Rocket Innovations
- Posted by e4 on July 16th, 2008 filed in Food: Preparing It, General
Regular readers probably know that I think the rocket stove is a pretty interesting concept. With minimal materials, you can basically create a stove-type burner that burns small sticks and scrap wood at pretty high temperatures. Almost all of the heat from combustion goes straight to the cooking area, which means very little fuel is required. And because of the high-temperature, fast burn, there’s very little smoke.
Well, there are some pretty interesting designs coming out of the low-mass, high-temp rocket stove concept. This design from Pakistan creates a cooktop with room for two pots which drop down into the combustion area to force heat across the sides of the pot instead of just underneath. It also has a warming cavity underneath, for drying and storing firewood, or for keeping food warm.
But this kind of innovation is not unique. Variations are being manufactured all over the world, often built to echo whatever a local traditional stove looks like, or whatever the local cooking methods dictate.
Check out the whole line of Ecofogao stoves out of Brazil. Or the PROLEÑA EcoStove from Nicaragua. Or the Henya stove from Kenya. And the Kuni Mbili stove, also from Kenya. (
Kuni mbili apparently means “two pieces of wood.”) Or this one from Malawi. Or this one from Mexico.
To me, it’s exciting to see a small but significant innovation being adopted and modified all over the world.
Well, all over most of the world. I haven’t seen too many of these showing up in my neck of the woods…
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August 18th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
It isn’t quite the same thing, but have you checked out the volcano stove? Albert Bates talked about it on his site. I was reading about water storage and kept reading. Under a post about the Farm he said he used them. I think it was Volcanostoves.com. What do you think?