Platform for Integrated Cookstove Assessment (PICA)

Dependence on dirty solid fuels and inefficient stoves for cooking, heating, and lighting by over 3 billion people in developing countries has very large negative effects on health, environment, livelihoods, gender equality, and global climate. To address this problem and fill the unmet need for robust, inexpensive instrumentation for measuring the in-field performance and usage of cookstoves, we are developing the Platform for Integrated Cookstove Assessment (PICA). Current tools for monitoring stove performance and usage, as well as other household-level impacts in the field, are generally expensive and time-intensive, failing to uniformly meet the DOEs requirements of affordability, reliability, durability, and user-friendliness. PICA is a system for managing a suite of tools to collect data at key phases of cookstove development and perform programmatic evaluation and research studies, including parameters such as household air pollution, personal exposure, emissions, and stove usage. Efficient, robust, cost-effective monitoring and evaluation tools such as PICA are critical to development and uptake of clean cooking solutions, the assessment of their impacts, and to support continued global investment in such solutions. Phase I funding was used to create pilot PICA software (the core of the PICA platform). We developed prototypes of the next generation of our UCB-PATS particle monitor, tested the new monitor as well as a commercial CO sensor, and integrated both into the PICA platform. We also used Phase 1 funding to integrate iButton stove use data into PICA and enhance algorithms for processing stove temperature data to yield useful metrics, such as the number of stove uses per day, week, or month. The first objective of Phase II is to fully develop PICAs instrument management and data management and analysis capabilities to create a proficient, comprehensive software system. Secondly, we plan to develop a fully functional, commercial PICA air quality monitor (PATS+). The final objective is to ensure that PICA is well positioned for the next generation of sensors and capabilities through continued research and development of additional sensors for measuring technology usage and energy/pollutant indicators. If the project is carried over into Phase III and beyond, the successful commercialization of PICA will allow an ever greater portion of the cookstove market to access this tool and collect cookstove data and/or track air pollution, especially the many less sophisticated users, developing country agencies, and NGOs. Three to five years from now, our goal is to also have a revenue stream from licensing some of the core technological components of PATS+ and PICA to a consumer products company that will target an entirely new market segment for real-time household air pollution monitoring.