Many rural residents do not have access to sustainable sources of energy, especially for cooking. Current methods force villagers to crouch over small, make-shift, fires that burn wood, charcoal, and cow dung thereby causing health problems and an increase in air pollution. This project seeks to develop an improved cookstove using co-designing as a community-based participatory approach to generating a sustainable solution.
The Study/Innovation:
Students from the University of Manchester, U.K. worked on designing and implementing an improved cook stove in the tribal village of Guptapada, Orissa. Guided by Mr. Harish Mohan, AMMACHI Labs, they joined Amrita students from the Departments of Computer Science Engineering, Electronics and Communication Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering to conduct research on the difference between combustion and gasifier stoves and natural draft and forced draft gasifiers. Also, a co-design workshop was carried out with
several village women, thereby enabling them to discuss their cooking habits and the problems they face via cooking related activities as well as their main requirements for a new stove. A first level prototype was developed from the villagers’ design and subsequently tested.
