Study of Local West Sumatera Stove Performances in Boiling Gambir (Uncaria Gambir Roxb.)

Gambir is one of traditional export commodity of West Sumatera Province mainly used as raw material of pharmaceutical industry, batik coloring, leather thinner and clarifier in beer refineries. This paper describes how the LWS Stove like in Siguntur village works to boil gambir leaves and branches. There are 400 “rumah kempa” home industries operates every day in Pesisir Selatan district to produce gambir using old model LWS Stove made of mixture of clay and cement. Gambir leaves and branches are harvested twice a year and one “rumah kempa” operates one month each harvesting period to produce around one tone of dried extract gambir and consumed 1.5 cubic meters of fire-wood as the main fuel. The dried solid waste of leaves and branches after being pressed, called “katapang”, is used as additional fuel. Five aspects were considered in LWS Stoves performances evaluation, namely- heat efficiency, service life and simplicity in operation, health and safety, economics, and local environmental impact. The methods used in this study were identification and evaluation. Data was collected by surveying and interview, analyzing, and calculation. The results show that heat transfer efficiency of LWS Stove is lower than twelve percents; short service life but very simple operation; indoor pollution due to smoke and burnt risk are high because of no chimney and hot flue gas temperature is still higher than 200 0C; economically, the stove is very cheap; while environmentally, it caused seriously impact on local deforestation.