Cook stove - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Cooking

Cooking is the process of preparing food by use of heat. Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely across the world, reflecting unique environmental, economic, and cultural traditions. Cooks themselves also vary widely in skill and training...

, a cook stove is a very basic stove

Stove

A stove is an enclosed heated space. The term is commonly taken to mean an enclosed space in which fuel is burned to provide heating, either to heat the space in which the stove is situated or to heat the stove itself, and items placed on it...

heated by burning wood

Wood

Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...

, charcoal

Charcoal

Charcoal is the dark grey residue consisting of carbon, and any remaining ash, obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents from animal and vegetation substances. Charcoal is usually produced by slow pyrolysis, the heating of wood or other substances in the absence of oxygen...

, animal dung

Feces

Feces, faeces, or fæces is a waste product from an animal's digestive tract expelled through the anus or cloaca during defecation.-Etymology:...

or crop residue

Crop residue

There are two types of agricultural crop residues:Field residues are materials left in an agricultural field or orchard after the crop has been harvested. These residues include stalks and stubble , leaves, and seed pods...

. Cook stoves are the most common way of cooking and heating food in developing countries.

Developing countries consume little energy

Energy

In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...

compared to developed nations; however, over 50% of the energy that they do use goes into cooking food. The average rural family spends 20% or more of its income purchasing wood

Wood

or charcoal

Charcoal

for cooking. Living in the city provides no refuge either as the urban

Urban area

An urban area is characterized by higher population density and vast human features in comparison to areas surrounding it. Urban areas may be cities, towns or conurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets.Urban areas are created and further...

poor frequently spend a significant portion of their income on the purchase of wood or charcoal.

Besides the high expense, another problem of cooking over an open fire is the increased health

Health

Health is the level of functional or metabolic efficiency of a living being. In humans, it is the general condition of a person's mind, body and spirit, usually meaning to be free from illness, injury or pain...

problems brought on from the smoke

Smoke

Smoke is a collection of airborne solid and liquid particulates and gases emitted when a material undergoes combustion or pyrolysis, together with the quantity of air that is entrained or otherwise mixed into the mass. It is commonly an unwanted by-product of fires , but may also be used for pest...

, particularly lung

Human lung

The human lungs are the organs of respiration in humans. Humans have two lungs, with the left being divided into two lobes and the right into three lobes. Together, the lungs contain approximately of airways and 300 to 500 million alveoli, having a total surface area of about in...

and eye

Human eye

The human eye is an organ which reacts to light for several purposes. As a conscious sense organ, the eye allows vision. Rod and cone cells in the retina allow conscious light perception and vision including color differentiation and the perception of depth...

ailments, but also birth defects. Replacing the traditional 3-rock cook stove with an improved one and venting the smoke out of the house through a chimney

Chimney

A chimney is a structure for venting hot flue gases or smoke from a boiler, stove, furnace or fireplace to the outside atmosphere. Chimneys are typically vertical, or as near as possible to vertical, to ensure that the gases flow smoothly, drawing air into the combustion in what is known as the...

can dramatically improve a family’s health.

Deforestation

Deforestation

Deforestation is the removal of a forest or stand of trees where the land is thereafter converted to a nonforest use. Examples of deforestation include conversion of forestland to farms, ranches, or urban use....

and erosion

Erosion

Erosion is when materials are removed from the surface and changed into something else. It only works by hydraulic actions and transport of solids in the natural environment, and leads to the deposition of these materials elsewhere...

are often the end result of harvesting wood for cooking fuel. The main goal of most improved cooking stoves is to reduce the pressure placed on local forests by reducing the amount of wood the stoves consume. Additionally, the money a family spends on wood or charcoal translates into less money being available to be spent on food, education, and medical care; so an improved cooking stove is seen as a way of boosting a family's income.

Three stone cooking fire

The traditional method of cooking is on a three stone cooking fire. It is the cheapest stove to produce, requiring only three suitable stones of the same height on which a cooking pot can be balanced over a fire. However, this cooking method also has many problems:

Smoke is vented into the home, instead of outdoors, causing health problems. According to the World Health Organization
World Health Organization
The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health...

, "Every year, indoor air pollution is responsible for the death of 1.6 million people - that's one death every 20 seconds."

Fuel is wasted, as heat is allowed to escape into the open air. This requires more labor on the part of the user to gather fuel and may result in increased deforestation
Deforestation
Deforestation is the removal of a forest or stand of trees where the land is thereafter converted to a nonforest use. Examples of deforestation include conversion of forestland to farms, ranches, or urban use....

if wood is used for fuel.

Only one cooking pot can be used at a time.

The use of an open fire creates a risk of burns
Burn (injury)
A burn is a type of injury to flesh caused by heat, electricity, chemicals, light, radiation or friction. Most burns affect only the skin . Rarely, deeper tissues, such as muscle, bone, and blood vessels can also be injured...

and scalds. Especially when the stove is used indoors, cramped conditions make adults and particularly children susceptible to falling or stepping into the fire and receiving burns. Additionally, accidental spills of boiling water may result in scalding, and blowing on the fire to supply oxygen may discharge burning embers and cause eye injuries.

Improved stoves and other measures

The World Health Organization has documented the significant number of deaths caused by smoke from home fires. The negative impacts can be reduced by using improved cook stoves, improved fuels (e.g. biogas, or kerosene instead of dung), changes to the environment (e.g. use of a chimney), and changes to user behaviour (e.g. drying fuel wood before use, using a lid during cooking)." Improved stoves are more efficient, meaning that the stove's users spend less time gathering wood or other fuels, suffer less emphysema and other lung diseases prevalent in smoke-filled homes, while reducing deforestation and air pollution. Some designs also make the stove safer, preventing burns that often occur when children stumble into open fires. Some of the new stove designs are discussed below.

Brick and Mortar Stove

A variety of new brick and mortar stoves have emerged. Most of the new designs incorporate a combustion chamber found in a rocket stove. By confining combustion to an insulated and enclosed area, the stoves increase the core temperature and thereby achieve more complete combustion. This allows a smaller amount of fuel to burn hotter, while producing less ash and smoke. Several stoves with similar features have emerged, often varying only slightly from one another. The Justa Stove is a simple biomass stove built around an insulated, elbow-shaped combustion chamber

Combustion chamber

A combustion chamber is the part of an engine in which fuel is burned.-Internal combustion engine:The hot gases produced by the combustion occupy a far greater volume than the original fuel, thus creating an increase in pressure within the limited volume of the chamber...

which provides more intense heat and cleaner combustion than an open fire, meaning that it consumes less fuel than a three-rock stove.

An improved Justa stove jointly developed by the non-profit Proyecto Mirador and the Aprovecho Research Center called the Dos por Tres is being disseminated in Honduras with more than 20,000 stoves installed as of 2011. The Dos por Tres has been registered as Project 690 and certified by the Gold Standard Foundation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2.7 tons per year. All Proyecto Mirador documentation related to proof of these reductions can be viewed on the Gold Standard Project registry https://gs1.apx.com/myModule/rpt/myrpt.asp?r=111. The co benefits of the Dos por Tres are highlighted in this video and construction of a Dos por Tres can be seen here

The Justa stove has been deployed in Honduras by Trees, Water & People and AHDESA, for which they jointly won an Ashden Award in 2005. The Eco Stove and the Patsari stove share common benefits with the Justa Stove, and are also used in Central America. Their proponents claim that these stoves use approximately 1/3 of the fuel required by traditional three stone stoves, lessening the daily labor devoted to gathering wood and also preventing deforestation. At the same time, it employs a stove pipe flue to vent fumes through the roof. This almost eliminates cooking smoke within the home, preventing respiratory problems for the users. Various groups have run programs to provide such stoves, or encourage production of stove making facilities, including certain Rotary Clubs, Trees, Water and People, and organizations aimed at preserving wildlife by preventing deforestation.

Lorena adobe stove

A predecessor to the Justa/Eco/Patsari stoves was the Lorena adobe

Adobe

Adobe is a natural building material made from sand, clay, water, and some kind of fibrous or organic material , which the builders shape into bricks using frames and dry in the sun. Adobe buildings are similar to cob and mudbrick buildings. Adobe structures are extremely durable, and account for...

stove. It was designed as a simple-to-build cook stove for use in Central America

Central America

Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. When considered part of the unified continental model, it is considered a subcontinent...

, one that could be manufactured locally of local materials. The name of Lorena stove comes from the combination of the two Spanish words lodo and arena (meaning mud and sand) as the stoves are basically a mix of the two. It became very popular in Central America, with anecdotal evidence suggesting that it is the most popular improved cooking stove in the region. The Lorena stove is an enclosed stove of rammed earth

Rammed earth

Rammed earth, also known as taipa , tapial , and pisé , is a technique for building walls using the raw materials of earth, chalk, lime and gravel. It is an ancient building method that has seen a revival in recent years as people seek more sustainable building materials and natural building methods...

construction, with a chimney built onto it.

The Lorena stove was designed with the mistaken belief that rammed earth would act as insulation

Thermal insulation

Thermal insulation is the reduction of the effects of the various processes of heat transfer between objects in thermal contact or in range of radiative influence. Heat transfer is the transfer of thermal energy between objects of differing temperature...

; there was a basic misunderstanding of the difference between mass

Mass

Mass can be defined as a quantitive measure of the resistance an object has to change in its velocity.In physics, mass commonly refers to any of the following three properties of matter, which have been shown experimentally to be equivalent:...

and insulation

Thermal insulation

. Good insulation resists the passage of heat; thermal mass

Thermal mass

Thermal mass is a concept in building design which describes how the mass of the building provides "inertia" against temperature fluctuations, sometimes known as the thermal flywheel effect...

does the opposite, it absorbs heat. Testing has shown that the rammed earth used in the Lorena stove absorbs heat that should be directed toward cooking.

The designers, Aprovecho, now state: "The Lorena has been tested over the years by many researchers and has generally been found to use more firewood than an indoor open fire. The stove has other attributes. Its chimney takes smoke out of the kitchen and it is well liked. It is pretty and a nice addition to the house. It is low cost and can be repaired and even built by the home owner. But, it is not a fuel saving or low emission stove". In later designs, the rammed earth has been replaced with thermal insulation, such as pumice

Pumice

Pumice is a textural term for a volcanic rock that is a solidified frothy lava typically created when super-heated, highly pressurized rock is violently ejected from a volcano. It can be formed when lava and water are mixed. This unusual formation is due to the simultaneous actions of rapid...

or ash.

Kenya Ceramic Jiko

From the beginning of the appropriate technology

Appropriate technology

Appropriate technology is an ideological movement originally articulated as "intermediate technology" by the economist Dr...

movement, one of the principal goals has been to create an affordable stove that was more efficient than the universally used three stone cooking fire. Of all the improved stoves, the Kenya Ceramic Jiko (KCJ) has been the most widely accepted to date, having become a standard item in most homes in Kenya

Kenya

Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...

and neighboring countries in East and Central Africa.

Charcoal is the standard cooking fuel in East Africa. Traditionally it was burned in a metal stove or “Jiko” as stoves are called in the Swahili

Swahili language

Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...

language. The KCJ is simply the traditional Jiko mated to a ceramic

Ceramic

A ceramic is an inorganic, nonmetallic solid prepared by the action of heat and subsequent cooling. Ceramic materials may have a crystalline or partly crystalline structure, or may be amorphous...

liner, producing a stove that is at least one fourth (and up to 50%) more efficient than traditional all-metal alternatives, costing only $2 to $5. The initial model has a distinctive shape, differing from the traditional cylindrical jiko, with the top and bottom the same diameter, tapering at about 30 degrees to a waist.

There are many variations on the same theme that can be found in Kenya and other areas of East Africa. Some are designed to be more robust than the original KCJ, and some such as the Upisi are designed to burn wood instead of charcoal, while others are built into the home, and remain stationary.

The Energy Efficient Charcoal Oven is a new innovation that has been developed and marketed by one of the initial disseminators of the KCJ; Dr. Max Kinyanjui, they are sold in supermarket chains around east Africa and allow people without access to electricity or gas to bake bread on a commercial or domestic scale using very little charcoal. Improved stoves also reduce the amount of forest cover lost and are a viable greenhouse gas reducer in addition to providing employment to a large number of sheet metal artisans.

Sanjha Chulha/Earth Stove/Surya Stove

Since 1999, an engineering company named Nishant Bioenergy (P) Limited in North India is conceiving, designing, fabricating and selling patent pending biomass briquette cook stoves. These are commercial cook stoves and are designed to burn biomass briquette. Biomass briquettes

Biomass briquettes

Biomass briquettes are a biofuel substitute to coal and charcoal. They are used to heat industrial boilers in order to produce electricity from steam. The most common use of the briquettes are in the developing world, where energy sources are not as widely available...

can be made from any farm or forest residues with or without binders.

The advantages of the stoves include sturdiness for heavy cooking utensils, lower cost of operation, ease of use, safe operation and the fact that they are carbon neutral. They manufacture many models like Sanjha Chulha and Earth Stove. Capacities are from 16000 KCal/Hr to 200000 KCal/hr. Earth Stoves are being used by a variety of people cooking food for 50 people to 50,000 people per day. As of January, 2010, they have installed around 355 stoves (total installed capacity is more than 13 MWh). Projects under execution are worth 3.5 Million Kcal/hr. They also have five franchises in western and southern states of India and are planning two more to spread the technology. Earth Stove based NISHANT STEAMER is also a great hit with college/school hostels. At some places savings are more than 75%.

Recently company has developed new technology named SURYA STOVE. Surya Stove technology is one of a kind as it runs on powdered biomass like saw dust (any biomass can be used provided it is dry (has a moisture content at or less than 10%) and is pulverised to 8 mm mesh ). The stove has automated fuel feed and ash cleansing system. It has a temperature controller to pre-set the temperature of the cooking/frying medium. It is especially designed for the frying needs of the ready-to-eat food industry. The company has planned to launch a nationwide project of 1000 such stoves duly linked with fuel supply chain with the assistance of local village based bio refinery.

The company has won national and international recognition for their unique efforts. Awards include the Ashden Award in 2005, PCRA Award -2001, and UN promising practices-2006.

Prefab Stoves

The Ecocina stove is manufactured at a central location from cement, pumice, and ceramic tiles. It resembles a large flower pot, with a steel cooking surface which can also receive a pot. It is the creation of a volunteer worker who noticed the high number of respiratory illnesses and burns on patients in Guatemala. It is actively produced in several countries, including Guatemala and Honduras. Unlike its brick and mortar counterparts, the Ecocina stoves have no flue and are manufactured in a backyard factory. They are then placed in a home on top of a table or similar raised surface. Again, as with their brick and mortar counterpart, the Ecocina stove employs a rocket stove combustion chamber and promises the same reduction in consumption of fire wood and reduction in fumes emitted into the home. It also remains cool to the touch, preventing burns.

Turbo Stoves

Some new metal stoves employ turbo charging features, air pressed into the stove or swirled, dramatically increasing the efficiency of combustion. Two such stoves are the Turbococina, developed in El Salvador, and the Lucai Stove, developed by World Stove. While the Turbococina promised dramatic results by employing higher pressures to lower combustion temperatures, its high cost of production (stainless steel) and its use of electricity have prevented it from going into production. At present, it does not appear to be economically viable. The Lucia Stove also employs swirling air patterns to change combustion, and has been economically produced. It is marketed by World Stove as one part of a larger environmental solution, because it captures carbon and thereby reduces the amount of carbon in the atmosphere from cooking. It produces Biocarb that is then recycled back to the soil.

Standard approaches to conserving cooking fuel

Almost all rural and many urban families in Latin America

Latin America

Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

rely solely on wood for their cooking needs. In most of Africa charcoal is the standard cooking fuel. In other places it can be a mix of the two, or alternatively like families on the Great Plains during the 1800s animal dung may be in common use if it is the only thing available.

There are three places in the cooking process where fuel can be conserved; the fuel, the stove, and the cooking pot. The greatest gains come not from the stove itself, but from how the heat the stove produces is used; paying attention to the pot rather than the stove results in the greatest fuel savings. In fact, fuel efficiency

Fuel efficiency

Fuel efficiency is a form of thermal efficiency, meaning the efficiency of a process that converts chemical potential energy contained in a carrier fuel into kinetic energy or work. Overall fuel efficiency may vary per device, which in turn may vary per application, and this spectrum of variance is...

in a stove is usually much more affected by heat transfer to the pot than it is by improving combustion

Combustion

Combustion or burning is the sequence of exothermic chemical reactions between a fuel and an oxidant accompanied by the production of heat and conversion of chemical species. The release of heat can result in the production of light in the form of either glowing or a flame...

efficiency.

The first way to reduce the amount of fuel a family consumes is simply to use a cooking lid
Lid (container)
A lid, also known as a cap, is part of a container, and serves as the cover or seal, usually one that completely closes the object.-History:...

while cooking, which by itself reduces fuel consumption by 40%. This simple change will normally save more fuel by itself than switching to an improved stove.

The second strategy is similar to the first; use a larger cooking pot. Larger pots are more energy efficient than smaller ones and wide shallow pots are more efficient than tall narrow ones.

Last, when cooking for a family, switching from a stove that has room for only one pot to cook at a time, to a stove where two or more pots can cook at once will often raise efficiencies by up to 40%.

In developing countries, families who rely upon wood for cooking have three ways of obtaining it. They can scavenge the areas where they live for firewood

Firewood

Firewood is any wood-like material that is gathered and used for fuel. Generally, firewood is not highly processed and is in some sort of recognizable log or branch form....

, purchase it from a firewood dealer, or grow their own. In most villages there is a lack of harvestable firewood in the surrounding area, and so most of the wood used is brought into the village and sold through a dealer. Those who cannot afford to buy firewood are often forced to travel several miles to acquire wood. Some families have obtained self-sufficiency by maintaining a living fence, or growing a woodlot

Woodlot

A woodlot is a term used in North America to refer to a segment of a woodland or forest capable of small-scale production of forest products such as wood fuel, sap for maple syrup, sawlogs, as well as recreational uses like bird watching, bushwalking, and wildflower appreciation...

near the family home.

Smokeless and wood conserving stoves

Smokeless stoves and wood conserving stoves are terms used to describe stove

Stove

s designed for developing country

Developing country

A developing country, also known as a less-developed country, is a nation with a low level of material well-being. Since no single definition of the term developing country is recognized internationally, the levels of development may vary widely within so-called developing countries...

settings to reduce the health impacts of smoke

Smoke

from open fires inside dwellings. It is generally claimed that the new designs burn the wood (or other fuel) more efficiently. Important features may include a pipe (chimney) to vent the smoke and a different chamber design.

There are various designs, such as the Lorena stove and the ONIL Stove which uses mortar-less concrete blocks in its construction and costs $150 USD

United States dollar

The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....

per stove. Another design is the Berkeley-Darfur

Darfur

Darfur is a region in western Sudan. An independent sultanate for several hundred years, it was incorporated into Sudan by Anglo-Egyptian forces in 1916. The region is divided into three federal states: West Darfur, South Darfur, and North Darfur...

stove that reduces smoke and is twice as efficient as a clay stove, with the goal of reducing the need for women to leave the camps in search of wood.

The most fuel-efficient type of cooker is the solar cooker

Solar cooker

A solar cooker, or solar oven, is a device which uses the energy of sunlight to heat food or drink to cook it or sterilize it. High-tech versions, for example electric ovens powered by solar cells, are possible, and have some advantages such as being able to work in diffuse light. However at...

, which uses no fuels of any kind. These devices of course require clear sunlight, but they are practical in many of the sunny regions of the world.

External links

Improved stoves at Appropedia, an anti-poverty and appropriate technology wiki.
Partnership for Clean Indoor Air
Biomass cooking stoves
Aprovecho stove research
Rethinking the Latin American Cookstove by Dean Still. A critical assessment of Lorena stoves & other new "improvements", and a discussion of how to improve the design.
Final Report for "Lorena Stoves to Protect Lungs and Forests" - The Virtual Foundation
Onil Stove - Community of Christ Health Ministries Association.
Burning Issues - A project of Clean Air Revival, Inc.. Promotes awareness of the negative health impacts of wood smoke.
BioEnergy Lists: Biomass Cooking Stoves
Holey Briquette Gassifier Stove Development - Richard Stanley, Kobus Venter 14 August 2003, on BioEnergy Lists
Asia Regional Cookstove Program (ARECOP)
What Makes People Cook With Improved Stoves
Ashden Awards case studies on fuel-efficient stoves in developing countries
The Gold Standard Foundation (Certification of Carbon Offsets)

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