Green Algae Strategy Products - CookingFuel

Tonight, one out of two people on Earth, 3.3 B people, will cook their supper with biomass fuels; wood, dung, agricultural residues or coal over an open fire. These biofuels used in cooking stoves emit substantial pollutants in the black smoke, including carbon particles, CO2, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides and benzene. Most these people also depend on solid fuels for heating. Globally, reliance on solid fuels for indoor cooking has emerged as one of the most important threats to public health. In 2000, indoor air pollution was responsible for more than 1.6 million deaths and 2.7% of the global burden of disease. About two thirds of smoke deaths occur in South-East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. In poor and developing countries only malnutrition, unsafe sex, lack of clean water and adequate sanitation were greater health threats than indoor air pollution. Indoor air pollution continues to ravage rural communities and poor urban dwellers. Smoke death continues to be largely ignored by the world community. Professional and academic research on the topic is nearly zero.

Smoke death

Smoke death occurs because mothers build cooking fires that give off sooty black smoke in their small huts. Mothers may cook four to six hours a day while their children sit near the cook stove. Mothers and children inhale smoke – the equivalent of smoking several packs of cigarettes a day. Inhaled cooking smoke is one of the leading causes of disability and death globally for women and children who are the most exposed. Cooking smoke causes acute respiratory infections, heart disease, pneumonia, tuberculosis, low birth weights, cataracts, muscular fatigue and multiple types of cancer. Globally, villages, towns and cities have denuded forests and fields for miles because firewood is considered a public resource. In too many cases, forest lands cannot replenish firewood with sufficient speed and the forest or rangeland erodes to desert. Diseases of the respiratory system from cooking fire smoke make it increasingly more difficult for women to hike extended distances to gather firewood and water for their families. Indoor Cooking

Given a choice, most mothers would prefer to use an alternative source of fuel that did not require them to scavenge for twigs or dung and did not put them at risk for respiratory distress and smoke death for themselves and their families. Algae oil burns cleanly, similar to other plant oils. Algae do not have the fibrous cellulosic structure associated wood that burns with black smoke and carries dense soot particulates. Algae oil burns hot with a clear, colorless or light blue flame.

Locally produced algae oil could provide a solution for smoke death and deforestation. The remaining biomass, after oil extraction, could provide animal feed. If the requirement for firewood were eliminated or modified significantly, villagers could replant the forests and fields and re-forest their community.