Abstract
In Ethiopia, the majority of rural household uses firewood with three-stone fire for cooking. Due to poor performance of the stove, there are major health issues created by indoor air pollution. To alleviate this problem, various efforts are undergoing such as the use of plant oil as an alternative fuel for cooking. This plant’s oils are available in the rural areas with minimal effort and water. In this study, Jatropha oil was blended with kerosene to present it as an alternative fuel for the rural poor in Ethiopia. The blends of varying proportions of Jatropha oil and kerosene were prepared, analyzed, and compared with the fuel properties of kerosene. The viscosity of Jatropha oil was reduced in ranges 86.3% to 4.5% by heating the oil from 30°C to 100°C. In order to understand the value of the blended fuel, the blended fuel was used for the evaluation of the performance of a stove for its thermal efficiency and indoor air pollution. Thermal efficiency of the newly designed bio-oil stove (Jatrok stove) was 52–66% with its specific fuel consumption ranging from 30 to 37 g/L and the fire power of the stove ranging from 1398 to 1433 watt using 10% to 40% Jatropha oil in the blend. In the case of emission, the Jatrok stove showed 11.5 to 9.5 grams of carbon monoxide (CO) and 352 to 289 grams of carbon dioxide (CO2) to boil 2.5 liters of water.The performance of the Jatrok stove using blended fuels was evaluated and compared with other domestic cooking stoves available in Ethiopia, making the stove comparable. A wider dissemination of such kind of plant oil blended with a kerosene-operated stove could reduce the environmental load in addition to lessoning the indoor air pollution in the kitchen.
Highlights
In Ethiopia, the majority of rural household uses firewood with three-stone fire for cooking
In Ethiopia, despite the opportunities for growing Jatropha as a biofuel crop, some barriers such as technical capacity and low awareness slowed down the utilization of the Jatropha plant oil [4, 5]. e calorific value of Jatropha oil is about 39.65 kJ/kg which is close to the calorific value of kerosene (43.50 kJ/kg); Jatropha oil has high viscosity (75.5 cSt) which is about 35-fold that of kerosene (2.2 cSt). is has a major impact on its utilization [6]
Blends of fuels were made by mixing Jatropha oil with kerosene. e viscosity of pure Jatropha and the blended fuels was measured by using the Brookfield DV2T viscometer, and calorific values were measured by using a calorimeter
Summary
In Ethiopia, the majority of rural household uses firewood with three-stone fire for cooking. Due to poor performance of the stove, there are major health issues created by indoor air pollution. To alleviate this problem, various efforts are undergoing such as the use of plant oil as an alternative fuel for cooking. Jatropha oil was blended with kerosene to present it as an alternative fuel for the rural poor in Ethiopia. A wider dissemination of such kind of plant oil blended with a kerosene-operated stove could reduce the environmental load in addition to lessoning the indoor air pollution in the kitchen. The viscosity of plant oil is many times higher than that of kerosene where common wick-type cookstoves are not suitable to use plant oils as the cooking fuel [6]. erefore, researchers have been focusing on utilization of plant oils on gravity [18] and pressure stoves [19]
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