NAIROBI, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Philip Kolil picked some wood chips from a gunny bag and put them into a cookstove, or Jiko in Swahili, arranging them neatly before getting a match stick and lighting fire.
Soon, the wood pieces burned steadily, and as the fire spread, the intensity of the heat from the cookstove increased.
Surprisingly, the cookstove did not emit any smoke, as one would expect with any wood-fueled Jiko.
"This is a smokeless cookstove, and it is very suitable for indoor cooking," Kolil, who came up with the Jiko, said in a recent interview.
The innovator explained that the Jiko not only uses woodchips but also steam generated by water stored in one of its compartments.
"Once I light the woodchips, the heat generated heats the water, which produces the steam that absorbs smoke from the chips, keeping the cookstove smokeless," said Kolil, who is based at Moi University in Uasin Gishu County in Kenya's Rift Valley, adding that the steam also helps with cooking food.
The smokeless Jiko, which is steadily gaining popularity in households in Kenya, as well as institutions like hospitals and schools, is one of the solutions to the widespread indoor household pollution problem in the East African nation caused by overreliance on biomass as a primary source of fuel.
Kenya's Ministry of Energy and Petroleum said in a 2021 study on household energy and indoor air quality that the overreliance on biomass fuel, especially in rural areas where more than 70 percent of households use firewood, has not only led to a rise in respiratory diseases due to poor household air quality but also increased deforestation.
The ministry says more often than not, it is women and young children "who get exposed to the high levels of indoor air pollution leading to health complications and premature deaths from lung cancer and child pneumonia."
The Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) estimates that 23,000 Kenyans die yearly due to household air pollution arising from the use of fuels like firewood and crop waste in poorly ventilated houses.
David Chirchir, Kenya's cabinet secretary for Energy and Petroleum, noted that the country targets "universal access to clean cooking by 2028 in line with the existing global and local commitments contained in Sustainable Development Goal No. 7, Sustainable Energy for All (SEforAll) and Kenya's Nationally Determined Contributions."
Kenya has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 32 percent by 2030, in line with the Paris Agreement.
The use of smokeless cookstoves, therefore, comes in handy as a solution to multiple challenges in the health and environment sectors and fuels the country's climate change goals, according to Kenya's Ministry of Energy and Petroleum.
This is because the Jikos use very little firewood or improved fuels like briquettes, emitting less smoke and therefore offering a safer way of cooking.
"My Jikos need a few woodchips as well as 1.8 liters of water to cook for up to three hours," Kolil said of the cookstove that he came up with in 2017, and has been patented by the Kenya Industrial Property Institute, which patents intellectual properties.
While he produces on-demand small Jikos that he sells to households for 3,000 shillings apiece and partners with institutions to make the bigger ones for them, Kolil said he is hoping to get an institutional manufacturer who would help him mass produce the cookstoves, as he also creates awareness about it at clean energy and climate forums.
The smokeless Jiko, according to Kolil, is his contribution to a carbon-free Kenya and part of the climate change mitigation efforts.
Abigail Kimei, who is among the about 500 users of Kolil's Jiko in Kenya, said it has saved her a great deal not only in terms of costs but also from respiratory diseases.
"When I used to use the ordinary Jiko, I was coughing a lot because of the smoke from firewood. But what I use now is smokeless," said the 37-year-old mother of four, who lives in Kapseret, Uasin Gishu County.
She uses the improved cookstove to cook all her meals, including ugali, a type of corn meal, tea and rice.
Steven Ochieng, a mechanical engineer from the University of Eldoret, said in general, environmentally friendly cookstoves are designed to cook faster and use fewer resources.
Ochieng, whose university has also made a smokeless cookstove, which is different from Kolil's, as it uses briquettes made from crop waste like bagasse and bean pods, said the energy-efficient Jiko is what the country needs to conserve the environment and prevent diseases and deaths caused by smoke.
"In our case, we compress the crop waste to make briquettes that are used in the Jiko. A kilo-and-a-half of the briquettes cook for the entire day," he explained.
After the briquettes burn, they produce biochar which Ochieng said is good for farm use as organic fertiliser as well as an anti-pest repellent. He explained that to use the biochar on the farm, one collects it from the Jiko and places it around the stems of different plants.
Ochieng said it is good for use in kitchen gardens hosting vegetables, tomatoes and even fruit trees.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which assesses the science related to climate change, estimates the use of improved Jiko has the potential to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by between 0.6 and 2.4 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent per year. ■