projectbrainsaver: Rocket Stove Design Base

Factory-built rocket stoves available in the US

Factory-built rocket stoves are available in the USA from EcoZoom . Check them out by clicking the image at left.
Burn Design Lab
If you are interested in developing a commercial cookstove business in the developing world, or if you would like to join our design team, please visit www.burndesignlab.org.

New Design Tool Launched for Constructing an Institutional Rocket Stove with Chimney

Thanks to funding from GTZ-HERA, Rocket Stove.org and Prakti Design Lab have developed a new automated tool that allows users to build a customized institutional rocket stove. The tool can be used to instantly design a brick or metal institutional rocket stove with or without chimney for any institutional pot (30 L + capacity) .

Click here to start designing your stove.

Due to the coding limitations of the Perl script , the tool can only be used with Firefox.

Many thanks to the individuals that worked on the tool: Julien Fortin wrote the Perl script; Hilawe Lakew wrote the Excel; our Ethos interns (Michael Naleid, Candida Crasto and Michael Braman) worked with GTZ-ECO to beta test and edit the manual in Ethiopia this past summer; and Peter Scott designed the stove and wrote the manual.

Institutional rocket stove test results published in Ethiopia

Click here for the latest test results from Ethiopia of the institutional rocket stove with and without chimney, as well as the tikikil/household rocket stove.

Internships available!

We are currently working on institutional rocket stoves (with chimneys) for Ethiopia, mass-produced household stoves for Kenya, charcoal stoves for Haiti and DRC, food dryers for Malawi, and tobacco curing systems for southern Africa and Asia. If you are interested in volunteering in the U.S. and potentially interning overseas in the next year, please click here to contact us .

Introducing Africa's first mass produced rocket stove: The Jiko Poa

Working with World Vision, Food for Hungry, and our local producers, Fine Engineering and Chujio Ceramics (who have over 20 years experience producing fuel-efficient jiko liners), we have created a stove that is starting a Kenyan cookstove revolution.

Feedback from the first 100 hundred sample stoves was very positive. Most of the women using the stove in peri-urban areas have switched from charcoal to wood, reducing their fuel costs by approximately 70%.

The project is producing 4000 stoves per month and on target to produce 6000 stoves per month by the end of the year! This stove is now available for sale in Kenya to outside groups.

Eco-Jiko Stove

The Eco-Jiko stove is the handmade version of the mass-produced Kenyan Jiko Poa stove.

Please contact us here to buy a copy or request more information.

Rocket Food Dryer 2.0

The Rocket Food Dryer is a hybrid wood powered/electric food dryer that has a maximum capacity of 100 kg of raw food (such as mangoes, tomatoes, pineapple, bananas, and mushrooms). It utilizes a small wood furnace and two 80 W electric fans. During tests in Malawi this year, the Rocket Dryer used 20 kg of eucalyptus over an 11 hour period to produce 6.9 kg of dried mango (the average wood: dried fruit ratio during trials was 2.94:1). This compares favorably to the existing system, which required ~1000 kg of wood to perform the same task.

Please contact us here to buy a copy or request more information.

Manuals for constructing the Eco-Jiko Stove and the Rocket Food Dryer 2.0 are now available upon request
The plans are being updated and should be available in the next few weeks.

Rocket stoves featured in New Yorker Magazine article

The December 21, 2009 issue of the The New Yorker magazine features a lengthy article by Burkhard Bilger, titled "Hearth Surgery". In the article, Bilger describes our struggle to bring improved cook stoves to the world, with detailed coverage of Aprovecho Research Center, stove camp, Peter Scott, and others. You can read a summary here.
Institutional rocket stove projects
Peter Scott/Aprovecho and GTZ/ProBEC were Ashdenfinalists in 2006 for their work in promoting institutional rocketstoves in Malawi. The Ashden Foundation produced a video as part of the2006 awards process.

Click the image to the left to view the video.

Rocketstove.org is currently collaborating with GTZ/HERA , GTZ/EAPUganda and GTZ/Sun-Energy Ethiopia to develop and disseminateInstitutional Rocket Stoves throughout Africa and the world.

Institutional rocket stove plans

A number of plans are currently available for constructing institutional rocket stoves:

There are several options for constructing brick or metal institutional stoves. For a complete list of design tools, go to the Institutional Stoves page.

Rocket tobacco curing barn

Although many people are not aware of the scope of the problem, tobacco production and curing is devastating the native forests of Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, and Malawi. It is estimated that over 110,000 ha of forest is lost each year.

Since 2005, we have been developing an improved tobacco curing system for small holder farmers in southern Africa. In 2007, field research conducted by GTZ/ProBEC showed that the rocket barn reduced fuel consumption by 50% and increased farmer income by approximately USD1300/p.a. This year in Malawi, Hestian Innovation will partner with Alliance One and Limbe Leaf to build approximately 1500 barns in the next 6 months.

Working with BAT and GTZ/EAPUganda, we are also prototyping a new and unique barn for Uganda.

Internship Opportunity! We are interested in placing interns in Malawi to help support the dissemination effort. If you are interested, let us know by clicking here.

Research Opportunity! If you are interested in helping in developing collaborative research projects with universities to study and improve the design of the rocket barn, let us know by clicking here.

Contact us for user guides and step-by-step plans for constructing rocket barns, available on a case-by-case basis.

Ashden Award for rocket stove mass production

Aprovecho Research Center (ARC) and ShengzhouStove Manufacturer (SSM), a Chinese manufacturer, are jointly the 2009 International Winner of the Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy for theirmass-production of environmentally friendly rocket cook stoves. The Global Energy Champions won £40,000 for their work.

Click the image to the left to view a video prepared by the Ashden Foundation about this award.

Buy a factory-made rocket stove

Household rocket stoves designed by Aprovecho Research Center and manufactured in China are now available for sale. Aprovecho has established a subsidiary, StoveTec, to distribute the stoves in the US, and has licensed EcoZoom to distribute them internationally. Peter Scott is working with EcoZoom to provide the stoves to international projects.

For more information, please contact Ben West at EcoZoom .

Rocket mass heaters: super efficient wood stoves you can build

Are you looking for a rocket stove heater you can build and snuggle up to? If you are, the book about how to build one, and the site about the book, can be found at www.rocketstoves.com.

We need your stories!

Do you have a rocket stove project? Please let us know about it so we can tell others about it here!

   Tell us about your project..

We need your support!

Rocketstove.org is a collaborative effort of many people who have aninterest in rocket stoves, their construction, their use, and theirbenefit to the planet.

Keeping this site going requires somespecialized skills that we simply have to buy. Editing new submissions,updating the web site, and developing and supporting our design toolsrequire a modest but necessary flow of funds.

If you can contribute to this flow, please do. Rocket stove users all over the world will benefit.

   Contribute...

Thanks to the Ashden Trust

Funding for development of the Institutional Stove Design Tool and part of the original funding for this web site were provided by the Ashden Trust.