February 4, 2016 – Some of the estimated 4 million premature deaths each year attributed to indoor cookstove smoke might be prevented because of the work of researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Colorado State University and Envirofit International. With 3 billion people in developing countries using open fire cookstoves, the need is great for durable, low-cost corrosion-resistant materials that also enable a stove to burn cleaner, said ORNL’s Mike Brady, who has led alloy design efforts for the team since this work began in 2007. The team is now reporting a new alloy (iron-chromium-silicon base) that shows early promise for better corrosion resistance than the current state-of-the-art alloys (iron-chromium-aluminum) at lower cost. The team is also publishing corrosion test methods, data and mitigation approaches for next-generation cookstove combustor materials that can be used by cookstove manufacturers to design more durable, better-performing cookstoves. This work was presented recently at the Engineers in Technical and Humanitarian Opportunities of Service conference in Kirkland, Washington.
With just a few small sticks, Envirofit International’s M-5000 Wood clean cookstove can boil water in seven minutes. Two-thirds of the company’s 1 million stoves sold used alloys developed by the research team.