Biomass Cook Stoves

A biomass cook stove is heated by burning wood, charcoal, animal dung or crop residue. Cook stoves are commonly used for cooking and heating food in developing countries.

Households in developing countries consume significantly less energy than those in developed countries; however, over 50% of the energy is for cooking food. The average rural family spends 20% or more of its income purchasing wood or charcoal for cooking. The urban poor also frequently spend a significant portion of their income on the purchase of wood or charcoal.

Cooking over a traditional open fire or mud stove can cause increased health problems brought on from the smoke, particularly lung and eye ailments, but also birth defects. The health problems associated with cooking using biomass in traditional stoves affect women and children most strongly, as they spend the most time near the domestic hearth. Replacing the traditional 3-rock cook stove or mud stove with an improved one and venting the smoke out of the house through a chimney can significantly improve a family’s health.

Deforestation and erosion often result from harvesting wood for cooking fuel. The main goal of most improved cooking stoves is to reduce the pressure placed on local forests by reducing the amount of wood the stoves consume, and to reduce the negative health impacts associated with exposure to toxic smoke from traditional stoves.

The traditional method of cooking is on a three-stone cooking fire or on a mud stove. The three-stone fire is the cheapest stove to produce, requiring only three suitable stones of the same height on which a cooking pot can be balanced over a fire. However, this cooking method also has problems:

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