Lead Contact:
fcdavidhsu [at] gmail [dot] com
Project Information
An Engineers Without Borders project team, under the direction of Professor Tami Bond, is currently developing a small, economical field emissions sensor that will measure carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), and particulate matter (PM) concentrations, providing real-time data on combustion efficiency.
Brief Background Information on Stoves:
Three billion people world-wide use solid fuel, biomass and coal, to meet their cooking and heating needs. The particulate emissions from these stoves are responsible for a number of diseases, primarily childhood pneumonia and acute respiratory infections in adult women. Conservative estimates indicate that solid fuel combustion was responsible for nearly 2 million deaths and 53 million disability-adjusted life years annually (DALYs), establishing indoor air pollution as the eighth largest contributor to the global burden of disease. One response to the problem is the replacement of traditional stoves with fuel- and combustion-efficient improved stoves, with the aim to reduce respiratory disease and deforestation.
The success of cookstoves as a solution to air pollution and illness requires the ability to monitor emissions and determine their causes. High costs and limited mobility of testing equipment prohibit wide-scale dissemination. The NGOs developing improved cookstoves cannot account for emissions attributions in their design, limiting the potential benefits of these stoves to human health and environmental sustainability.
