It is not surprising to learn, as the population of the world expands at an ever-increasing rate, that the demand for affordable energy is placing unreasonable expectations on our fragile ecosystem. Alexis Belonio has accomplished the seemingly impossible and developed a clean burning cooking stove and continuous-flow industrial flow burner. Belonio’s cooking stove uses a finely tuned gasification process that produces a clean-burning fuel. The Rice Husk Gasifier’s simple and elegant design allows rural communities to build the stove themselves, sourced from accessible resources and local talent, while potentially saving two million metric tons of energy loss each year. Belonio speaks with Center for Social Innovation correspondent Sheela Sethuraman as he joins the Prize Laureates from the 2010 Tech Museum Awards.
Alexis T. Belonio is a professor, engineer, scientist, innovator, and inventor from the Philippines. Motivated by the plight of poor farmers in the Philippines faced with the high cost of fuel for their cooking, Alexis Belonio, born in 1960, developed a low-cost, ecological method that uses agricultural waste –- in the form of rice husks –- to solve the problem. The inveterate Filipino inventor was equipped to meet the challenge, having worked as a researcher at the International Rice Research Institute and as an associate professor of agricultural engineering at Central Philippine University. Devoted to sharing this device with other parts of the world, including Vietnam and Nepal. Belonio set up a demonstration and training centre at Central Philippine University where visitors can receive a free copy of the fabrication manual.
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