Designing A Fuel Efficient Stove For Reduce Amount Of Firewood And Charcoal Use

Project Justification

Discuss about the Design a Fuel Efficient Stove for Reduce Amount of Firewood and Charcoal Use.

The purpose of report is to investigate on the use of fuel-efficient stove design to reduce amount of firewood and charcoal, which are required by cook stove. It will also explore the alternative fuel sources for cooking. In Mayukwayukwa, Zambia, cooking is basically done on the stoves which is fuelled by firewood as well as charcoal. The total volumes of fuel, which is used for purpose of cooking causes deforestation within the area (David et al., 2016). The women within the forest, which raises safety concerns for them, collect the firewood. Burning of charcoal in the household of Zambia creates health, livelihood as well as environmental problems among people (Gallagher et al., 2016). This study is taken to identify technical solutions of the problem, which can induce a large-scale change. The report provides with a design justification of fuel-efficient stove, research on design information as well as detailed design solutions.

The project report justifies the problems and issues that people are facing due to use of charcoal and firewood for cooking purpose. In the household, poor people are burning biomass energy in order to meet with their cooking requirements (Anhalt & Holanda, 2013). The open fires are not efficient to convert energy in the form heat. Collection of this fuel and woods from the forest of Zambia takes an hour a day. The other issues of open fires are emission of smoke, which cause respiratory diseases, natural re-growth of natural resources and environmental issues (Masekameni, Makonese & Annegarn, 2016). Those issues are addressed with design of a fuel-efficient stove for cooking purpose to reduce use of charcoal. The current requirements of the community are to reduce smoke, improve energy efficiency as well as reduce drudgery-cooking duties. The stove is designed for rural as well as urban population of Zambia.

In Zambia, cooking is considered as responsibility of the women to spend amount of time in preparation of food. There is a requirement of improved fuel-efficient stoves so that they can reduce smoke production as well as harmful gases in the households (Prinsloo, Dobson & Mammoli, 2016). It reduces use of biomass by approximately 60 percent, reduction of cooking life cycle as well as safety in households. Currently, the community of Zambia designs a fuel-efficient stove for the households to reduce waste wood and reduction of health problems (Mapelli & Mungwe, 2013). The problems and issues are required to address so that it enhances energy as well as food security among the population of Zambia.

Preliminary Research

Primary energy data sources

“Hanna, R., Duflo, E., & Greenstone, M. (2016). Up in smoke: The influence of household behavior on the long-run impact of improved cooking stoves. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 8(1), 80-114.”

For doing research on use of fuel-efficient stove in cooking in households, data are used for this study are collected from Living Conditions Monitoring Survey (LCMS), Zambia which are being conducted by Central Statistical Office. LCMS provides with a good data on the energy use of household. Even the data are making possible in order to construct a variable for total amount of charcoal as well as cooking gases spent in the cooking purpose. Then, the data from LCMS are compared with total actual household expenditures so that it helps to investigate importance of energy within the household costs. The data on the energy use are appeared in form of appliances required to own by people. The report on households are required to identify which is required to own such as gas stove, electric stove etc for purpose of cooking.

The report summarizes the harmful effects of the cooking fuels in the life of people. The use of modern cooking fuels as well as stoves describes the requirement of fuel-efficient stove. This modern cooking solution reduces health risks as well as loss of time, which are suffered by women. It gives description of cost as well as characteristics of the fuels, which helps to identify use of technology for cooking.

“Kshirsagar, M. P., & Kalamkar, V. R. (2014). A comprehensive review on biomass cookstoves and a systematic approach for modern cookstove design. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 30, 580-603.”

In this source, over 98 percent of the households of Zambia are reported to use of charcoal as well as wood as their main sources of energy for cooking purpose. The fuel-efficient stove is designed based on some of considerations such as social, technical as well as economical. Before take the decision of designing stove, the users do in-depth analysis on cooking practices, type of fuel used as well as functional requirements of the stove.

The information in the source helps to design the fuel-efficient stove as it defines the first step is to finalize the design parameters such as initial physical system. It is based on type of fuel, combustion as well as heat transfer. The next information that it gives is to model as well as analyze different components of the fuel-efficient stove to design the proposed stove properly. Modeling of the components of the stove is done in order to formulate equations so that it uses to identify behavior of the actual component of stoves.

Secondary Energy or Fuel Sources

The design of fuel-efficient stove is to reduce amount of firewood and charcoal. It will also use to improve emission of smoke, natural re-growth of natural resources as well as environmental issues. The design of the stove reduces the use of charcoal by women for purpose of cooking. The following two sections describe a detailed description of fuel-efficient stove with the issues, which are required to investigate in development of design.

In Zambia, new “rocket stove” is used to reduce emission of smoke, use of charcoal and makes it fuel-efficient to the households. The design of rocket stove is such that it consists of durable metal alloy liner, which is surrounded by insulating layer as well as metal container (Zulu & Richardson, 2013). The improved in efficiency as well as higher burning temperature of this rocket stove reduces use of biomass energy for purpose of cooking. Small twigs are used with three rocks method to reduce the time of gathering of fuel. The combustion chamber is being insulated so that it keeps fire hot in order to burn the wood (Chanda, 2015). It reduces smoke emission.

The rocket stove is made up of fuel letter L, the fuel is being fed in combustion chamber. The way to push the fuel into combustion chamber ensures that the fuel is being fed into the rocket stove at correct rate and there is clean combustion (Sparrevik et al., 2013). There is feed opening to pass air through the burning fuel as too much of air cools the fire. Due to moving of air through burning fuel, it assists to remain the fire above 650 degree for absolute combustion. There is a skirt, which surrounds the pot (Hanna, Duflo & Greenstone, 2016). The gap between pot as well as skirt forces the fuel to scratch against the sides of pot. It increases in transfer of heat.

 

Figure 1: Sketch of Rocket Stove

(Source: Hanna, Duflo & Greenstone, 2016, pp-91)

The design of a fuel-efficient stove such as rocket stove is required to properly designed. As an inefficient stove should use of wood, therefore it causes economic issues. If the design of the stove is not proper, then it takes more time to cook (Khudadad, Ali & Jan, 2013). A properly designed rocket stove will use of 75 percent of less wood. An inefficient stove should create large amount of smoke. It causes environmental issues such as the trees and plants are affected. The smoke from the wood is causing health issues such as asthma, heart diseases, cancer and others. It is estimated that most of people are killed annually due to wood smoke (Prinsloo, Dobson & Mammoli, 2016). Improved design of fuel-efficient stove is almost 100 percent combustion. It is smoke free except at the starting when the woods are pushed in the fire. Therefore, an efficient design of rocket stove will overcome with the identified issues.

Design Concept

Conclusion

It is concluded from analyzing the design report of a fuel-efficient stove, it reduces amount of firewood as well as charcoal. It is explored as the alternative fuel sources for cooking. Most of the population of Zambia is using charcoal for cooking, but burning of charcoal in the household influences on health, livelihood as well as environment. The main purpose of this report is to reduce smoke, improve energy efficiency as well as reduce drudgery-cooking duties. In order to meet with the project purpose, new rocket stove is being used to reduce smoke as well as charcoal use. This stove becomes a fuel-efficient households stove. Design of the store should be perfect otherwise, it would create large amount of smoke, not only that an inefficient stove will take more time to cook. An improved as well as efficient design of the fuel-efficient stove will give 100 percent rate of combustion.

References

Anhalt, J., & Holanda, S. (2013). Policy for subsidizing efficient stoves.

Chanda, J. (2015). SEI_Transforming Household Energy Practices Among Charcoal Users in Lusaka Zambia; a User Centred Approach_Apr 2013.

David, L. I., Beltramo, T., Blalock, G., Cotterman, C., & Simons, A. (2016). What Impedes Efficient Adoption of Products? Evidence from Randomized Sales Offers for Fuel-Efficient Cookstoves in Uganda.

Gallagher, M., Beard, M., Clifford, M. J., & Watson, M. C. (2016). Energy for Sustainable Development.

Hanna, R., Duflo, E., & Greenstone, M. (2016). Up in smoke: The influence of household behavior on the long-run impact of improved cooking stoves. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 8(1), 80-114.

Khudadad, N., Ali, B., & Jan, K. (2013). Measuring the impact of low carbon technologies and products on domestic fuel consumption. Renewable energy, 49, 115-118.

Kshirsagar, M. P., & Kalamkar, V. R. (2014). A comprehensive review on biomass cookstoves and a systematic approach for modern cookstove design. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 30, 580-603.

Mapelli, F., & Mungwe, J. N. (2013). Modern Energies Services for Cooking: from Improved Cook-Stoves to Domestic and Community Biogas Based Systems. In Renewable energy for unleashing sustainable development (pp. 43-74). Springer International Publishing.

Masekameni, D., Makonese, T., & Annegarn, H. J. (2016, March). Performance evaluation of three charcoal stoves. In Domestic Use of Energy (DUE), 2016 International Conference on the (pp. 1-7). Cape Peninsula University of Technology.

Prinsloo, G., Dobson, R., & Mammoli, A. (2016). Model based design of a novel Stirling solar micro-cogeneration system with performance and fuel transition analysis for rural African village locations. Solar Energy, 133, 315-330.

Sparrevik, M., Field, J. L., Martinsen, V., Breedveld, G. D., & Cornelissen, G. (2013). Life cycle assessment to evaluate the environmental impact of biochar implementation in conservation agriculture in Zambia. Environmental science & technology, 47(3), 1206-1215.

Zulu, L. C., & Richardson, R. B. (2013). Charcoal, livelihoods, and poverty reduction: Evidence from sub-Saharan Africa. Energy for Sustainable Development, 17(2), 127-137.