Ethanol gel fuel for cooking stoves revolutionizing African households

More than half of the world’s population relies on dung, wood, crop waste or coal to meet their most basic energy needs. Cooking and heating with such solid fuels on open fires or stoves without chimneys leads to indoor air pollution. This indoor smoke contains a range of health-damaging pollutants including small soot or dust particles that are able to penetrate deep into the lungs. In poorly ventilated dwellings, indoor smoke can exceed acceptable levels for small particles in outdoor air 100-fold. Exposure is particularly high among women and children, who spend the most time near the domestic hearth. Indoor smoke pollution is a real killer in the kitchen. According to the WHO, every year indoor air pollution is responsible for the death of 1.6 million people - that's one death every 20 seconds.

Now a new, simple and sustainable biofuel is silently bringing a revolution to African households: ethanol gel. The low cost gel is smokeless, odourless, not poisonous, easy to handle and to store and can be used in traditional cooking stoves. Moreover, it reduces CO2 emissions by up to 50% compared to wood and diminishes pressures on forests. To produce gelfuel, denatured ethanol from sugar or starch crops is mixed with a thickening agent (cellulose) and water through a very simple technical process, resulting in a combustible gel. The gelfuel is thus renewable and can be locally produced in most countries in Africa. Jellified and/or solidified liquid fuels (kerosene and ethanol) have been in use since World War II, when they were used by soldiers for cooking.
The advantage of the ethanol gel fuel is that it can be made from so many tropical crops - from sorghum over cassava to tapioca, sweet potatoes, sugar cane and maize, to name but a few.

Several initiatives like the World Bank's Millennium Gelfuel Initiative - a public-private partnership aimed at adapting and disseminating the cooking fuel for the African household sector - have yielded encouraging results. Consumer tests and marketing assessments conducted in Ethiopia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Senegal, and Zimbabwe have overwhelmingly affirmed the appeal and potential commercial viability of the gelfuel. More than 15 African and 2 Latin American countries have expressed interest in introducing the local production and marketing of the gelfuel, and concrete private sector driven Millennium Gelfuel investment projects are being prepared in Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.

Other large commercialisation efforts are underway elsewhere. In Swaziland, for example, local people are "extatic" about a gel fuel project, because not only does it deliver cheaper and cleaner energy than wood, its production also brings in jobs and gives a boost to the local economy. The company in question has made a €uro 4 million investment and will be sourcing cassava as a feedstock from small farmers. Women entrepreneurs will sell the gel packs on local markets. "Everything comes together so nicely", as one woman in Swaziland said enthusiastically about the project. We agree with her.

More information:

• Biomass Technology Group: Ethanol Gel as Domestic Fuel [*.pdf]
• Joanneum Austria, for the IEA's Bioenergy Task 38: Ethanol/Millennium Gelfuel: A Sustainable Engine for Rural Transformation [*.ppt presentation]
• Technical University Eindhoven: Ethanol gel fuel for developing countries
• The World Bank's Millennium Gelfuel Initiative: Gelfuel: A Renewable Low-Cost Cooking Fuel (technical description), and a nice overview of the project's results.
• A company called Greengel African Heat already distributes the ethanol gel in South Africa.
• The Swazi Observer: Locals ecstatic about gel fuel project

ethanol :: biodiesel :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: Africa :: gelfuel