Cateau Albers

All in all we can see that we made a satisfying cookstove that meets the needs of the customer. It is more efficient, affordable, faster and it emits less smoke. However, it is hard to say how reliable these results are. We could not test all cookstoves on one day, because we only had one pot that had to be cold at the beginning of the test. Because of that, we did all tests on different days

After the water boiling test, we gave the cookstove to the women who cook everyday on KITA to use it. After a few days, we asked them some questions about our design of the cookstove. We asked them about the efficiency, user friendliness, emitted smoke and price. The women said it was much more efficient than the three stone fire they were used to, they really liked to use our cookstove. Also

The graph above shows the amount of wood we used to boil the water. Again, it can clearly be seen that all the cookstoves are much more efficient than the three stone fire. However, the second prototype used a little more wood than the other ones.

To test our cookstove, we made use of a document about the water boiling test (Bailis, R., e.a., 2007). According to this document, the water boiling test consists of three tests: the cold start high power test, the hot start high power test and the low power test. These three tests should immediately follow each other. However, for our project, we decided to only do the cold start high power…

Research Phase Already in the first week the project structure changed drastically as we could not visit the kenkey makers and started the prototyping phase two weeks earlier than planned. We have spoken to kenkey makers and asked them about their needs and demands, so we could deliver this investigation. All the Ghanaian people are very familiar with kenkey and the cooking process, so for them…

Week 1 On a Sunday evening we arrived at KITA. The first days we were introduced to KITA, the students, the teachers and the other volunteers. The students, involved in this project, showed us the Ghanaian way of life. They taught us how to buy food at the market, how to do your laundry and how get around. We learned that Nick, an American volunteer at KITA, would be our supervisor and we…

Kenkey makers in the Ejisu-Juaben district The customers are the Ga and Fante kenkey makers (mostly women) in the Ejisu-Juaben district in Ghana. They cook kenkey all day long in order to sell small portions to households in the region. Therefore they use traditional three stone fires and have to deal with all the negative consequences for their health, the local livelihood and the environment.

Worldwide nearly three billion people rely on open fires or traditional cookstoves for cooking every day (Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, 2015). This method of cooking has severe consequences for their health, the local livelihood and the environment. Nowadays it is the fifth leading cause of death and the fourth leading cause of diseases in developing countries (WHO, 2014). Also in Ghana a…

Since the client is an institute, representatives from KITA are the supervisors. The director of KITA, Mr. Samuel Tekye, will keep track of the project’s process. The project managers are Mr. George Ansah and Mr. Franklin Takyi. They will provide technical support with cookstove development and especially with the field work and they are the supervisors of the day to day   project activities of…

For the second year in a row the Clean Cookstove project will be executed by three students of Delft University of Technology and three students of Kumasi Institute of Tropical Agriculture. The KITA students participate in this project for their final thesis, whereas the TU Delft students participate in this project for their minor International Entrepreneurship and Development. KITA wishes to…

To develop renewable energy solutions, KITA has partnerships with the SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, the Green Microfinance NGO in the USA, the Power Africa Energy Challenge of USADF, the Institute for Sustainable Energy and Environmental Solutions (SEES) and the Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development (CEESD). Furthermore KITA works together with the Ministry of…

After the research phase, at the end of week 2 or the beginning of week 3 we will finish a brief report on our results of the research. The prototypes need to be constructed before the Christmas holidays, so at the end of week 6, but it is possible to let the clay dry during these weeks. The prototyping phase and the sales phase overlap in the ninth week and we expect that preparing the…