I left the Modi lab last February and moved home to West Africa to introduce energy efficient firewood stoves in Millennium Village sites. This job is two pronged. The first phase involves comparing the performance of manufactured cookstoves against the traditional 3-stone fire used in most Millennium Villages while the second phase is the creation of a cooperative or association of vendors who will establish a self-sustaining business importing and selling these stoves.

This series of posts will consider lessons learned from my time in Pampaida and Ikaram – both Millennium Villages in Nigeria.

Lesson 1: Community ownership.

The site teams in Pampaida and Ikaram made it abundantly clear from the first day that this project would fail woefully unless we had the backing of both the community heads and opinion leaders within the village. So I spent my first week at each site meeting the community heads, showing them how the stoves work, and giving them a complete idea of what to expect in my three or so months with them. I tell them that we’ll spend about a month conducting cooking tests in 30 households to determine which  manufactured cookstove fits best within the community. Once our tests are completed and we know which stove the community prefers, we form a cooperative to act as the sales team. I explain that besides this being  a business opportunity for members of the community, these stoves will burn cleaner, save people up to 60% of what they spend annually on firewood, and save people time since the wood they collect will last longer while using these stoves.

After this introduction, 30 randomly selected households are presented with two manufactured cookstoves which they test for two weeks. Testers are encouraged to use these stoves daily so that they are comfortable using them when we return to perform Controlled Cooking Tests. This test allows us to determine how much wood each stove uses per kg of food cooked.

Many developing countries lack adequate energy infrastructure.High petrol fuel costs combine with distribution challenges to further aggravate energy access issues.Yet rugged, low-speed, stationary engines (like the Lister) are widely available throughout much of the developing world.It is very likely that straight vegetable oil (SVO) can be used as a sustainable fuel source in these engines.This fuel can be easily produced on site, by households and communities that could then use the energy generated from the SVO fueled engines.

Though a great deal of research has taken place in recent year on substantially chemically altering vegetable oil to create biodiesel, no formal research has been done to characterize the effects of SVO on these low-speed stationary engines.It is possible that the high viscosity of SVO, as well as other characteristics, may cause excessive wear and tear on the engine, but simple alterations to the engine, such as pre-heating the fuel, may reduce these issues.Further advantages of SVO combustion may include improved emissions characteristics.

Existing Infrastructure and Partnerships:

• Columbia University has installed a Lister engine lab complete with portable emissions test equipment on site at the NYC campus to support this research.
• Partnering with an indigenous Ugandan NGO (Pilgrim), Columbia has installed a biofuel field lab in rural Uganda, complete with an engine, SVO preheating kit, biodiesel reactor, and basic test equipment.
• Manhattan College, City College, and the Ugandan field lab have joined Columbia University in a formal research cooperative called the Biofuel Engine Longevity Test (BELT) in which each participant is performing a 500 hour Lister SVO-preheating longevity test.
• Nine local and international organizations from the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Africa have participated in an annual conference called Sustainable Power and Research Cooperative (SPaRC) hosted by the Columbia research group.Participants gathered to discuss the role of alternative and sustainable energy systems for international development.

Click here for more info on our Biofuel Engine Longevity Tests (BELT)

The power derived from mechanical engines can be used to grind grain, pump water, and generate electricity. These engines often run on diesel or gasoline. But in developing countries, diesel is often expensive and not easily accessible to people in remote villages far from petrol stations.

PhD student Matt Basinger and his team are working on modifying an engine to run on vegetable oil instead of diesel. This will enable remote villages to power their engines more reliably with locally grown products instead of fossil fuels.

The most common stationary diesel engines in rural Africa and India are single-cylinder, low-speed designs similar to the British Lister engine. They are older, purely mechanical designs popular for their reliability, longevity, and inexpensive price. Common engine sizes are between 5 and 16 horsepower, which can provide a community of 300 to 1500 people all of its agricultural and potable water processing.

Our progress so far: To get a diesel engine to run on vegetable oil, we need to significantly reduce its viscosity to levels as close to diesel’s as possible. To reach this viscosity, the vegetable oils need to be heated to a temperature greater than 200° F before entering the engine’s combustion chamber. To accomplish this preheating, we use waste heat being generated by the engine instead of electrical heating. This also maximizes the efficiency of the system.

What we’re busy with now: The Jatropha adoption study. Since jatropha could be a cheap form of vegetable oil, we’re studying the factors that affect whether or not people are willing to grow and use jatropha oil instead of diesel.