catalytic converter, which causes combustion of the gas and smoke particles not previously burned. Other models use a design that includes firebox insulation, a large baffle to produce a longer, hotter gas flow path. Modern enclosed stoves are often built with a window to let out some light and to enable the user to view progress of the fire.
While enclosed stoves are typically more efficient and controllable than open fires, there are exceptions. The type of water-heating "back boiler" open fires commonly used in Ireland, for instance, can achieve more than 80% absolute efficiency.
Metal stoves came into general use in the 18th century. An early and famous example of a metal stove, the Franklin stove, was allegedly invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1742. It had a labyrinthine path for hot exhaust gases to escape, thus allowing heat to enter the room instead of going up the chimney. The Franklin stove, however, was designed for heating, not for cooking. Benjamin Thompson (1753-1814) at the turn to the 19th century was among the first to present a working metal kitchen stove. His Rumford fireplace of the 1790s used one fire to heat several pots that were also hung into holes so that they could be heated from the sides, too. It was even possible to regulate the heat individually for each hole. His stove was designed for large canteen or castle kitchens, though. It would take another 30 years before the technology had been refined and the size of the iron stove been reduced enough for domestic use. Philo Stewart's Oberlin stove was a much more compact, wood-burning cast-iron stove, patented in the United States in 1834. It became a huge commercial success, with some 90,000 units sold in the next 30 years. In Europe, similar designs also appeared in the 1830s. In the following years, these iron stoves evolved into specialised cooking-appliances with flue pipes connected to the chimney, oven holes, and installations for heating water. The originally open holes into which the pots were hung were now covered with concentric iron rings on which the pots were placed. Depending on the size of the pot or the heat needed, one could remove the inner rings.
Nepalese may cook on a chulo or clay oven.
Stove, Ethnographic Museum, Belgrade.jpg|Traditional clay stove from Serbia, in the Ethnographic Museum (Belgrade, Serbia)
Grosses Kabinett Keramikofen Neues Schloss Schleissheim-1.jpg|Baroque stove in the Neues Schloss Schleißheim (Germany)
Stove tile with personification of America, Southern Germany, 1650-1700, ceramic, polychrome glaze - Germanisches Nationalmuseum - Nuremberg, Germany - DSC03737.jpg|Stove tile with personification of America, from Southern Germany, –1700, ceramic and polychrome glaze, in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum (Nuremberg, Germany)
Catherine Palace heater.jpg|Tiled stove (for heating) in the dining room of the Catherine Palace (Saint Petersburg)
Poêle de la salle de bains de la Du Barry - DSC 0432.JPG|Rococo stove in the bathroom of Madame du Barry, in the Palace of Versailles (Versailles, France)
Schloss Wolfshagen Gartensaal Ofen.jpg|A fully neoclassicism glazed ceramic ofen (oven), early 19th century, at Schloss Wolfshagen (Prignitz, Brandenburg, Germany)
Ofen Museum Senftenberg.jpg|Neoclassical stove decorated with festoons, in the Schloss Senftenberg (Senftenberg, Germany)
AT-34724 Schloss Rosegg, Lukretia 045.jpg|Neoclassical stove in Schloss Rosegg (Rosegg, Austria)
DB Museum waiting room heating stove.jpg|Gothic Revival stove in the Nuremberg Transport Museum (Nuremberg, Germany)
Schloss Grafenegg - Kachelofen - 1.jpg|Renaissance Revival tiled stove in Schloss Grafenegg (Austria)
Kopřivnice, Šustalova vila, expozice (13).jpg|Renaissance Revival tiled stove in the Šustalova vila (Kopřivnice, Czech Republic)
Камін P1630140 Будинок на вулиці Дорошенка, 19 (Львів).jpg|A Rococo Revival glazed ceramic stove in Lviv (Ukraine)
Old Petersburg exposition 02.JPG|Art Nouveau stove tile, here in a Russian exhibition named «Old Petersburg»
File:The middle part of an Art Nouveau stove in the house with number 6, Strada Speranței, Bucharest (Romania).jpg|The middle part of an Art Nouveau stove in a middle-class city-house in Bucharest
Pellet stove are a type of biofuel stove. The shelled dry kernel of corn, also called a corn pellet, creates as much heat as a wood pellet, but generates more ash. "Corn pellet stoves and wood pellet stoves look the same from the outside. Since they are highly efficient, they don't need a chimney; instead, they can be vented outdoors by a four-inch (102 mm) pipe through an outside wall and so can be located in any room in the home."
A pellet stove is a type of clean-burning stove that uses small, biological fuel pellets which are renewable and very clean-burning. Home heating using a pellet stove is an alternative currently used throughout the world, with rapid growth in Europe. The pellets are made of renewable material — typically wood sawdust or off-cuts. There are more than half a million homes in North America using pellet stoves for heat, and probably a similar number in Europe. The pellet stove typically uses a feed screw to transfer pellets from a storage hopper to a combustion chamber. Air is provided for the combustion by an electric blower. The ignition is automatic, using a stream of air heated by an electrical element. The rotation speed of the feeder and the fan speeds can be varied to modulate the heat output.
Other efficient stoves are based on Top Lit updraft (T-LUD) or wood gas or smoke burner stove, a principle applied and made popular by Dr. Thomas Reed, which use small pieces of sticks, chips of wood or shavings, leaves, etc., as fuel. The efficiency is very high — up to 50 percent — as compared to traditional stoves that are 5 to 15 percent efficient on average.
Stoves fueled by alcohol, such as ethanol, offer another modern, clean-burning stove option. Ethanol-fueled stoves have been made popular through the work of Project Gaia in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.
These stoves are used most often to heat buildings in winter. Wood or other fuel is put into the stove, lit, and then air flow is regulated to control the burn. The intake airflow is either at the level where fuel is added, or below it. The exhaust (smoke) from the stove is usually several meters above the combustion chamber.
Most modern air-tight stoves feature a damper at the stove's outlet that can be closed to force the exhaust through an after burner at the top of the stove, a heated chamber in which the combustion process continues. Some air-tight stoves feature a catalytic converter, a platinum grid placed at the stove outlet to burn remaining fuel that has not been combusted, as gases burn at a much lower temperature in the presence of platinum.
Using an air-tight stove initially requires leaving the damper and air vents open until a bed of coals has been formed. After that, the damper is closed and the air vent regulated to slow down the burning of the wood. A properly loaded and controlled air-tight stove will burn safely without further attention for eight hours, or longer.
These features provide a more complete combustion of wood and elimination of polluting combustion products. It also provides for regulation of the intensity of fire by limiting air flow, and for the fire to create a strong draught or draw up the chimney. This results in highly efficient fuel usage.
Air-tight stoves are a more sophisticated version of traditional wood-burning stoves.
The burn temperature in modern stoves can increase to the point where secondary and complete combustion of the fuel takes place. A properly fired masonry heater has little or no particulate pollution in the exhaust and does not contribute to the buildup of creosote in the heater flues or the chimney. Some stoves achieve as little as 1 to 4 grams of emissions per hour. This is roughly 10% as much smoke than older stoves, and equates to nearly zero visible smoke from the chimney. This is largely achieved through causing the maximum amount of material to combust, which results in a net efficiency of 60 to 70%, as contrasted to less than 30% for an open fireplace. Net efficiency is defined as the amount of heat energy transferred to the room compared to the amount contained in the wood, minus any amount central heating must work to compensate for airflow problems.
SB 1256, a bill that would ban the sale of disposable, single-use propane cylinders in California, is set to be presented for approval to Governor Gavin Newsom. If signed into law, the ban would take effect in January 2023 and would be the first of its kind in the United States. SB 1256 aims to phase out the cylinders completely by 2028; the state Assembly and Senate both approved the legislation. Propane stoves are widely used by campers for cooking, lighting, and heating, and the spent gas canisters often pile up on the ground near dumpsters at campgrounds. The bill is sponsored by the California Product Stewardship Council, a nonprofit local government coalition, in an effort to reduce waste and cut down on the pile-ups of canisters. Worthington Industries, a manufacturer of propane cylinders, has objected to the bill on the grounds that it would be disruptive to campers and that it would not improve the recycling rate of propane cylinders. The company has also argued that refillable cylinders cost three times as much as single-use cylinders.
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