Cook stoves for women in developing countries

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Currently there are 2 – 4 million people that die every year in developing countries due to unclean cooking. Tens million more get seriously ill. This is a result of the approximately 3 BILLION people that still cook over wood and charcoal cookfires on the ground. The smoke, toxic emissions and particulates cause respiratory infections and cancer, just from daily cooking. This problem predominately affects women and children since they are often the ones cooking in the homes. When the mother in the family dies from a respiratory infection or cancer this often has extremely negative consequences on the family, children aren’t able to go to school and often end up homeless on the streets. There is also the tens of millions of cases were a family member gets sick and needs medication, even the cost of $50 for antibiotics can plunge a family just making it into extreme poverty…and there are 3 billion people who are at risk every day and every meal.

This is why I developed a biomass cook stove that burns as clean as a natural gas stove. Better yet I designed the stove to burn agricultural biomass waste. Agricultural biomass waste is the leftovers from the mass farming of crops across the world. Corn, rice, wheat, coffee etc all have husks, cobs, stems and plant parts that are left as waste after the crops have been processed. These waste products are often dumped and have little value. In fact over 500 billion tons of agricultural biomass waste is produced annually, that’s every year. And the best part is, since its waste, its free.

The stove I designed can burn all of these different types of biomass waste cleanly as fuel. If a family is able to use our stove they can cleanly burn renewable agricultural biomass waste as fuel instead of buying wood and charcoal to burn in unclean fires.

This benefits users in many ways:

1.       Clean burning = mom and kids aren’t exposed to toxic emissions whenever they are cooking dinner

2.       Agricultural biomass waste is free = savings from purchasing fuel will pay off the stove in under a year (also lets not forget about the savings from not having to pay for medicine or medical expenses from respiratory infections and cancer!)

3.       Renewable energy source = reduce mass deforestation

4.       Reduce toxic emissions = cleaner air and cleaner earth

5.       Stoves would be assembled and distributed locally in target market countries providing good paying jobs to local men and women

Right now we have a patent pending, we have a manufacturer, we are setting up distribution and sales in the Philippines (then we will expand to other countries soon). We have field tested stoves in Cambodia and the Philippines.

Now we need to start production and start providing clean cooking to people that need it the most! But that comes with some significant start up costs. We are raising $50,000 to pay for initial manufacturing costs as well as setting up distribution that includes training local Filipino sales men and women.

My name is Joe James I have been working on developing biomass cookstoves for over 5 years now, I’m currently working on my Phd in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Akron. I have personally travelled to Cambodia and the Philippines and sat beside women as they cook over unclean wood fires, I have coughed and had my eyes watered right beside them. I thank them from the bottom of my heart for opening their homes to me and cooking their delicious food.  Below are a before and after picture from the Philippines in 2018, the top picture with all the smoke is how they cook EVERY DAY, the picture below that is after they started using two of the stoves I had brought them. NO SMOKE!!!




If you can’t contribute funds, even just sharing this post to your social media is helpful!

Again thank you for your support!

Please visit our website at jjquad.com

Also, visit our instagram page for more pictures and follow us to keep up to date!  Instagram: jjquad_bioenergy

December 19, 2019: We have a new improved design ready for testing in 3 countries in SE Asia!
In March 2020, I will be taking 6 stoves to 3 countries Cambodia, Vietnam and the Philippines (2 stoves will be left for long term testing with families in each country!)



If you can’t contribute funds, even just sharing this post to your social media is helpful!

Again thank you for your support!

Please visit our website at jjquad.com

Also, visit our instagram page for more pictures and follow us to keep up to date!  Instagram: jjquad_bioenergy