SCORE: The Multi-tasking Stove, Sounds Good.
by Warren McLaren, Sydney 
on 05.18.07
Take a Stirling engine, some four UK universities, (Nottingham, Imperial College London, Manchester, Queen Mary London), a leading US research centre (Los Alamos National Laboratory), a multi-national electrical goods manufacturer (GP Acoustics), an international charitable organisation (Practical Action), sprinkle in £2 M (~4$4 M USD) and let simmer for 5 years and you just might conjure up a SCORE (Stove for Cooking, Refrigeration and Electricity). The project aims to take high technology used by NASA and the like, but to adapt it to relieve the plight of an estimated two million people who rely on often smoke filled open fires for their cooking. Research as found that this style of cooking is 93% wasteful of its energy source (left image). Instead, the team lead by Nottingham University, want design a stove which uses biomass fuels, such as cattle dung, to heat air which then passes through a tapering pipe to generate sound (sort like a kettle whistle.) This sound is converted by a linear alternator (are the script writers for Doctor Who reading?), turning it into electricity, that in turn runs a cold box - the refrigerator part of the system. But the team have also charged themselves with coming up with a design that is small, affordable and can be locally made. We trust their engineering skills greatly exceed their web design ones. ::SCORE, via Associated Press Of Pakistan.
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But is the inside bigger than the outside?
Next thing you know they'll be overrun with Daleks.
Repairability is a key factor. Many a well-meaning development project has gone to scrap because the components couldn't be locally serviced.
it's 2 billion people. Not million. They hope to produce a million units a year according to popular science.
I know this is an old article, but I would love to buy one of these.
One way to market these is to charge $60 for them and take the profit to make those that you send a unit to Africa. Other words, for everyone sold at $60 - 80, you give one away to someone in Africa. I would gladly give that much and I think that if marketed properly, you could move at least a couple million in the US along. Canada would probably move another million. Just a thought for a very good cause.