Safety Testing and Analysis of the Berkeley-Darfur Stove

Camps for Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) in war-torn Darfur, western Sudan, house over 2,400,000 people.  As firewood rapidly becomes scarce within easy walking distance of encampment sites, women and girls must travel longer distances to forage for firewood. Traditional three-stone fires (TSF) used for cooking by the IDPs are energy inefficient and grossly polluting. The Berkeley-Darfur Stove (BDS) is a fuel-efficient biomass cookstove intended to replace the TSF for cooking.  Use of BDS reduced firewood demand, and decreased the frequency of arduous long trips needed to forage for firewood. Aside from measuring stove fuel-efficiency and emissions, it is desirable to measure how BDS ranks for safety for the end user. A ten-part cook-stoves safety test protocol has been developed by the International Standards Organization (ISO) International Workshop Agreement (IWA), based on the University of Iowa stoves safety test. This protocol was applied to the BDS.  The BDS scored “Good/Tier 3” overall, with “Best/Tier 4” scores in six tests (sharp edges and points, cookstove tipping, heat transmission to surroundings, chimney shielding, flames surrounding cook pot, and flames/ fuel exiting the fuel chamber, canister, or pipes);  “Good/ Tier 3” scores in three tests (containment of fuel, obstructions near cooking surface, and temperature of operational construction); and a “Poor/Tier 1 score in one (surface temperature) test.  We have used these test results to propose and analyze design modifications that will improve the BDS safety score by lowering the external surface temperature with only minimal impact on the cost and complexity of its construction.