Development and Testing of the Berkeley Darfur Stove Page: 3 of 55
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Executive Summary
Darfur, one of the poorest regions in Sudan, has been in the midst of a complicated and
bloody conflict since 2003 that has resulted in the displacement of 2.2 million citizens.
The displaced, known as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), are crowded into refugee
camps scattered across the region with low fuelwood productivity and no alternative
means of fuel. Unsustainable harvesting has led to increasing zones of total denudation
around the camps, now extending several kilometers in all directions from the camp
boundaries. Women who leave the camp to fetch fuelwood are subject to rape and
mutilation due to the continuing conflict.
In November of 2005, a team of scientists from LBNL visited Darfur to assess the
potential of fuel-efficient stoves ("FES") as a means to mitigate the fuelwood shortage. In
addition to conducting a systematic informal survey, the team found that a metal FES,
known as the Tara, required 50% less fuelwood to cook an IDP meal than the inefficient
three-stone-fire used by 90% of the IDPs. The LBNL team emerged from the trip
recommending a metal FES based on the Tara, but with two specific design modifications
to make it suitable for conditions in Darfur. These included improving the mechanical
stability of the stove during vigorous stirring, and maintaining or improving performance
during a breeze.
In Spring 2006, an interdisciplinary team of four Berkeley students (3 graduate and 1
senior undergraduate) took on the project of designing, fabricating, and testing the
recommended modifications as part of a UC-Berkeley course entitled Design for
Sustainable Communities. Under the guidance of Prof. Ashok Gadgil, the students
designed several modifications to improve stove performance in windy weather,
including a wind-shield around the upper stove body, and the addition of a metal ring to
prevent direct air flow through the stove body. Stakes were also added to the stove body
to improve stability during vigorous stirring. The students fabricated a prototype for
testing, known as the "Berkeley Darfur Stove," or BDS.
Since no existing stove test was relevant to the conditions of Darfur, a new protocol,
known as the Darfur Cooking Test (DCT), was developed by the students to compare the
fuel efficiency of two stoves. This protocol is specific to the conditions in Darfur,
incorporating both windy and non-windy conditions, along with the cooking pots, food
preparation methods, and meals employed by IDPs. The complete DCT protocol is
presented in Appendices 1 and 2.
The BDS prototype was tested against the original Tara stove using the newly developed
DCT along with a simple tipping test (to compare stability). Fuelwood usage by the BDS
was found to be consistently less than that of the Tara stove under all tested conditions.
Compared to the Tara, the BDS was found to save 56% (with wind) and 40% (without
wind) of the fuelwood required to cook sauce-like mulah (one of two staple IDP foods)
and to save 74% (with wind) and 8% (without wind) of the fuelwood required to cook the
dough-like assida (the other staple food). Using these numbers, the BDS was found to
have a net annual fuelwood savings of 72% over the three-stone-fire in Darfur. The
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Amrose, Susan; Amrose, Susan; Kisch, G. Theodore; Kirubi, Charles; Woo, Jesse & Gadgil, Ashok. Development and Testing of the Berkeley Darfur Stove, report, February 29, 2008; Berkeley, California. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc895930/m1/3/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.