The Belonio stove

Alexis Belonio is an associate professor in agricultural engineering at the Central Philippine University of Iloilo City. In 2008 he received a Rolex Award for Enterprise for a rice-husk-burning stove he designed. Belonio’s stove is not complicated, either mechanically or conceptually: A columnar metal burner with the addition of a small intake fan at the base to tip the stoichiometry of combustion towards oxidation, giving a blue, clean, efficient flame that leaves little or no residue. Traditional rice husk burners, by contrast, do not have this forced-air feature and produce a yellow, dirty, inefficient flame that leaves tar behind. The upshot is more efficient use of rice husk biomass and greatly reduced pollution from the many rice-husk burners in use today.