Development and Performance Evaluation of Biomass-Based Injera Baking Gasifier Stove: A Case Study of Clean Cooking Technologies in Ethiopia.

The primary energy source in Ethiopia is biomass. Over 80% of Ethiopians are rural dwellers who rely on biomass energy for lighting and cooking. In most parts of Ethiopia, injera is traditionally baked using an open fire, a three stone, or a device using woody biomass. These baking stoves have very low efficiency and consume a significant amount of fuel. Moreover, these traditional baking stoves have released large amounts of indoor air pollution, which has led to different types of health-related risks, especially for women and children in the country. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate efficient and fuel-saving injera baking technologies. Rigorously, an injera baking gasifier stove was designed, developed, and characterized in detail through water boiling and control cooking test methods. The indoor air pollution level was evaluated using particulate matter measuring instruments. The result indicated that the developed gasifier stove had a thermal efficiency of 21.8%. Furthermore, an 86% fuel savings performance was demonstrated by the controlled cooking test for the injera baking gasifier stove. The average emission concentrations of particulate matter and carbon monoxide were 608 µg/m3 and 9 ppm, respectively, during indoor air pollution determination. The study showed that injera baking gasifier stoves are a promising cooking technology for societies where baking is mostly dependent on traditional biomass fuel.

Effect of maturity on the moisture sorption isotherm of chili pepper (M a reko Fana variety).

The moisture sorption isotherm at three maturity levels of the M a reko Fana chili pepper variety (red, brown and green) has been studied in this paper. The sorption isotherm was determined based on the standard static gravimetric method using a glycerol-water mixture in a relative humidity range of 10-92% at three temperature levels and nonlinear regression analysis was used to select suitable sorption models. The Clasius - Clapeyron equation was implemented to determine the isosteric heat of sorption of the chili pepper using the experimental equilibrium moisture content at different sorption temperature levels. The results showed that the GAB model was well fitted for green chili pepper, while the OSWIN model described well the brown and red chili variant. There was a difference in net isosteric heat between the adsorption and desorption isotherm of chili pepper maturity. For green chili, the maximum value of the net isosteric heat was 18 kJ mol-1 and 20 kJ mol-1 for adsorption and desorption isotherms, respectively and it decreased exponentially as moisture content increased. The desorption heat was higher than the adsorption heat for each maturity of chili pepper which indicated the existence of hysteresis in the sorption process. In comparison to literature data reported for different chili varieties, M a reko Fana has a lower heat of sorption and monolayer moisture content.