On a table in the offices of Vashon’s Burn Design Lab (BDL) sit two pots.
One, in the general style of East African cookware, has a flat bottom. The other has a rounded bottom more common to West African cookware.
They may not seem so different, but consider how differently they’ll cook on a stove, says BDL Communications Director Katie McRoberts; put a round pot on a flat stove and it “would lose so much efficiency.”
It’s not a hypothetical engineering problem, but rather, one of the many real world challenges that the BDL tackles in trying to build better stoves for the world.
Founded in 2010, the BDL, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit at the JT Sheffield campus, works with manufacturers and cooks around the world to make safer and environmentally friendly cooking devices.
Their Kuniokoa stove, developed for East African cooks, uses a flat surface. A BDL project starting last year seeks to modify that stove for the rounded pots, which come in different shapes and sizes. It’s under contract with Burn Manufacturing, a for-profit Africa-based corporation that shared its roots with BDL but is now entirely independent.
Roasting Shea
It’s their improved Shea roaster that has, more recently, put BDL in the news.
The machine produces Shea butter — a fat used in cooking, cosmetics and many other crafts — from Shea nuts.
The roaster — like many of BDL’s products — reduces fuel use and toxic emissions, meaning it saves resources and is healthier for its users (primarily women) in Ghana. It’s also built to use Shea cake, a byproduct of the roasting, as a fuel source itself — further reducing the fuel cost of the process.
“This is a livelihood,” BDL Executive Director Paul Means said. “People are roasting these Shea nuts … and it’s a way for them to have an income. And the women are having to work over an open fire, and a lot of smoke and heat.”
The roaster is ramping up manufacturing and marketing in West Africa now: “We’re only getting positive feedback,” Means said.
By the numbers, Shea roaster project engineer/manager Jeremy Su said, the roaster realizes 70 to 100% firewood use reduction, around a 50% increase in output efficiency, and up to a 70% reduction in exposure to unhealthy fine particulates.
The project has gone on for five years, said Su, surviving staff turnover, grant and partnership changes and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I am proud of our team, and of our perseverance, that has taken the project to where it is now, despite these setbacks,” Su said, who also lent his thanks to the team’s volunteers, donors, partners and supporters.
This summer, the Shea roaster was awarded at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Innovation Showcase, which includes financial support and the assistance and coaching of talented engineers to solve particularly vexing engineering problems.
And just this week, BDL announced that the lab and its new Shea roaster were recognized as one of 35 finalists for an environmental stewardship award this year, competing against nearly 1,000 other applicants for financial awards.
The competition is the .ORG Impact Awards, which honors organizations that use a “.org” internet domain and have a positive effect in their communities. (BDL’s website is burndesignlab.org.) BDL was recognized specifically for its improved Shea roaster project.
The winners of that award will be announced on Nov. 16. As a finalist, BDL will be eligible for donations in a range from $10,000 to $50,000.
Building a better stove
Two to three billion people across the world cook over open fires or using primitive cookstoves, typically using biomass such as wood, charcoal, or dung for fuel, according to the World Health Organization.
The result is indoor air pollution that can be linked to more than 3 million premature deaths per year — shouldered mostly by women and children — and which contributes to the rise of Co2 in the atmosphere that exacerbates climate change.
Why is the smoke so toxic? In large part, because these traditional cooking methods cause too much incomplete combustion of the fuel they use, kicking up pollutants such as carbon monoxide.
BDL designs cooking equipment such as stoves that are both durable and affordable to produce, and which burn fuel more efficiently, drastically reducing the number of toxins released. The entire process happens over back-and-forth conversations with cookstove users and manufacturers in the places they serve, to make sure the stoves fit the cultural and practical needs of the people who will use them.
“It’s not simply a bunch of engineers in a corner,” Means said. “It really needs to be an iterative approach.”
Other successes include the Jikokoa, a charcoal-burning stove that reduces fuel use and emissions. More than a million have been produced so far, Means said.
Unlike the paperclip, Means said, which is the kind of design that holds up after a century, their stoves are more like the automobile — advances in technology, manufacturing processes and cultural understanding keep making room for stoves that burn a little better, cost a little less, last a little longer and fit a community a little more.
“You figure if they’re successful, because we’ve helped them develop an improved design, and establish or expand and improve their manufacturing system, then they’re providing a quality product at the lowest possible price to the people in their region,” Means said. “So that’s success for us.”
Back to the lab
Future projects for BDL include efforts to build a better institutional stove for schools, hospitals and other high-volume places in Sierra Leone. A manufacturer, West Wind Energy, is attached to that project.
Another goal is to produce an open-source design for a household stove that smaller, local manufacturers could use to serve their communities.
Sharing a warehouse, fabrication shop and lab in the JT Sheffield park means the engineers at BDL can bring those dreams to life and even test them all in the same workplace.
When engineers have a model in mind, their work starts with design and research. Mechanical engineers, like Srividhya R, use design software like Fusion 360 to craft detailed three-dimensional schematics that can be sent to a 3D printer.
In the shop downstairs, engineers use lasers, shears, water jets and other tools to cut parts to size and then assemble them for use.
Then, a lab room outfitted with a fume hood can take these prototype stove designs and measure how much smoke they emit.
Mechanical design engineer Katarina Reynolds said the workflow at BDL allows her to do the design, the building and the testing — processes that other companies will sometimes cordon off into individual teams or engineers.
“I will say this is more satisfying,” Reynolds said. “Here’s this product that I actually thought of, and I’m now holding in my hands.”
