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Last edited: 7 September 2024
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An example of a manufactured improved combustion Rocket Stove
This photo illustrates the amount of fuel needed using a traditional three-stone fire (left) compared to a Ben 2 improved-combustion stove (right).
Improved combustion stoves can be valuable companions to solar cookers as part of the Integrated Cooking Method. Some can be easily constructed from low-cost materials such as bricks and concrete blocks, while other designs are offered as finished manufactured stoves.
They burn small pieces of wood or other biomass very efficiently, greatly reducing the amount of fuel required. The fire burns very hot, which eliminates much of the smoke typical of open fires.
Although the level of smoke produced is reduced, there is still a risk of respiratory illness when used indoors, or with the constant attention required to feed more fuel to the stove.
Gasifiers are versions of improved combustion stoves that are designed to burn the gases given off from biomass fuel in a low oxygen environment, without actually burning the fuel itself. This is the process used to make charcoal. Gasifier stoves have an inner chamber with the fuel, and an outer chamber with venting to provide combustion air for the burning of the gases released from the fuel, typically near the top of the stove.
The advantages of gasifier stoves include economic fuel consumption and low carbon monoxide (CO) and particulate emissions. Disadvantages can include the necessity of having a uniformly dried fuel source (possibly biomass pellets or briquettes), and the inability to add more fuel during the cooking cycle. Windy conditions can create problems with maintaining an even draft through the stove. Bernhard Müller has written an excellent explanation of how gasifier stoves work and are constructed. See: Gasifiers
News[]
- September 2024: Improved combustion stoves used indoors need flue venting to safeguard health -Aprovecho Research Center
- 25-27 January 2019 (Kirkland, Washington, USA): (ETHOS) Cookstoves Conference 2019 - Engineers in Technical and Humanitarian Opportunities of Service. More information...
- May 2015: Dieter Seifert reports: Today I have made tests with the Ben 2 and Ben 3 Firewood Stoves. It is almost unbelievable, but the efficiency is always higher than 40% and if one does not heat up too fast (i.e., the power under 1.5 kW is), the result is almost no smoke and approximately 350 g thin wooden sticks can bring 6 liters of water to a boil in 25 minutes. Of course cooking is much more convenient with a large parabolic solar cooker (We have used the AlSol 1.4 for many years.). The Ben ovens are so easy to prepare (2 sheets provided with holes and bending, drilling a ring and three legs and turn, turn 4 bars hairpin-shaped and assemble everything) that the cost in firewood crisis regions would be well below $10 USD. The combination of heat-retention cooking and improved combustion stoves with the solar cooker is ideal. The solar cooker can do much more than just cooking. It is a peace-creating technology that is so urgently needed.
Diagram showing the role the solar dryer plays in helping produce dried fruits, vegetables, and briquettes for fuel-efficient cookstoves.
- December 2014: Joshua Guinto, a specialist with appropriate technologies has provided an update on recovery developments in the Philippines in the wake of typhoon Haiyan. Their focus has been providing solar dryers to dry fruits and vegetables, as wells to dry wood for bio-char and briquette production for use in improved combustion stoves. Read more at: The Approtech Training for Salcedo Eastern Samar - Joshua Guinto, November 2014
- November 2014: The Impact of the co2balance Cookstoves in Bugasera, Rwanda - co2balance
- November 2014: Comprehensive report on heat-retention cooking prepared by Dieter and Imma Seifert: Notes on Fireless Cooking - Cooking With Retained Heat - Dieter and Imma Seifert
- September 2014: The article Factors Influencing Household Uptake of Improved Solid Fuel Stoves in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Qualitative Systematic Review was recently provided by the WASHplus Project. SCI newsletter editor, Patricia McArdle has responded with several observations and questions in the Discussion Section.
- January 2014: Volunteers for Bolivia Inti-Sud Soleil, Michel Perrin and Jacques Prévost, have recently finished a comparative test of ten various biomass stoves. It can be reviewed here: Tests D'E'Bullition D'eau
Articles in the media[]
- December 2017: Can these 'stoves' finally crack the clean cooking problem? - Devex
- Well-Tended Fires Outperform Modern Cooking Stoves - Low-Tech Magazine
Reports[]
- 2014 Barriers to Cookstoves, Household Energy Network
- 2013: Peace Corps Improved Cookstoves Manual
- June 2016: Health and Climate-Relevant Pollutant Concentrations from a Carbon-Finance Approved Cookstove Intervention in Rural India - Ther W. Aung, et al
Construction plans[]
- Ben 2 and Ben 3 Firewood Stoves
- Hobo Stove Gasifier
- How to make Sri Lanka's Anagi II Stove, 2015
- Plans for Making a Fuel-Efficient Wood Stove from the Association for Humanitarian Development in Pakistan
- See also the other construction videos listed below:
Audio and video[]
The "4 Block" Rocket Stove! - DIY Rocket Stove - (Concrete Cinder Block Rocket Stove) - Simple DIY
Rocket Stove Ideas 33 - Brick Box Rocket Stove
Pekka Leskela explains how his brick Rocket style stove works and is assembled.
Clean Cooking Stoves for Vietnamese farmers - November 2012
Vietnam Solar Serve has designed their version of a double-wall stove that allows for a secondary burn, which allows for more complete combustion and creates more heat.
Images[]
See also[]
- Remarks on Stove Technologies - Dieter Seifert
- Hobo Stove Gasifier
- Gasifier
- Rocket Stove
- Ben 2 and Ben 3 Firewood Stoves
- Integrated Cooking Method
- Aprovecho Research Center
- Baba Moto Stove
- Plans for Making a Fuel-Efficient Wood Stove from the Association for Humanitarian Development in Pakistan
- An Investigation of Skirts - Dale Andreatta and Alex Wohlgemuth
- Report on Oaxaca, Mexico Project With Photos Showing the Construction of Rocket Stoves From Various Materials
- Cookstove Fuel Consumption Evaluation Guidelines
- Darfur Stove
- Vesto Stove
- Biomass briquettes
- Photovoltaic cooking
- Estufas en Imágenes
External links[]
- Baba Moto improved combustion wood stove - (English version)
- BTUs contained in different wood species
- ENVIROFIT - 2016 Product Overview
- Rocket Stoves, Boilers and Patsari cookstove - Haiti Reconstruction
- Possible Stove Options for Haiti A review of the Lucia, Stove Team International, and Stovetec stoves.
- Campus Center for Appropriate Technology (CCAT) demonstration rocket stove, Humboldt State University, California.
- Sierra Zip on zzstove site
- How to make a simple type of rocket stove on Pyro-energen site
- Grover Rocket Stove, Stockstorage selling site
- Improved Cooking Stove (ICS) use in Nepal. From the Nepalese Centre for Rural Technology. A historic of the development of these stoves in Nepal, and succinct technical specifications. 5 pages.
- A long list of organizations (with links) that work with improved biomass cookstoves
- Institutional Rocket Stove Manual
- The Institutional Rocket Stove Design Tool allows you to produce detailed designs for three different types of institutional rocket stoves. You specify pot and material dimensions, and the tool generates a custom set of Rocket Stove plans.
Clean Cooking Alliance site:
Aprovecho site:
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