| Summary: | Sauce (“Wot”) preparation and Injera baking using an open-fire stove are recurrent cooking activities in rural households in Ethiopia. The low thermal efficiency open-fire stove utilized huge quantities of fuel and caused high particulate matter exposure for cookers. A rocket stove is proposed and fabricated that burns commonly used biomass fuel. The Aprovecho Research Center design guiding principles were followed to develop the prototype. The overall performance of the model was tested using a water boiling test (WBT version 4.2.3) to confirm thermal efficiency improvement and air pollutant reduction compared to the conventional stove. Indoor air pollution (IAP) measuring apparatus was installed to record the carbon monoxide (CO) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) emission exposure of the cooker during the WBT test. The performance testing result of the model has shown an improved thermal efficiency of 32% compared to the three-stone stove (14%). The stove reduced CO concentration by 42% and PM2.5 concentration by 99.5% over the three-stone stove. The average concentration exposure for an hour (3.1 μg/m3 CO) of the new stove satisfies the World Health Organization indoor air quality standard. Furthermore, the stove showed a 43% reduction in specific fuel consumption (roughly 625 kg fuel saving/year/device). The fuel-saving achieved from the model resulted in the reduction of CO2 gas emissions by 1.3 tCO2/year. Therefore, it is assumed that the rocket stove has a considerable improvement over the open-fire stove and its timely development may enhance environmental care. Therefore, shifting the cooking technology from the conventional traditional cooking stove to rocket stoves could mitigate indoor air pollutant emissions and deforestation.
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