Traditional cooking method, the open fire.
Goodshoot/Thinkstock
It's definitely not news that the use of firewood or charcoal for cooking is one of the most inefficient and environmentally destructive habits that persists in rural areas around the developing world.
We've seen some clever cookstoves developed to help combat this problem, and right now, some students from Dartmouth are joining in.
Part of a group called Humanitarian Engineering Leadership Projects (HELP), the students are in Tanzania continuing a project started last year to introduce the rocket stove, which burns cleaner than traditional stoves and uses significantly less wood.
They're blogging about the trip for Scientific American, where they describe the basics of the stove:
It takes advantage of the fact that 70 percent of the heat energy you get out of a piece of wood when it burns is from the heat-activated gasses that vaporize off the wood (that's what's happening when you see flames). The rocket stove has a short (30-centimeter) combustion chamber that concentrates the gasses coming off the wood producing a tall flame that reaches from the wood to the bottom of the pot, limiting radiation losses and permitting more efficient heat transfer.
Compare that with a traditional stove built on an open fire (pictured above), and it's pretty clear which one comes out on top.
