Author(s)

Oscar Mulumba Ilunga^1,2*, Hurtado Pérez Elías José¹

¹Instituto de ingeniería energética, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia UPV, Valencia, Spain.
²Mechanical Department, Higher Institution of Applied Techniques ISTA, Kinshasa, D.R. Congo.

Sub-Saharan African countries depend 80% on the biomass-wood to meet their daily needs in terms of cooking foods. Traditional cookstoves are much more used to this effect. Many change programmes for replacing cookstove model have been planned. Yet many of these programmes have not been preceded by environmental impact studies. This work offers high-performance cookstove models and determines their impact on the reduction of CO₂ emissions, a very harmful greenhouse gas causing the planet warming and climate change. Replacing the traditional cookstove by an improved stove may lead to an economy in terms of fuel ranging from 33.2% to 75.4% according to the model of cookstoves. Yet the Gasifier using pellets as fuel remains the most beneficial stove in terms of fuel saving (75.4%) and in terms of ER CO₂, i.e. 2748 t CO₂/Year. An improved gasifier cookstove is multi-fuel. He can use charcoal, pellets and wood. This is an indispensable cooking tool with alternative fuels. In this work, the ER CO₂ was evaluated using two methods. The KPT, which is a field method and the CCT which is a laboratory method. By the KPT method a gasifier ICS/GAS/P records up to an ERCO₂ of 2748 t CO₂/Year, while with the same gasifier, an ERCO₂ of 2619 t CO₂/year is found by the CCT method. The comparison between the two methods shows the same trend but with very high values of ERCO₂ for the KPT method results. The variation between the two methods ranges between 1% approximately to 6.9 percent.

Improved Cookstove, Biomass, Gasifier, CO₂ Emissions

Ilunga, O. and José, H. (2018) Environmental Impacts (ER CO₂) of an Improved Multi-Fuel Gasifier Forced Air Cookstove in the City of Kinshasa. Journal of Environmental Protection, 9, 619-635. doi: 10.4236/jep.2018.96039.