International Stove Design Consulting and Training
There are many fine organizations around the world who are working to mitigate the problems associated with burning biomass for fuel (e.g. indoor air pollution, deforestation and global warming). ARC puts its decades of experience to work for these organizations by providing open-source access to the latest research and cutting edge technology.
For the projects that focus on manufacturing stoves locally, ARC provides support and resources on several levels, including:
- Design and implementation strategies are taught to a wide range of participants, from technically experienced project stakeholders to lay participants and the local cooks themselves.
- Technical assistance is provided from project inception to manufacturing scale-up.
- Expert training, education and implementation plans have been developed based on over thirty years of experience.
From teaching large seminars to governmental and non-governmental organizations, to working with indigenous peoples in village settings, ARC is well prepared and highly adaptable to the various challenges of working in foreign locations and cultures, unfamiliar circumstances, and in unusual work environments.
Some examples of successful projects and trainings include:
- Guatemala - Developing the HELPS International molded cement cooking stove with Don O'Neal.
- Honduras - Working with Trees, Water, & People, and Northwest Medical Teams to train NGOs, and implement the first improved “Justa” stoves in the country.
- Nicaragua - Working with Prolena to develop their highly successful Ecostove, and introducing the Justa stove in Nicaragua.
- South Africa - Working with GTZ to develop a rocket stove for the region.
- Uganda, Lesotho, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia - Training commercial producers to implement institutional stoves and bread ovens for GTZ.
- Kenya - Working with Winrock International developing institutional rocket stoves.
- India - Providing technical assistance to Shell Foundation on an improved cook stove project being manufactured and distributed on a large scale.
- Ghana - Taught water boiling tests and kitchen performance tests to local stove builders.
- United States Stove Camp - Held for the past four years at Aprovecho. A week long intensive stove design training involving graduate students, professors, and stove designers from around the world.
- The USEPA Partnership for Clean Indoor Air - Aprovecho consultants have been asked to teach workshops from anywhere between 5 and 250 participants to share all aspects of stove design and testing. Most recently ARC led Day 2 on stove testing at the biannual PCIA forum in Kampala, Uganda.
The experience of working with a wide array of stove design projects from concept, to prototype, testing, and final design modifications, has given ARC's staff the ability to quickly diagnose and fix design problems that can lead to much greater efficiency, cleaner combustion, and most importantly, adoption by the end user.
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ARC is featured in a new article about the pressing problems in the world that improved cook stoves address. Read the article in the recent issue of the New Yorker Magazine.
