Rocket Stove Aprovecho Research Center

Originally designed by Dr. Larry Winiarski and the Aprovecho Research Center, the Rocket Stove paved the way for high efficiency biomass stoves. Over 10,000 designs based on Rocket Stove principles have been introduced into over 30 developing countries on five continents.

The stove’s central element is the “Rocket Elbow,” a hollow, L-shaped shaft made of ceramic, clay or metal. The “elbow” sits within a metal or brick container and the space around the elbow filled with insulation such as pumice rock. The stove reaches temperatures above 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit, consuming most of the smoke and gases generated by the fire.

In Uganda, Apovecho is implementing a Rocket Stove suitable for the large-scale cooking needs of institutions. In Honduras, Aprovecho, Trees, Water and People, and AHDESA, are developing micro-enterprise by training artisans and vendors to build and sell Rocket Stoves.

Aprovecho Research Center

PROLENA EcoStove
Aprovecho Research Center, Trees Water People, PROLENA Nicaragua

The PROLENA EcoStove is the continued evolution of Rocket Elbow technology. Born out of a partnership between Trees, Water & People, Aprovecho Research Center and PROLENA Nicaragua, the portable EcoStove is mass-produced in a factory in Managua, Nicaragua. In the past four years over 4,000 EcoStoves have been produced and installed across Nicaragua. The EcoStove model has been replicated in countries throughout Latin America. (more…)

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How is SELF helping to power small villages all over the developing world?
We use photovoltaics as the primary technology - solar cells that convert sunlight directly into electricity without burning any fossil fuels. This technology has been around since the 1950s, when NASA developed it to power satellites in space. Over the last few decades, there has been a steady advance in the efficiency with which these cells convert sunlight to electricity and in improved manufacturing processes, which help to lower their production costs. It has reached a point now where we can visit rural villages all over the world, places that have little hope of ever being connected to a conventional electric grid any time soon, and install panels directly on the homes, schools and clinics and generate clean solar electricity.

Two billion people still live in the dark. How can solar energy help to bring electricity to the entire world population?
Photovoltaics offer many benefits to the developing world. Because the panels can be quickly installed in very remote areas, you have an opportunity to bring immediate relief at the household level. This is what we did as a primary mission during our first decade; we focused on household lights using typically 50 watt systems, which generate enough power to run three or four lights, a radio and a couple of appliances in the home. As a result, we noticed a rapid increase in the quality of life. No longer were these people breathing in toxic kerosene fumes, children were studying and reading at night, and entire families were engaged in productive activities during the evening hours.

How does SELF financially assist the families acquire these solar home systems?
Even though we’re a non-profit organization, we did not believe that giving the systems away outright was a smart thing to do. On the other hand, asking families to pay $400 or more in cash for a solar home system is just prohibitively expensive. So we used micro-credit and other innovative forms of financing that would allow these families in developing countries to pay for and take ownership of these solar electric systems over a period of time. We proved through a series of pilot projects in about eleven countries that if you can provide the access to credit, rural credit, many of these families who are already spending five dollars or in some cases ten dollars a month on candles, kerosene, and small dry cell batteries to power radios, that they were able and willing to pay for solar electricity. (more…)

Solar Mission Project
EnviroMission Limited
Schlaich Bergermann and Partner

The Solar Mission Project is a one kilometre tall solar thermal tower intended for construction in the Australian dessert by 2006. The 200 megawatt tower would generate power 24 hours per day and provide energy for 200, 000 homes and abate over 700,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases annually. A prototype constructed in Manzanares, Spain successfully produced power throughout a three-year trial period.

Sunlight hits the glass roof surrounding the solar chimney heating the air and earth underneath along with water-filled tubes. The air is then forced by the laws of physics (hot air rises) to move as a wind up through the chimney. This air rises through wind turbines inside the chimney generating electricity. When the sun is obscured by clouds or has set for the night, the water-filled tubes and earth release stored heat generating airflow to drive the turbines.

In 2002 Time Magazine voted Solar Tower Technology one of the best inventions of the year.

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Rick, tell me about C60.
C60 is also known as the “buckyball”. Imagine a soccer ball with its seams arranged in a pattern of pentagons and hexagons. If you sit and count the vertices, you’ll find that there are precisely 60 of them - just like the carbon 60 molecule. 60 is a remarkable number. It turns out that it is the largest number of objects you can arrange around the surface of a sphere and have each be identical to every other one by a simple rotation. 60 also has more integral factors than any other number, and any range of numbers, if 60 is inside that range or some multiple of 60. It is this factorability of 60 that gave the Babylonians reason to use it as the basis of their number system. And it’s reason that around the world we divide the hour into 60 minutes and the minute into 60 seconds.

What sort of special genius does the carbon atom have wired into it?
Carbon has a genius for forming a one-atom-thick membrane, the sheet of which graphite is made. In this graphite sheet - called graphine - each carbon atom is connected to just three others, very much like the vertices in the hexagonal mesh of chicken wire. In graphite, carbon stays defiantly 2D in a 3D world. Carbon is the key connective entity in organic molecules and there’s a way of binding its atoms together that not only gives you the versatility of organic chemistry but also magnificent electrical conductivity in the form of buckytubes, which are the best conductors of electricity of any molecule that we’ve ever discovered. The buckytube is for electrons what a single node optic fibre is for photons. It’s a single node wave-guide for the transmission of electrons.

I understand your research group at Rice University has the motto “If it ain’t tubes we don’t do it.”
That’s right! And we’ve recently formed The Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory whose tag line is “We’re going to make buckytubes be all that they can be.” (more…)