Wood Stoves May Cause Cancer, Heart Disease

February 28, 2011 · 1 comment

Feb 7, 2011 – A wood-burning stove in your home may be a great source of heat during the cold winter, but new data shows that invisible particles produced by burning wood may cause cancer and heart disease, the Telegraph reported.

Wood-burning stoves are becoming more popular because of the rising price of oil, gas and electricity prices. But researchers at Copenhagen University in Denmark said that breathing in air around the stoves is the equivalent to inhaling car exhaust—with the wood particles being small enough to breathe into the deepest parts of the lungs.

“The particles that come from wood smoke can certainly cause fatal heart or lung disease. In human cells that were exposed to the particles, substantial DNA damage and mutation took place. It was comparable to the effects of particles given off by traffic,” said professor Steffen Loft, of the Department of Public Health at Copenhagen University.

When scientists tested the wood-burning particles on human cells in a laboratory, they found that the particles caused more cellular and DNA damage than air without the particles.

“The full scale of the health risk is not currently known,” Loft said, “but said some people were already feeling the impact, such as those suffering from asthma.”

Loft emphasized that those who do own wood-burning stoves should only use dry wood cut into small pieces, and make sure there is a good air flow in the room to minimize exposure to particles.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/02/07/wood-stoves-cause-cancer-heart-disease/

Tailor renewable energies to local culture

February 28, 2011 · 0 comments

To make an impact, small-scale renewable energy systems must fit social expectations and cultural norms, argues Benjamin K. Sovacool.

In 2009, 1.4 billion people lacked access to electricity — 85 per cent of them in rural areas. By 2030, 1.2 billion are set to remain off-grid, while 2.8 billion will rely on traditional biomass.

The health consequences of this are monumental. Indoor air pollution kills 1.5 million people a year, more than malaria or tuberculosis. And by 2030, biomass smoke will be responsible for more than 4,000 premature deaths a day.

A suite of off-grid renewable energy technologies — solar home systems, biogas cookstoves and small hydropower units — can deliver energy services to rural households more cost-effectively than national grids, without relying on expensive and polluting fuels.

These systems are making inroads in some regions. But assessments of how they perform often neglect local realities that can determine whether they succeed or fail.

An expanding field

Solar home systems consist of a solar panel, battery, inverter, charge controller and usually two or three lamps with an extension cord to power a small radio or television.

Biogas cookstoves capture methane from the anaerobic digestion of waste and convert it into fuel. And ‘pico-hydro units’ consist of miniature dams and powerhouses that use natural river flow to generate electricity for a communal mini-grid.

In the past ten years, millions of these systems have been deployed around the world. A rich literature has emerged as well, discussing common barriers to adoption that include high up-front costs, poor access to financing and substandard equipment.

But these assessments often miss a key part of the adoption puzzle: culture.

In some cases, well-designed, high-quality technology-transfer programmes backed by sufficient financial incentives have failed to convince households to adopt the technology, often because of cultural reasons.

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EPA Chief Promotes Green Partnerships in East Africa

February 28, 2011 · 0 comments

Feb 25, 2011 – The head of the US Environmental Protection Agency has been promoting green technology partnerships during a trip to East Africa. One project is aimed at resolving Ethiopia’s most pressing environmental concerns.

Tedla Woldemichael is an environmental activist working to promote fuel-efficient cooking stoves in mostly rural southern Ethiopia.

He was in Addis Ababa this week to demonstrate his stoves to visiting US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. 

“If we save fuel, then that is conserving the forest, so this is our idea,” Woldlemichael said while explaining the connection between fuel-efficient cooking and environmental protection. “Now, if you conserve the forest, then we are fighting against climate change.”

Wood and other biomass fuels are scarce in Ethiopia. A century ago, 40 percent of the country was forest. Today it’s less than 4 percent.

Despite a massive tree-planting campaign, woodlands are in danger as a rapidly growing population scours the countryside for fuel.

Tedla’s organization, Concern for Environment, does not simply hand out clean cook stoves. Instead it provides women with molds and materials to build their own stoves that use less than half the fuel of traditional cooking fires. They can then re-use the mold to produce and sell more stoves to others in their communities.

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Inverted downdraft gassifier for better fuel efficiency

February 28, 2011 · 1 comment

CAEPHT Centre of RES demonstrates improved cook stoves on farmer’s house at Samlik Marchak village of East Sikkim.

The College of Agricultural Engineering and Post Harvest Technology (CAU) centre of the Renewable Energy Sources (RES) conducted the demonstration of fuel saving improved cook stoves as Inverted downdraft gassifier to cook daily meals at farmer’s house (Mr Roop Narayan Bhattarai) in village Samlik Marchak of East Sikkim on February 23, 2011.

The Inverted Downdraft Biomass Gasifier Type Cook Stove using 1-3 kg wood or briquettes per filling is suitable for domestic use. Wood pieces and biomass briquettes are used as fuel. It offers the advantage of cooking/heating with gas while using a variety of biomass fuel.

The thermal efficiency of this cook stove is much higher (about 33%) as compared to the improved metal cook stove which ranges between 18-22% and 12-15% for traditional chulha for single and double pot very common in the villages of Sikkim.

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NPR – Engineers Hone Clean-Energy Stoves For The World

February 17, 2011 · 0 comments

Rocket Stove

Almost half the world still cooks its food with solid fuels, such as wood and charcoal.

The results are deforestation and black carbon, which contributes to global warming. And smoke-related disease kills an estimated 1.6 million people a year.

In war zones, the daily hunt for firewood can present families with terrible dilemmas, says Veronique Barbelet of the World Food Programme.

“You hear women in northern Uganda and places like that telling you, ‘My choice is between going out there and collecting firewood and being raped, or for my husband to go out and get killed, and I would rather go and get raped,’ ” she says.

For these and other reasons, the World Food Programme has turned to a small nonprofit organization called Aprovecho.

In a rustic research center near the railroad tracks in Cottage Grove, Ore., Aprovecho builds stoves that use minimal amounts of wood, don’t release much smoke — and are cheap enough for the Third World.

‘We Don’t Know How Fire Works’

Making the stoves is no simple task, says Damon Ogle, a retired mining engineer. He helped build a new large stove that the World Food Programme plans to deploy in refugee camps and schools in Africa.

“Our ancestors have been making fires for probably 400,000 years,” Ogle says. “And we still don’t know how fire works.”

But Ogle knows more than most. The stove he helped build can cook rice for 20 people with two fistfuls of sticks — up to 90 percent less wood than required by a traditional cooking fire.

“Rocket science is very simple and straightforward compared to what’s going on in your fireplace or inside one of these wood-burning stoves,” he says.

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National Geographic – Protecting Health and the Planet With Clean Cookstoves

February 17, 2011 · 0 comments

Josephine Adzrolo sat on a stool in front of her mud-brick home, stirring banku, a fermented paste of corn and cassava served with soup or okra stew. She heated the traditional mixture using a typical cooking fuel—charcoal—an energy source linked to serious global health risk.

But with her family waiting for lunch, Adzrolo cooked outdoors using a stove specially designed with a ceramic liner to retain heat. Although the scrap-metal exterior gave it a rough-hewn look, the cookstove was rated 40 percent more energy efficient than the traditional stoves used in the area.

For Adzrolo, the most obvious advantage was a practical one. “It saves a lot of charcoal,” she said. “I can cook plenty of banku and soup.”

Toyola Energy, the five-year-old Ghana business that made the stove, is aiming for far-reaching benefits as well. By using heat-conserving equipment outdoors, instead of more traditional cookstoves indoors, Adzrolo and others can avoid the high levels of toxic cooking smoke that have ravaged people’s health throughout the developing world.

(Related: “Fighting Poverty Can Save Energy, Nicaragua Project Shows“)

Half the world’s population—3 billion people—cook with wood, charcoal, dung, coal or agricultural residues on simple traditional stoves or open fires. Breathing the smoke from those stoves causes a stunning variety of acute and chronic illnesses—pneumonia, emphysema, cataracts, lung cancer, bronchitis, cardiovascular disease, and low birth weight—all contributing to an estimated 1.9 million premature deaths every year—more than double the global death toll of malaria, according to World Health Organization statistics. Indeed, the WHO estimates harmful cookstove smoke to be the fourth worst overall health risk in developing countries.

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India – For rural homes, a lamp that's also a stove!

February 14, 2011 · 0 comments

Bangalore: Is it a stove or a lamp? ‘It is actually both,’ says engineer-inventor Anil Rajvanshi, developer of a dual purpose device that simultaneously solves the twin problem of cooking and lighting in rural homes that do not have electricity.

A lantern, which burns kerosene to produce bright light and also doubles up as a cooking stove, is the latest invention from Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) at Phaltan in Maharashtra, a non-profit organisation that undertakes research in agriculture, renewable energy, animal husbandry and sustainable development.

‘The hybrid device christened ‘lanstove’ (lantern combined with cook stove) provides excellent light and cooks a complete meal of rice, dal and vegetables for a family of five and boils 10 litres of water for drinking — all in four hours,’ NARI director Rajvanshi said.

‘To our knowledge, it is the first such device where both lighting and cooking are combined together resulting in tremendous energy efficiency and saving of fuel,’ Rajvanshi, a graduate of Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, said.

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Sol Source solar cooker

February 14, 2011 · 0 comments

One Earth Designs in Boston has developed a portable solar parabolic cooker, the 3-in-one Sol Source solar cooker, which has three interchangeable units:  one is a stand that holds a cooking pot or tea kettle, the second unit is a ceramic device that generates an electric current when heated and can be used to charge batteries, the third unit, which addresses the problem discussed in this report is a heat storage unit. 

After concentrated sunlight heats the unit to several hundred degrees, it can be stored in a heat retention basket, which is then opened at night to provide several hours of safe, smoke-free heat until the family goes to bed.  It was designed for Tibetan nomads who needed something portable, but heavier parabolic solar cookers could also be used by Afghans for night time heating.

From Pat McArdle, email: solarwind1@mac.com
http://solarcooking.org

USAID – Fuel-Efficient Stove Programs in Humanitarian Settings

February 11, 2011 · 0 comments

Fuel-Efficient Stove Programs in Humanitarian Settings: An Implementer’s Toolkit.

USAID, 2010

Link: http://www.energytoolbox.org/cookstoves/

This Toolkit is designed to take you and your organization through a step-by-step process of assessment, planning, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation of a proposed activity. While these guidelines focus primarily on wood-burning stoves, OFDA also will consider funding applications for stoves that utilize other fuels. A similarly thorough needs assessment and justification analysis will be required for those programs as well.

The Toolkit contains twelve steps. Each step includes an introduction, explanation of the task(s) to be conducted, tools to help you carry out the task(s), and information on additional resources. Each step is color-coded for ease of use. In addition, data log sheets for all surveys and testing protocols are provided below. You therefore have the ability to reproduce and modify the forms as necessary for your particular project.

While this Toolkit has been developed to be as comprehensive as possible, it is not possible to account for all possible circumstances or situations. This Toolkit provides the framework to make informed decisions, but you must also apply your knowledge about the unique needs, experiences, and preferences of your target beneficiaries and the natural and political environments where you intend to work. Moreover, the fields of stove design and testing methodologies are dynamic, and USAID priorities and indicators will change over time. Therefore, you should refer to the USAID/OFDA Guidelines for Unsolicited Proposals and Reporting to determine if there are any relevant revisions or updates before submitting your proposal for funding.

Innovative microcredit and cookstoves project in Guatemala

February 11, 2011 · 0 comments

An excerpt from – When Microcredit Won’t Do

If you asked poverty experts to name the single most significant new concept in the field in the last few decades, chances are they would say microcredit.  Microcredit is the lending of very small amounts of money to very poor people to help them invest in things that have the potential to bring income later on — a loan of $50 to buy a sewing machine to make clothes, for instance, or piglets to raise and sell. 

….

Greg Van Kirk was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nebaj, Guatemala, a town of about 10,000 people in a mountainous Mayan region, when he thought of consignment as the solution.  He was an unusual Peace Corps volunteer, having already had one career as an investment banker.  He had worked in structured finance for UBS, helping companies do complex deals to buy, sell or lease airplanes and power plants.

Van Kirk’s adventures in less-structured finance didn’t start with reading glasses, but with cookstoves.   He saw that families in the region cooked on open fires on the dirt floors inside their houses.  Their ceilings were black from smoke.  People coughed all the time and children were always sick. (Respiratory illnesses are a leading cause of death in poor countries, and indoor cooking is a significant cause.)  Open-pit fires, moreover, were inefficient.  The heat dispersed, and only one pot could be heated at a time.  That meant the family had to collect or buy a lot of firewood.  Moreover, fires were unsafe, especially for children, and cooking on the floor was unhealthy, luring ants and the family’s chickens into the house.

Van Kirk worked with a local mason named Augustín Corrio to try to find something better.  Corrio took a standard stove design and rejiggered it in various ways.  The best model had cement block legs, a brick chamber surrounding the fire on three sides, a metal sheet over the fire so several pots could be heated at once, and a chimney to take the smoke outside the house.  This stove used 60 to 70 percent less wood than an open fire — so even though it costs about $100 it could pay for itself quickly.  Buyers could pay in installments.  It could be locally produced from basic construction materials.

The problem was how to sell it on a wide scale. No micro-borrower would take out the enormous loan necessary to buy a number of stoves to resell. Van Kirk thought that consignment was the answer.  With consignment, a supplier gives a product to a retailer, who then sells it. After the sale is completed, the retailer reimburses the seller, keeping a commission.  The risk is taken not by the retailer, but by the supplier.  Van Kirk made a deal with Corrio:  Corrio went around to groups of people in Nebaj and surrounding villages to talk about the stove and show pictures.  When a family ordered one, Corrio built it right in their house with materials Van Kirk had bought for him.  Families paid in installments about equal to the money they saved by buying less wood. As payments came in, he repaid Van Kirk and kept a commission.

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