Physics Professor and Students Develop Solar Cookware to Save Lives Worldwide
Schwartz celebrates with three women in the Southern Region, Malawi, who won a contest to use as little firewood or charcoal as possible. (Courtesy photo)
DONORS CONTRIBUTE TO STUDENT RESEARCH DURING THE SUMMER
JuLY 2024
by nick wilson
Each year, millions of people around the world get sick or die from emissions related to cooking with polluting materials such as firewood and coal.
To prevent illness and reduce environmental impact, a Cal Poly physics professor is working to expand use of solar cooking technology, coordinating with others to establish cookware in households worldwide.
Schwartz works with a man in a Kathmandu factory that can now manufacture the ISECookers. Two cookers have been imported to Cal Poly for more testing. (courtesy photo)
The innovative, cost-effective cooking tools developed by Professor Pete Schwartz and his students promote sustainable practices.
Schwartz's model, Insulated Solar Electric Cookers, is designed to use electric heaters connected directly to solar panels to cook food inside an insulated chamber. Solar cookers can be made on site worldwide.
"The benefit is that you get people interested in the technology and they can work toward manufacturing and shape how the product looks and works in their local communities," Schwartz said.
Schwartz has a comprehensive portal of information on his Solar Electric Cooking website, with posts on the technology, journal articles and insights into his travel experiences.
"These insulated cookers can be made locally (presently produced in Kathmandu, Malawi, Togo, Cameroon and Zambia), stimulating local economy, exciting interest in technology, and providing product support and customer feedback," Schwartz wrote on his site. "We support new manufacturing centers with funding, instructions, and a support community. We collaborate with local academic institutions to jointly study the technology and adoption."
Thanks to donor funding, four students working with Schwartz are conducting summer research this year to advance the new technology. Three students are being supported by the Frost Fund, and a fourth has been funded by a private donor. Another student is volunteering.
One group of summer researchers will develop a cost-effective electronic interface with the solar panel, and another group will pursue manufacturing improvements.
Schwartz has been innovating clean energy cookers for two decades, helping people in places where biomass (wood, charcoal, crop residues, and dung) and coal are burned to heat up food. Burning those materials can harm one's health.
Nearly 3 billion people in the world rely on the burning of biomass and coal in rudimentary stoves or open fires to meet basic needs for household energy, according to the World Health Organization website. WHO officials note that household air pollution from cooking, heating and lighting cause 3 to 4 million premature deaths annually, more than AIDs, malaria, and tuberculosis combined, and a wide range of illnesses.
Besides solar panels, power for ISECookers may come from the grid or from a combination of electrical sources. Energy can be stored thermally or in a battery. Low-power cooking, made possible because of the insulation, saves money by reducing electrical bills (if grid connected) or reducing the number of solar panels purchased.
However, those fuels may cause people in the developing world, primarily women and children, to become ill due to smoke with high concentrations of pollutants such as fine particles composed of toxic compounds. Approximately 500,000 people in the U.S. are affected by indoor air pollution from poorly ventilated stoves.
Additionally, producing and distributing sustainable cookers for developing countries also may help reduce the risk of sexual assault.
"Women (and children) are vulnerable when they leave their communities to collect firewood or purchase coal," Schwartz wrote in his blog.
Between September 2022 and September 2023, Schwartz visited collaborators in Africa, as well as India, Nepal, and Fiji, supporting local manufacturing and innovating uses of the cooking devices.
UK Aid Direct has provided about $200,000 in funding for Schwartz's work under its Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) program. The international community of collaborators has grown, through Schwartz’s online presence, as international innovators learn about ISECooking and reach out.
Salma Bougoune, from Togo, coordinated with Schwartz to build solar electric cookers in the western African country. Bougoune manages an organization that expands access to affordable and sustainable solar lighting systems in rural Togo.
"From the grant, I sent him $1,000 and Salma got going on using cookers," Schwartz said. "He sent a bunch of pictures of how they were progressing, and then I sent him more money to continue the work."
Schwartz spent five weeks in Togo, working with Bougoune and running a week-long workshop for 20 innovators from all over Africa. The experience has made the two men "like brothers" as Schwartz lived with Salma’s family, grew close to his son, and they shared meals, argued and laughed.
Schwartz said that solar panels may be purchased in Africa for between $30 and $100 and the cookware can be built as cheaply as $15, with increases in cost based on materials and added features.
As part of his curriculum at Cal Poly, Schwartz teaches courses that include cultural awareness and the design/creative process, such as PSC 391 and 392, which he introduced with guidance from former Cal Poly industrial and engineering Professor Sema Alptekin, combining theory and application.
"We look at global poverty, where it comes from, what efforts have been done to mitigate it, what failings there have been and how we want to be when it comes to all of that," Schwartz said. "Students are learning important things, but I also learn through this process incredibly. The fact that I'm learning while they are learning, students rise to that."
In these “hands-on” service-learning classes, an interdisciplinary group of four students directly work with an international collaborator – usually someone in the global learning community.
With continued student involvement, community outreach and collaboration worldwide around solar cooking, Schwartz said the project is still a work in progress.
"It's an innovative technology, but it's also an innovative designing process," Schwartz said. "How do you design a technology? How do you design a dissemination mechanism? How do you design a learning mechanism? There were so many things that I hadn't anticipated happening."
Last year, Ashesi University (Ghana) exchange student Ropa Nhanga (from Zimbabwe), who studied at Cal Poly in 2022-2023, was awarded funding though the Physics Department Faculty-Student Research to do research related to the solar cooking project.
"We are very glad that Pete proposed this summer research opportunity for Ropa because she could continue the work at Ashesi and with industrial partners in Accra (the capital and largest city of Ghana)," said Jennifer Klay, chair of the Physics Department.
After completing her final year as an undergraduate student at Ashesi, Nhanga will be attending graduate school at UC Berkeley this fall.
Back in San Luis Obispo, Schwartz said that one of the ways to practice and improve upon the tools are to use the cookware at home.
Schwartz explained: "That's something that I do personally and that I've always done with my students because it's really hard to design an improved cooking experience unless you’re living it."
Want to see more? Schwartz kept a comprehensive blog during his trip.
