reStove
Clean Cooking for Rural India
The Problem
Imagine cooking on an open fire, burning wood and coal, indoors, every day. This is the reality for millions of people in rural India. The problem? Indoor air pollution.
Approximately one million people die every year from IAP, caused by the incomplete combustion of these biomass fuels, which releases toxic gases like CO and NO2 into the household.
To combat this problem, the Indian government has distributed modern gas-powered stoves to residents free of charge. The major problem with LPG (liquified petroleum gas) is affordability for the rural population, which often resorts to their old ways of burning biomass to fulfill their daily needs.
The Solution
Enter the reStove Biogas System. We have developed a simple and cost-effective biogas plant to enable people in rural India to use their gas-powered stoves in a sustainable way. The concept is simple: cow dung and water in, biogas out. Each household or community operates their biogas plant independently, using cow dung collected from their agriculture work, so they don’t have to rely on LPG supplies anymore. The biowaste generated can be put back into the fields as fertilizer. An easy-to-use, affordable and empowering alternative to other cooking fuels.
Milestones
2021
Development and construction of the first conceptual prototype in Germany.
04 / 2022
08 / 2022
NISD – Partnership with National Institute of Sustainable Development to connect with the local community, obtain first customer feedback for our prototype and conduct further market research through their vast network.
IETL – Partnership with Innovative Environmental Technologies Pvt. Ltd. as our main local partner to support technical development and procurement later on.
2022
First travel to India funded by TUM SEED Center. Highlights were to visit our local partners for the first time, dive into the actual living conditions of our customers in rural India, attend SEED Annual Symposium at Indian Institute of Technology Mumbai (IITB) and extend our local network.
The Teamleads
Carl Kuzinski
