Four Cooking Stove Designs That Can Save The World

3 billion people's health is at risk is simply because of how they cook their food. Smoke inhalation from burning wood or charcoal over an open pit leads to 1.9 million premature deaths a year, mostly among women and children who are often home all day. A movement is underfoot to replace those open fires with high-tech but low cost biomass stoves that promise to revolutionize rural health care, significantly reduce deforestation and even curb global warming. We take a closer look at four of these stoves and how the manufacturers are not just in pursuit of the perfect design but how an intense campaign is underway to get these stoves to those who need them the most.

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The technology is dubbed the rocket stove, a seemingly simple device that has a large vertical cylinder to hold a pot and an opening at the bottom to feed the combustible biomass to efficiently cook a meal or pasteurize drinking water. While the concept has been proven to be simple, effective and best of all cheap, studies in fluid dynamics, geometry, and advanced materials are leading to very efficient high-tech designs which can reduce the smoke by 95 percent.

Add to that the fact that fuel consumption is reduced by half, which helps to curb expenses for families and slows the clearing of forests just for cooking fuel. All of theses factors make these stoves essential for the long term sustainability of a significant portion of the world population. These stoves are precision technologies that are far superior to homemade stoves, and they are designed to be affordable for even the poorest in the world with prices as low as $15 a unit.

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