By Jerry Brown
A simple $25 cook stove developed by Colorado State University is improving human health and the environment in parts of the Third World.
The stoves were designed and developed at CSU’s Engines & Energy Conversion Laboratory (EECL). It’s located in a building near the main campus that used to be the home of Fort Collins’ main power plant.
In parts of India, Africa, Asia and South America, families cook their meals over fire pits or rudimentary wood-burning stoves.
“It’s a huge human health problem,” Dr. Morgan DeFoort, EECL co-director, said during a recent interview at the lab. “It’s also a huge environmental problem.”
“We now have easily half a billion people who desperately need a cook stove,” DeFoort added.
To address the problem, DeFoort said, EECL developed a simple but durable and efficient stove that fits the cooking style of families throughout the Third World.
The stoves are marketed and sold by Envirofit International, a nonprofit spinoff of the lab. Envirofit currently sells about 10,000 stoves a month -- more than a quarter million in all.
“So we now have lots and lots of people breathing cleaner air, families breathing cleaner air, because of this device,” DeFoort said.
Health improvements aren’t the only benefit, though. There’s also an environmental benefit.
“We have deforestation and unsustainable harvesting of wood that’s leading to global impacts on greenhouse gas emissions,” DeFoort said.
EECL focuses on “large, global problems around energy and combustion where we can have an impact,” DeFoort said. “Cook stoves is certainly one of those areas.”
The stove developed by the lab reduces fuel consumption by about 50 percent and reduces harmful emissions by 50 to 70 percent, DeFoort said.