Wireless Instrument for Automated Measurement of Clean Cookstove Usage and Black Carbon Emissions

Traditional cooking practices, prevalent in many developing nations, emit massive quantities of black carbon and other pollutants through the inefficient combustion of biomass fuels. As a result, improved cook stoves are being introduced worldwide as a fuel-efficient and cleaner-burning solution. Because actual performance can depart significantly from laboratory results, real-time devices to assess cook stove usage and emissions from the field can enable rapid and iterative cycles of improvement in cook stove performance. These devices must be versatile and easy to operate and maintain, with a low probe cost and minimal power consumption, in order to enable large-scale measurement for extended periods of time in rural conditions. The aim of this Phase-I proposal is to develop a low-cost, geotemporally referenced sensor for monitoring and reporting cook stove usage and black carbon emissions generated by biomass burning. The proposed system, which is informed by field research from Project Surya, an Indian cook stove project sponsored by the United Nations Environment Program, will support automated and wireless capture of stove type, fuel type, cooking duration, and cook stove emissions of black carbon. The method will remove much of the computational complexity from the sensor and transfer it to a central facility and will, therefore, be able to be implemented on a large scale at extremely low cost. Further, the streamlined hardware platform will be lightweight, ruggedized, and will support local operation and maintenance. During the proposed Phase-I research; side-by-side controlled studies will compare the proposed methods with state of- the-art measurement tools in order to validate accuracy, resolution, and detection levels.