Made On Earth

The Belonio stove

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.

Living willow architecture

Living willow architecture

More arboreal architectural awesomeness, here brought to you by German architect Marcel Kalberer and the Sanfte Strukturen group. The first structure, called the Auerworld Palace, was constructed in 1998, in Aeurstedt, Germany, and was their first “willow palace” project, taking the efforts of 300 volunteers to build. Kalberer has gone on to… er… plant 70 […]

Living root bridges

Wow, how cool are these bridges, “grown” by training roots to grow into the shapes you want for your structure. In the depths of northeastern India, in one of the wettest places on earth, bridges aren’t built – they’re grown. The living bridges of Cherrapunji, India are made from the roots of the Ficus elastica […]

Fishing net calls when it’s full

Fishing net calls when it’s full

From AfriGadget: Pascal Katana, a Fourth Year student at the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, developed an electronic device that ‘automates’ fishing. The trap employs amplification of the sound made by fish while feeding. The acoustic signals are radiated and attract other fish who head toward the direction […]