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Invicta Grammar School Emma Carter Year 12

Design a Cooking Stove for a Remote Community which helps to improve their

Quality of Life and Well-being

A cooking stove is an integral part of any poor, rural community; it provides a

means of not only cooking food but also allows for the carrying out of simple tasks

which most of us would take for granted, such as boiling water or keeping warm. For

these reasons, ensuring that such communities have a simple, cheap and efficient

stove available to them is paramount if we are to ultimately take significant steps in

improving the quality of life of those living in such deprived areas across the globe.

The stove which has been designed in this case has the community of Iloro-Idanre in

Nigeria specifically in mind and runs on biomass which is the source of 90% of

household energy usage in the developing world [1]. It is intended to be more efficient

and less dangerous than traditional cooking stoves and so should help to improve

quality of life and well-being within the community in many different ways.

Iloro-Idanre is a cocoa farming community at the fore-front of cocoa growing

in Ondo State, which is Nigerias most prolific area in the production of this particular

crop [2]. A majority of its inhabitants are farmers and they live in poverty, with few to

no modern conveniences and certainly no electricity which means they are reliant on

such stoves. At the moment, the existing technology used is paraffin which is the

most commonly used domestic fuel in developing countries [3]. However, there are

numerous problems with the use of paraffin as a fuel which are having a detrimental

effect on the people of this community. Firstly, there are significant health issues

associated with the burning of paraffin. It is extremely toxic if accidently consumed

and it has been suggested to cause respiratory problems if the fumes produced,

when it is burnt, are inhaled. In addition, spilt paraffin can ignite spontaneously which

is very dangerous, causing explosions and burns [4]. It is also not particularly efficient

as a fuel; typical paraffin stoves take around 48 minutes and use about 165ml of fuel

to cook meat for an average household [5].This means that the users can often have

to spend a lot of money on fuel for their stove and so often have to resort to not

using it at all, or instead fall back on wood fires as a means of cooking. It does

therefore seem sensible to utilize a more economical fuel for any new stove design

for this community and the most obvious of these is to take advantage of the waste

from the areas main industry: cocoa farming. In cocoa production a significantproportion of the raw produce is not made use of with the cocoa pod which encases


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the cocoa seeds making up between 75% and 80% of the total weight of the

harvested fruit [6].These cocoa husks are therefore a substantial source of biomass

which could be made use of, if not as a sole source of fuel, but certainly as an

additional type of biomass to be used alongside typical biomass fuel such as wood

and other crops. This would be very beneficial to the area as it means that biofuel

can be acquired without the need to plant additional crops which would only further

increase the competition over agricultural land and access to woodland which is

already causing tensions within the Nigerian communities.

The design of the stove is reasonably simple to try and ensure that it is cheap

to buy and not overly complex for the community to utilize. Considerations have

been made in order to reduce the amount of heat lost from the stove which is vital to

ensure a high efficiency. The outside of the main part of the stove which contains the

fire is made from ceramic to act as an insulator thus not only preventing heat loss

through the sides of the stove but also ensuring that the whole stove does not heat

up too excessively and become a danger to the user. The lid has also been

combined with a pot which means that the pot is close to the heat but that no heat is

lost through the top of the stove, so the food is cooked quicker. Efficiency is also

aided by the measures taken to make sure that the fire fueled by biomass has a

good oxygen supply which enables the fuel to combust more completely. This not

only increases the efficiency of the stove but it only helps to decrease the amount of

particulates produced. A good air flow is achieved in the stove by having the fire

raised above the ground on an iron mesh with a gap at the bottom of the stoves

casing so air can get to the fire. This is also one of the reasons that a chimney has

been included as it draws in air to help the combustion of the biomass. The chimney

is also important because it provides an outlet for the smoke from the fire which is

higher than it would otherwise be. This means that the smoke comes out above the

heads of the users and not into their faces, thus reducing the amount of it they inhale

significantly in comparison to paraffin stoves. A higher efficiency means that less fuel

is required to cook the same amount of food. This stove could certainly use wood as

a fuel, however cocoa pod husks are also a viable option to use either alongside

wood, or by themselves. The average amount of energy in a cocoa pod husk is

around 4500kcals [7]. The average weight of a whole cocoa pod is 400g [8] so if we

assume that 80% of this is the husk then it is possible to obtain 320g of fuel fromevery cocoa pod harvested. There is therefore around 14055 kcal of energy per kg of


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cocoa husk. With around 3890kcal per kilogram of dry wood [9] this means that there

is about 3.6 times more energy per kilogram in cocoa husk than wood which means

the inhabitants of the community can use less than a third as much fuel for this stove

if they use cocoa husks. This means that significantly less wood is required for

cooking in the community and therefore competition for firewood decreases and

consequently for fuel in general as cocoa beans are more renewable than wood is

and are plentiful. The stove should be suitable for cooking everything the community

would generally eat as it can reach high temperatures and just 1kg of the cocoa husk

could bring 1kg of water to the boil because this requires 100kcal [10].It is important

that the stove is cheap and therefore the design is simple with few individual

components which also means that it is easy to manufacture. Having a stove which

is easy to transport is also important so the chimney is collapsible which means it

can be tall but the stove can be moved easily.

Hopefully, the design of this cooking stove will enable it to greatly improve the

quality of life of the owners of the product. Firstly it has the potential for huge health

benefits for the inhabitants. A more efficient stove means food can be cooked more

effectively and safely which can contribute to improving the diet of the community. In

addition, the stove itself is designed to reduce any particulates produced when the

biofuel is burnt thus helping to prevent any harmful repercussions associated with

their inhalation. This is of particular significance when judging how the stove would

help improve the well-being of its users when you consider reports suggesting that

breathing in smoke from traditional fires causes an estimated 1.9 million premature

deaths every year[11]. The stove could also act as an additional source of heat within

the community during the wet season, where temperatures can fall to 12C at night

[12].As well as this the stove can also improve the well-being of its users by saving

them money. It is designed to be cheaper than traditional paraffin stoves and by

using a fuel which is a natural raw material, available free as a by-product of the

cocoa farming industry around which the community centers, the inhabitants are not

required to purchase paraffin. This would save them a significant amount of money

considering that a litre of paraffin costs the equivalent of $0.32 when most people

living there will earn less than a dollar a day [13].Burning the cocoa husks also acts to

aid waste removal in the area. It is estimated that every year around 1.5 million tons

of cocoa pods husks are wasted in Nigeria alone[14]

and in many case the farmershave to actually pay to have this waste removed which means they often just leave it


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accumulate. Using the husks as fuel thermally decomposes them into ash which is

far more easily managed and research also indicates that this ash may have the

added benefit of being a possible fertilizer for crops [15]. This would be a significant

aid to the farmers quality of life as they can use the ash to help improve their crops

yields, both of cocoa pods and the crops they grow outside of the cocoa harvest

season, thus increasing their potential profit. It was for this reason that it was

ensured that the stove had an ash tray beneath the fire in order to collect the ash

produced.

While this stove is designed for a specific community, it is also suitable for many

areas, from just those within Nigeria, to ones across Africa and even the rest of the

world. The design is not too constricted and can be adapted to be run on other types

of biomass available in other communities. In addition, the use of cocoa husks is

very sustainable and a truly viable option for years to come as figures suggest that

for the next thirty years at least, production of this crop is expected to continue at an

ever increasing rate [16]. By increasing awareness of the idea of using cocoa pod

husks as fuel, there is also a chance that the idea will become more popular in a

world where the importance of environmentally friendly energy is ever growing in

prominence. There is even the possibility that, if the idea really catches on, the

farmers in communities such as Iloro-Idanre will be able to sell the cocoa pods as

well as their much desired seeds, and though this would not be likely to bring in huge

amounts of revenue it would still go a notable way towards improving the quality of

life of its inhabitants.

In general, if this stove were to be provided for the community of Iloro-Idanre,

then it would hopefully make significant improvements to the quality of life and well-

being of its inhabitants. With a change to their way of life as simple as using a new

cooking technology the health, prosperity and future of these people would be

greatly enhanced.


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Design proposal for the Cooking Stove:


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Appendix:

[1] - Bioenergy Andagriculture: Promises and Challenges for Food, Agriculture, and

the Environment

Bioenergy in Developing Countries: Experiences and Prospects

Daniel m. Kammen

[2] - A Visit to a Cocoa-Growing Community in Nigeria

Joseph C. Anikwe,

Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria

[3] - Gender and Energy in the South: A Perspective from Southern Africa

Hesphina Rukato

[4] - Small-Scale Production and Use of Liquid Biofuels in Sub-Saharan Africa:

Perspectives for Sustainable Development

Energy and Transport Branch Division for Sustainable Development

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs

[5] - Comparative Performance of Gel Fuel Stoves

Norman Mhazo

Development Technology Centre, University of Zimbabwe

[6] - Solutions to the practical problems of feeding cocoa-pods to ruminants

O.B. Smith

Department of Animal Science

Obafemi Awolowo University

Ile - Ife, Nigeria

[7] - Waste and by-products of cocoa in breeding: Research synthesis

Bouafou Kouam Guy Marcel1*, Konan Brou Andr2, Dally Thodore2, Kati-

Coulibally Sraphin2

[8] - MementolAgromone

Ministere de la Cooperation Francaise,1993,

[9] -http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/wood-biomass-combustion-heat-d_440.html

[10]Thermal energy storage systems and applications,

Ibrahim Diner and Marc. A. Rosen, 2001

[11] -http://moringafact.com/moringa-project-summary-in-2011/

[12] -http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Africa/Nigeria-CLIMATE.html
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/wood-biomass-combustion-heat-d_440.htmlhttp://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/wood-biomass-combustion-heat-d_440.htmlhttp://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/wood-biomass-combustion-heat-d_440.htmlhttp://moringafact.com/moringa-project-summary-in-2011/http://moringafact.com/moringa-project-summary-in-2011/http://moringafact.com/moringa-project-summary-in-2011/http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Africa/Nigeria-CLIMATE.htmlhttp://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Africa/Nigeria-CLIMATE.htmlhttp://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Africa/Nigeria-CLIMATE.htmlhttp://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Africa/Nigeria-CLIMATE.htmlhttp://moringafact.com/moringa-project-summary-in-2011/http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/wood-biomass-combustion-heat-d_440.html


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[13] -http://www.pppra-nigeria.org/articledetails.asp?ArticleID=13

[14] - Utilization of Cocoa Pod Husk for the Removal of Remazol Black B Reactive

Dye from Aqueous Solutions: Kinetic, Equilibrium and Thermodynamic Studies.

Olugbenga Solomon Bello, Mohd Azmier Ahmad and Tan Tong Siang, 2011.

Trends in Applied Sciences Research, 6: 794-812.

[15] - Effect of Cocoa Pod Ash and Poultry Manure Combinations on Soil

and Plant Nutrient Contents and Performance of Maize Screenhouse

Experiment

Adeleye, E.O and *Ayeni L.S.

[16] - Resource and technology assessment of cocoa pod husk for cogeneration

Frimpong, Samuel Oteng
http://www.pppra-nigeria.org/articledetails.asp?ArticleID=13http://www.pppra-nigeria.org/articledetails.asp?ArticleID=13http://www.pppra-nigeria.org/articledetails.asp?ArticleID=13http://www.pppra-nigeria.org/articledetails.asp?ArticleID=13

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