The study presented the research of an alternative fuel stove for household energy purposes. The stove design was addressed to a particular local context, the Logone valley at the border between Chad and Cameroon, where an international development cooperation project is working to improve the poor energy access of local population. The good availability of rice husk, a local agricultural by-product currently without any use neither value on the local market, suggested recovering this biomass for cooking purposes.
According to local socio-technical constraints a prototype of rice husk stove was designed and tested, in order to assess the best technical performances and to identify the most proper materials.
A rigorous Research & Development pathway was implemented in order to investigate in detail the operation of the mlc stove, result-ing in a final configuration with very reliable performances in terms of thermal efficiency (18%), boiling time (270) and duration(up to 700 with air regulation).