Filipino honored for inventing low-cost stove

MANILA – A 48-year-old Filipino professor has been honored as one of the recipients of the prestigious Rolex Awards for Entrepreneurship for inventing a low-cost stove that uses what is usually considered as waste from rice production.

The honoree is Alexis Belonio, an associate professor of agricultural engineering at the privately-owned Central Philippines University located in Iloilo City in Iloilo province in the Visayas.

Officials of the Rolex Award said Belonio was granted a $50,000 cash prize in addition to a Rolex chronometer watch.

Started in 1976 the Rolex Awards have been established to support pioneering work in science and medicine, technology and innovation, exploration and discovery, the environment as well as cultural heritage.

Belonio’s invention is now widely used by farming households not only in the Philippines but also in Indonesia and Cambodia which belong to the 10-member Association of Southeast Asia Nations (Asean).

Belonio said he would use his cash prize to promote his invention for free, especially by the poor throughout the world who are suffering from the high cost of cooking food.

“I will focus on disseminating the stove throughout the world,” he vowed. “To achieve this, I will produce more publications to show people how to do it.”

It is through such cooperation with his Asian counterparts, he said, that the stove has also become popular in Indonesia and Cambodia.

According to Belonio, he developed the stove powered by rice husk, which is usually considered as waste.

The stove, he said, reduces fuel costs as well as minimize greenhouse gas emissions that pollute the atmosphere.

Belonio explained he designed the stove in such a way that a stream of oxygen converts the burning rice husk fuel to a combustible blend of hydrogen, carbon monoxide and methane gases.

This, in turn, yields a hot blue blame similar to that produced by burning natural gas, he said.

Initially, Belonio said he sold his invention equivalent to $100 each, which was way beyond the reach of the poor families who were his intended beneficiaries.

But by simplifying the design in terms of operation, materials and fabrication, Belonio said he succeeded in reducing the price of each stove to just $25.

He said that by exploiting a freely available waste product at a time of soaring energy prices, the stove can save a family of rice farmers about $150 a year in fuel bills, a huge benefit for families that live on about $1.50 day based on the standard on poverty level by the Manila-based Asian Development Bank.

Nothing goes to waste by using the stove, Belonio assured. He pointed out even the char left after the burning of the rice husk can be recycled to fertilize the field or to produce environment-friendly bio-coal briquettes used for grilling fish, meat and vegetables.

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