Burn Design Lab’s “Extended Life Stove” (ELS) project aims to improve one of Kenya’s most popular cookstoves, the Jikokoa cookstove, by extending its working lifetime and designing a more durable combustion chamber. Currently stove users are willing to invest $40 to buy the Jikokoa because of the fuel savings and health benefis. As stove user Magdalene Nyambura of Kenya explains, “It’s important to saveguard my future and that of my kids by investing.” However, at this time the production Jikokoa fails after about three years if it is used to cook three meals every day. We hope to improve the durability of the stove so that users will have a greater return on their significant investments.  

We currently have three combustion chambers (CCs) in the program, all of which maintain the same charcoal-holding capacity as the production design, but alter either the combustion chamber’s shape or its material composition. Our alternate geometry designs, which have shown reduced carbon monoxide emission compared to the production Jikokoa, are still in good condition after an equivalent lifetime of two years. Having just failed after an equivalent lifetime of nearly three years, our initial ceramic combustion chamber design has shown its potential as an alternate material to extend the life of the Jikokoa! We have been exploring different avenues to improve our ceramic combustion chamber design and manufacturing process, hoping to send an improved product to Nairobi soon.