The Daily IIJ

CHARCOAL is increasingly becoming a scarce commodity and is not only contributing to serious environmental problem like deforestation and soil erosion among other challenges but also pauses serious health hazards like diseases associated with respiratory systems.

Careful energy management is important for the poor households who approximately spend a third of limited income on energy. Therefore a reduction in cost by promoting use of energy efficient stoves and recycling of organic/ biodegradable waste materials will help in realization of cutting energy costs.
Ugastove is one of the companies in East Africa that produces shielded rocket stove. This type of stove provides wood saving of at least 50 percent. The stove can be produced sustainable using the local resources and expertise. It can be done with access to simple materials and training.
Uganda Stove Manufacturers Ltd (UGASTOVE) was until last year called Urban Community Development Agencies Ltd (UCODEA) a company engaged in the production and dissemination of various kinds of biomass technologies among which include improved energy saving stoves for households, institutional saving stoves for institutions (both fixed and portable), baking ovens, incinerators and charcoal briquettes.
According to Chief Executive Officer of Ugastove Ltd, Hajji Mohammed Kawere, low efficiency and high stove body temperature means that one will have to use a lot more charcoal to get the food cooked when using the traditional metal stove.
Kawere said reduce charcoal consumption, and cost savings for regular families using UGASTOVEs, is the most pronounced social benefit of this type of stove.  Due to increasing demand and an unsustainable supply chain, the price of charcoal in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, has doubled.
While these stoves significantly reduce green house gas emissions, they simultaneously provide co-benefits to users and families in the form of relief from high fuel costs and reduced exposure to health damaging airborne pollutants.
He added that the traditional metal stove is risky especially when it comes to children around it, because any touch on a metal heated to 463.5º C means serious damage.
He said new shielded rocket stove technology, aimed at reduction in dependence on wood fuel and carbon emission, which contributes to reduction of the negative impacts of climate change.
The shielded rocket stove has greatly contributed to understanding of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of ensuring environmental sustainability, which has its target to halve by 2015, especially when it comes to air pollution.
Kawere said majority of people are low-income earners, this results mainly rely on wood and charcoal for their daily cooking.
“Most people in urban and rural areas still rely on the ancient technology like use of the three stones and sigiri (charcoal cooking stove) which not only consume a lot of firewood and charcoal but also poses serious health hazards in form of air pollution.
The use of shielded rocket stove will reduce dependence on wood fuel and carbon emission, which contributes to reduction of the negative impacts of climate change and will promote energy saving and increase efficiency of biomass energy production and utilization, which will raise people’s living standards through promotion of less indoor polluting biomass technologies such as improved energy saving stoves and ovens and conservation of the environment.
Some three billion people around the globe burn biomass as a source of energy for instance dung, wood, crop residues and coal indoor for home cooking and heating. The number of people using the fuels is expected to rise substantially by 2020. According to the World Health Organization this wide- spread use of biomass results in the premature death of an estimated 1.6 million people each year from breathing elevated levels of indoor smoke, with women and children being most significantly affected.
Indoor Air pollution from house hold energy ranks as the forth leading healthy risk in poor developing countries, according to the World Health Report. Breathing elevated levels of indoor smoke from home cooking and heating practices more than doubles a child’s risk of serious respiratory infection and may also be associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes. (Still birth & low weight babies).
In response to this challenge, founding governments and organizations launched the partnership for Clean Indoor Air at the World Summit for sustainable development in Johannesburg in September 2002
The shielded rocket stove is made of two parts, the metal cladding and an insulation lining. Metal cladding is made out of galvanized steel sheet, gauge 2mm and it has two layers (inner and outer). Insulating materials are used to separate the two layers so that not much heat gets to the outer layer.
The stove also has top ring made out of 2.5mm gauge iron sheet plus a flat bar of 2mm.
Insulation lining.
The stove has a firebox made of pumice bricks, vermiculite, high and low temperature and sodium silicate. All the heat from the wood fire is contained within combustion chamber and directed to the cooking vessel. It has no chimney but no smoke can be realized in the space. A shelf inside the elbow of the combustion chamber allows just enough air pass under the wood. This ensures optimal airflow into the combustion chamber to maintain temperatures necessary for complete combustion of all the flue gases from the wood.
Any smoke drawn through the flame combusts before it gets to the surface of the cooking vessel, thus raising the fuel efficiency of the stove.
Apart from the stove above, this company also make saucepan made out of stainless steel gauge 1.5 mm, this is because the size of the cooking source pan has to match the stove. The normal aluminum saucepan can not stand the heat of shielded rocket stove, because normal aluminum melts at 927 ºC.
The prices of these stoves vary from 10,000 to 4,800,000. Ugandan shillings. This is because the company produces stoves from household to institutions levels. The major markets are Makerere University, Uganda Peoples Defense Force (UPDF), schools such as Gayaza Junior, Buddo Junior, Erina Bright Nursery and Primary Schools, Kireka SDA, St. Mbuga Primary, Nsambya Junior, Nsambya secondary Schools, St. Johns secondary – Kazo and individual users.