Wednesday, September 15, 2010

X Price Foundation, India Government,IIT Delhi Announce Partnership to Create Global Competition to Develop Clean Burning Cookstoves

Initiative would combat the serious problem of indoor air pollution, which kills more than one million people each year

The Basintuthu Stove (pronounced baa-sin-doo-too, "makes fire from smoke") is a stove designed to burn small diameter wood and twigs efficiently, combining preheated primary air, preheated secondary air and secondary combustion. This means that nearly all the available heat contained within the biomass fuel can be liberated. It also means there there is less smoke, particulate matter and Carbon Monoxide (CO) emitted, compared with most other stoves and open fires
The Basintuthu Stove (pronounced baa-sin-doo-too, "makes fire from smoke") is a stove designed to burn small diameter wood and twigs efficiently, combining preheated primary air, preheated secondary air and secondary combustion. This means that nearly all the available heat contained within the biomass fuel can be liberated. It also means there there is less smoke, particulate matter and Carbon Monoxide (CO) emitted, compared with most other stoves and open fires
The X PRIZE Foundation, an educational non-profit that designs and administers competitions with prizes of up to $30 million, the Government of India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) and the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi have formed a partnership to create a global competition to develop and deploy clean and efficient cookstoves. The competition will focus on the development of affordable and clean-burning cookstove technologies (and possibly delivery models) and is a part of the MNRE’s National Biomass Cookstoves Initiative, which was launched in December 2009. Details of the competition, including the announcement of the launch date, prize purse and competition guidelines are forthcoming. A study conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO)estimated that indoor air pollution was responsible for more than 1.6 million deaths worldwide in the year 2000, making it the second largest environmental contributor to ill health, behind unsafe water and sanitation. Additionally, the study found that when households are filled with smoke from inefficient stoves, exposure to these emissions increase the risks of developing pneumonia, cataracts, and tuberculosis. Furthermore, cookstoves generate products of incomplete combustion that are contributors to climate change.

Approximately 70% of Indian households — more than 160 million households, comprising about 770 million people – are estimated to depend on simple but polluting cookstoves that burn solid fuel, mainly wood or coal. It also is estimated that approximately 400,000 to 550,000 people – primarily women and children – die of the resulting indoor air pollution each year in the country. This makes the cookstoves problem in India and the potential market for cleaner cookstoves amongst the largest in the world.....
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