The new Residential Rocket Stove. ewbcu.org
DCL
The National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) combined with the support of the Lemelson Foundation provides $1.5 million to student and faculty programs and ventures annually. Today's featured project by the Engineers Without Borders Team at the University of Colorado at Boulder, is a more efficient stove design that will fix many of the problems associated with the stove designs currently being used in Rwanda.
Many areas throughout Africa are known for their lack of fuel for cooking, since supplies are particularly scarce in the more arid regions, such as Rwanda. Many people are forced to cut down trees in order to use the wood as a stove. These indoor fireplaces, as they most closely resemble, cause respiratory disease, degrades soil quality, soil stability, and contribute to extensive deforestation.
To alleviate this growing problem, the students from the University of Colorado at Boulder Engineers Without Borders Chapter have designed high-efficiency stoves that will better utilize Rwanda's limited resources, providing cleaner and more efficient cooking. The rocket stoves, as they are called, are made from all local materials, which will one day help to create microenterprises (small businesses) that will build and sell these stove models, helping to bring more financial stability to the area. These stoves are smokeless, offer a 70 percent reduction in firewood, and they are durable enough for daily use.
Currently the team of students is working on a new residential size stove, and writing a construction manual that will help the citizens of Rwanda build these stoves themselves. Testing will commence for the new smaller residential stove once the cold Colorado ground thaws enough to allow the concrete portion of these stove prototypes to be properly poured and set (pouring cement in cold weather is nearly impossible).
The entire CU Boulder team is made up of Christina Barstow, Christie Chatterley, Max Gold, Clarissa Hageman, and Darby Odell. The remainder of the team is made up of Rwandan partners, Jean Pierre Habanabakize, Peter Muligo, and Innocent. We were able to speak with Christie Chatterley further about the project:
