One of my brothers was a Reader (in Mechanical and Production Engineering) at the University of Nottingham -- in the UK -- and it is good to see one of the other departments there (Electrical Engineering) at the hub of one of those projects that should make us all proud to be engineers.
Four universities have come together in a project with the acronym SCORE (Stove for Cooking, Refrigeration and Electricity supply). The researchers are from the University of Manchester, the University of Nottingham, Imperial College (London), Queen Mary College (University of London) and they have stretched their arms across the Atlantic to gain help from the Los Alamos National Laboratory and GP Acoustics (a division of GP Industries and manufacturers of KEF and Celestion audio products). They are also working with the international charity Practical Action, which focuses on trying too solve poverty issues through technology.
What are all these people working on? If I said it was a thermoacoustic stove, refrigerator and generator all-in-one, most of us (me included) would be scratching our heads.
Thermoacoustic engine technology is not an unknown. It has been used for the refrigeration of natural gas, combustion driven, and Los Alamos (and why they are involved) have been at the top of electricity generation techniques using radioisotopes.
The device being developed has a number of objectives. From Practical Action's viewpoint it fits into their concern over the deaths from smoke inhalation in the poorest parts of the world. Indoor smoke, they say, from burning solid fuels like coal, wood, even dried animal dung, is killing 1.5 million a year, more than die from malaria.
But the main objective for SCORE is the production of electricity and refrigeration combined with safe cooking with those same solid fuels.
In the West we would see the use of a fuel like wood as quaint. In much of Africa, and in many parts of Asia, it is an essential ingredient to life -- as important as seeking clean drinking water. The SCORE device burns a biomass like wood producing heat for a cooking bowl set above it. The smoke from the stove enters a specially-shaped chimney (see block diagram) that produces an audio whistle. That whistle is absorbed by what amounts to the front-end of the cone of a carefully-designed highly-efficient loudspeaker, producing electrical power -- what SCORE is calling a linear alternator. This is the only moving part in the device.
The gas oscillations also power a cooling heat exchanger which is balanced against ambient air to produce a refrigeration area.
An artist's impression of the complete device shows the cooking surface, the cold box and electrical outlets.
This is being thought of as a five year project, the first three of which involve detailed on-site research into the needs of the various villages that need this solution -- with a focus on rural Nepal. At the same time, each of the three stages of the operation of the device will be perfected in the various labs. In the last two years, the final devices, using as much local materials as possible, will be built, distributed and monitored. Various educational agencies in Africa and Asia will coordinate these last phases at the local level.
This is such a nerve-wrenchingly practical project, with such a decent target solution. It makes you so glad that we still have people who are willing to devote a chunk of their lives to helping others -- especially in such a basic manner. Yes, there will be commercial benefits down the road, but hopefully they will be mostly on a local level.
Nobody loses in this project, and there is everything to gain for many. This is not charity for the heck of it; it is a life saver.
