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Rice As Fuel?

Posted on December 14, 2008 by Manasi Sharma
New energy-efficient stoves running off rice husks are helping poor Philippino rice farmers Photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigberto/2680751025/">Shubert Ciencia (flickr)</a>
New energy-efficient stoves running off rice husks are helping poor Philippino rice farmers Photo: Shubert Ciencia (flickr)

Thanks to a new safe, clean and less-expensive stove that runs off rice husks, Philippine farmers will now be able to save more than $150 a year on fuel.

More than a third of the world's population can't afford basic propane or other petroleum-based cooking fuels. Using rice husks to generate fuel avoids using smoke and toxic fume-emitting sources such as wood and charcoal to cook food.

The other benefit is that rice husks are cheap. In the Philippines for example, farmers only spend 20 cents a day to run the rice-powered stove.

Companies are now manufacturing thousands of rice-powered stoves in the Philippines, Indonesia and Cambodia.

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Tue, 12/16/2008 - 16:41 — Julie (not verified)

Reading this post immediately

Reading this post immediately after the Watercone one, I immediately thought of this NY Times magazine article, "Necessity is the Mother of Invention" (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0CE7D8113BF933A05752C1A...) , about an MIT professor teaching an engineering class on how to invent low-budget/free practical labor-saving devices for the rural poor. With the last link especially, it's interesting to see how companies are rethinking and remarketing their products based on an extremely large, somewhat ignored population.

On a similar note, have you heard of the human waste methane stoves?

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