Vietnam is a country with favorable natural conditions and agriculture developed so early. However, in recent years, the agricultural mechanization and the decrease in custom of using straw, rice roots as food for buffalo, cows and castles have resulted in the regretful waste of abundant agriculture residues like straw, rice husks, bodies and cores of corn, peanut… after every harvest (they are even fired right in fields or poured into rivers, canals, irrigation ditches, causing environment pollution). Besides, other residues like saw dust, wood chips, sugarcane residues… are also under the same waste.
To solve this problem, our society is in need for inventions, new technological solutions or outstanding researches to utilize or turn agriculture fuels and residues into new valuable commodities which help increase people income and create sustainable economic and social values.
Currently, many kinds of cook stoves using gas, electricity, coal, wood, straw, rice roots are being used for daily cooking. But these cook stoves are wasting energy sources and emitting many kinds of toxic air damaging user health and polluting environment.
With a decisive determination to research and manufacture one kind of cook stoves can utilize many abundant sources of biomass from agri-forestry residues in an efficient manner, Mr. Nguyen Manh Ha and researchers from the Institute of Regional Research and Development – Ministry of Science and Technology of Vietnam have created a new kind of infra-red biogas stove with outstanding features.
This kind can turn agricultural residues like rice husk, straw, rice roots, corn cores in pellets into firing air sources which are then lead to combustion section and create infra-red fire with high energy efficiency.
The structure of a infra-red biogas stove includes a cylinder gasification chamber with 2 metal layers. There is insulating ceramic cotton between the 2 layers. Such cotton can bear thousands of degree Celsius. Main sections of the biogas stove are: combustion chamber, combustion valves, and fuel compressing system. The air supply section includes blower, gas leading pipe, and gas control valves, fuel feeding section, system leading gas from gasification chamber, gas filtering and cooling section, and infra-red firing head.
“With the said structure, the new infra-red biogas stoves can operate more efficiently than other ones of the same kind because they can use plant pellets as fuels, operate continuously without turn-off during fuel feeding and compressing, and gas is created at the highest efficiency, and more importantly, it can minimize toxic gas from cook stoves using wood, coal and LPG which most damage human health” shared Nguyen Manh Ha.
Economically, the use of infra-red biogas stoves saves 25-40% of monthly expense compared with the use of LPG stoves and 10-30% of monthly expense compared with the use of bee-cell coal stoves.
Infra-red biogas stoves have high firing efficiency, save fuels so they help save cooking expenses and time for housewives. This is a useful solution to restricting the exploitation and use of non-recyclable firing fuel sources. Putting infra-red biogas stoves into practical production and daily life will not only help save fuels, protect user health but also contribute part to increasing income of peasants from collection, purchase and production of agricultural residues.
Actually, the infra-red biogas stoves of the author will be a all-rounded technological solution meeting use needs of all people, opening a broad application potential, and bringing sustainable socio-economic efficiencies in the near future.