Rocket stoves & mass heaters - introduction
“A warm tent, 8 litres of hot water and an omelette on the hob. Life’s good.” – Ed Morriss
What are rocket stoves?
Rocket stoves are stoves designed to burn wood, but also to operate at high enough temperatures to superheat the wood to release gases that are also burnt, increasing efficiency. The flammable gases released are hydrogen and methane, which are burnt, along with carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and steam, which are vented.
There’s no smoke with a rocket stove. With a wood stove you burn plant matter, which releases gases – as smoke, which is vented, not burnt. Modern stoves with baffles hold the smoke and gases longer, and are therefore more efficient – but not as efficient as a rocket stove.
A rocket stove is usually a simple L-shape, comprising combustion chamber / flue and a ‘magazine’ to load wood in at the front – usually but not always horizontally. Air is drawn in past the wood, so that combustion occurs at the bottom of the insulated flue (which is often double-skinned, infilled with wood ash or vermiculite). The insulation and the airflow means that the heat is concentrated in the combustion chamber / bottom of the flue, and extremely high temperatures can be achieved.
Rocket stoves are more prevalent in poorer countries such as Somalia, Ethiopia and Uganda, and have been used successfully in refugee camps in Rwanda. They can be made from various materials, including bricks, clay and recycled oil drums or cooking oil cans.
From simple, single-burner outdoor cooking facilities, you can utilise the same principle for indoor ovens, water boilers, multiple burner stoves or mass heaters, where the heat from the flue is used to heat up a mass of earth, cob or some other material that will store the heat. This way you can make a heated cob bench next to the stove, for example. Throw on a few cushions and we’re talking very, very cosy. For an indoor heater, there needs to be a flue to vent gases outside, with a vertical chimney to take carbon monoxide up and away from windows etc, where it may re-enter the house.
There are presses that can make little round briquettes from sawdust that fit exactly into the magazine of a rocket stove. They have a hole through the middle that allows the air to flow through. They are pushed further into the stove by the next briquette as they burn down.
The principle of superheating wood to release gases, then burning the gases, is the basis of a wood gasifier, which produces gas to be used as a fuel. Wood is burnt in an anaerobic environment (pyrolysis), and the gases released can be used immediately or stored for use elsewhere. Cars can be adapted to run on wood gas.
What are the benefits of rocket stoves?
- lower emissions of carbon and pollutants per unit of heat delivered
- they use wood more efficiently; you can bring a pot of water to the boil twice as fast as an open fire or wood stove, using less than half the wood
- the smoke leaving the flue from a wood stove is hot, but the exhaust from a rocket stove is around normal room temperature; heat is radiated into the room or into the food being cooked, not lost via the flue
- you don’t have to spend so much time chopping firewood
- cheap to construct, from recycled materials
- can reduce deforestation – a serious problem in sub-Saharan Africa due to firewood harvesting for cooking fires
- in countries where cooking is over an open fire, there has been a high incidence of pneumonia among children and adults alike, due to smoke inhalation; using a rocket stove instead removes this problem, as there’s no smoke
What can I do?
You can buy a stove, or you can make one. You can search online for instructional videos, or occasionally there are rocket stove building courses.
Possibly the simplest stove you can make is with 3 cans (e.g. olive oil cans) – a large can for the exterior, a smaller one for the interior chamber, and a third, horizontal one for the feed magazine. Put wood ash between the interior and exterior cans for insulation, and you have a basic stove. You could also make a cob/clay stove by forming it around two pieces of pipe in an L-shape, and then taking the pipes out. Sturdier rocket stoves can be fabricated from metal, which is a bit more involved, and you’ll need welding skills.
It is possible to incorporate the rocket stove principles described above into a rocket mass heater that can be installed in a house and used to heat water and/or a mass such as ceramic, fire bricks or a cob bench that will store and radiate heat like a large-scale storage heater without the need for electricity. These are very efficient as heat is stored by the mass rather than wasted from the chimney as with conventional fireplaces. They are used successfully in homes around the world, and in some very cold climates too. There are portable designs available for use in tents, yurts, tipis etc for cooking and heating.
If you want to install a rocket mass heater in your home, you need to think about building regs, otherwise there may be safety issues, and your house insurance will be invalidated if your installation isn’t signed off properly. Some people in remote, self-built, low-impact accommodation often ignore building regs altogether, are confident in their ability to install a heater safely, and don’t go in for house insurance for a property that they can fix or even completely rebuild themselves if necessary. If this isn’t you, then our advice is: be nice to your building control officers. They could block your installation if they want to, because equipment should really be lab tested, which is expensive. The building control officer may not know about that, but they’ll know about document J, covering flues and surrounds. Flues are not allowed to be horizontal, but you could argue that the the horizontal run is in fact part of the heater, and then hook up to a vertical chimney after the horizontal run. There has to be a good hearth around the heater too, to protect flammable materials from falling embers. It really depends on what your local officer is like, but if you approach them in a non-antagonistic way and ask for their help with an interesting, environmentally-friendly (but safe) project, you’re likely to get a more favourable response.
You can use rocket stoves on the patio, or for camping. They can be used as cooking stoves, bread ovens and/or water heaters, and rocket heaters can be used indoors as a sealed unit with a flue. Even in a northern climate, located in the centre of the home, they can perform all these functions with a couple of hours burning in the morning, and a couple in the evening.
If you tweak the design so that the fuel (sticks) is inserted vertically (see diagram), then gravity will feed them into the fire, and you can see when you need to add more.
Rocket stoves are very good for camping and there are designs using an enclosed rocket stove that can provide a hot plate cooking surface, water heating and little side flue that can be used in your tent.
They are quite simple to light. Start a small fire at the bottom of the flue using balls of paper and kindling, and then feed in dry wood. Often you have to tend the fire more often than a conventional wood stove, especially when cooking, due to the small amounts of wood involved. If you leave it for more than 15 minutes at a time, it could go out. However you will have cooked your meal, heated some water or mass to radiate heat and all using a lot less fuel than a conventional wood stove.
Integrated cooking
Rocket stoves can be used in combination with solar cookers and retained heat cookers. This combination enables you to cook at any time, rain or shine, without fossil fuels. See our solar cookers intro for more information.
Thanks to Ed Morriss of Drawfire for information.
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The specialist(s) below will respond to queries on this topic. Please comment in the box at the bottom of the page.
Stewart MacLachlan is an urban solar / rocket stove cook living in London. Co-founder of SLiCK, architect and specialist in deep green building, MSc in advanced energy architecture from UEL. UK distributor for EcoZoom rocket cookstoves.
The views expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily lowimpact.org's
6 Comments
The nomadic herders of Mongolia live in gers/yurts, and burn wood or dung in stoves giving off much smoke and pollution. It’s of little (or less) consequence in the country’s vast open spaces, but thousands have migrated to capital Ulaanbaatar (UB), still living in gers on the city outskirts and still using same stoves burning coal, wood, plastic or any junk that burns. Result: UB is more air polluted in winter than Beijing! Pollution 10+times greater than WHO safe levels. Every year there are high numbers of lung related diseases and deaths, especially babies, children, pregrant women and the elderly.
Given sufficient education and safety measures (?), could rocket stoves be used in their circumstances for cooking and heating? Winters there are -20C to -30C but ger insulation is good. The chimney goes through a hole at top of ger. They might not suit nomadic herders unless very portable, but for those domesticated in UB they could be of immense value healthwise, and cheaper to run. I willl be interested in your comments.
can you use rocket stoves to cook in doors and could you have a cooker and water heater in one stove?
Bill Munns. As I understand Mongolian style coal and biomass burner is an elevated metal box, with a pipe and a door and very simple. While portable and at least better than an open fire, you can imagine the amount of combustion heat lost up the pipe to a cold sky. Any kind of rocket stove incorporating the general principles will improve on this performance. As you’ve identified in this instance it important to respect local traditions.
The La Plancha rocket stove by EcoZoom was developed as a anti deforestation and smoke initiative for Rural Mexico and is a response to the hot plate cooking used there. Rocket stove principles are expertly applied, for the purposes of cooking but also as a detailed response to local requirements. You can read about the La Plancha here, and I believe 25,000 were distributed as a .gov scheme.
https://www.engineeringforchange.org/solutions/product/ecozoom-plancha/
A targeted Mongolian rocket stove solution is likely required in my humble opinion, using efficiency and smoke reduction as a target, with obvious benefits in Ulaan Bator and further afield in Central Asia,
Having any kind of fire indoors requires careful consideration of intake and exhaust gas. Our well sealed U.K. homes often don’t lend themselves to indoor fires in the same way as a Mexican or Kenya shack might – these will be very leaky. A good safe fire requires ventilation before , during and after use and should be handled by an experienced user.
When the above are taken into account, especially exhaust emissions/smoke while warming up, a rocket stove could be used for cooking indoors in certain situations. I’ve seen people using rocket cookstoves in their open chimney fireplace, with a steady draft taking away any smoke. But always remember you are handling a fire and carbon monoxide can kill if allowed to accumulate (without ventilation removing it).
Hello, I have another question about using a rocket stove indoors for cooking, in cases of emergency.
I have a Solo Stove, which I used for camping several years ago since it’s very light to carry, and I’ve bought an Ecozoom some time later as well, for use in the garden.
For the Solo Stove there is also a methylated spirit burner available nowadays, so you can still use the stove if you don’t find any dry wood or leaves when it rains. In principle, you can use such burner inside with any fondue set and without any extra safety precautions other than being careful.
Can’t you use this burner also safely inside with the Solo Stove then, using meth spirit or burning paste? And if you can, also with the Ecozoom? It wouldn’t be an open fire, and in both type of stoves the holes in the bottom and on top should work the same way as outside. The only difference with a fondue set would be the rapidity to get water and food to the boiling or cooking point. But maybe I miss something very important about heating basics and safety?
I have spent many an evening camping using a friends solo stove – it’s a little can size wood gasifier, and when it’s well fed can burn reasonably cleanly, but mostly it’s a little twig burner so it’s harder to keep it fed at the right rate to keep it hot enough, so gets a bit smoky at times. This is no problem outside but inside it would likely smoke the place out, I wouldn’t try. With a little meths burner it would be far far cleaner , like a Trangia camping stove. Which I’ve seen people regularly use indoors and inside tents. . Meths doesn’t have much smoke at all, it’s methanol. It will also have less cooking power than a little twig fire , so take longer, as you say like a fondue set.
Nobody will advise you to burn wood or charcoal inside on either a solo stove or an EcoZoom. That would be a decision for you to make once you have assessed the ventilation situation. Remember ventilation before, during and after use is the only way to ensure you don’t suffer breathing difficulties, carbon monooxide poisoning and other problems from bringing a fire indoors to a sealed up area.
I have recently built a two barrel rocket stove to heat my garage just a little late for the winter, I am looking to build a compact rocket water heater
low tech perferable ,although i can weld to heat a Ibc Container hot tub,which Im planning.
do you Have any ideas.
I have recently built a two barrel rocket stove to heat my garage just a little late for the winter, I am looking to build a compact rocket water heater
low tech perferable ,although i can weld to heat a Ibc Container hot tub,which Im planning.
do you Have any ideas.
Water has the highest specific heat capacity of materials,,meaning it needs the most heat energy to heat it. It’s also a good conductor of heat and hot water is very useful indeed, from generation to cooking and hygiene. It’s also very dangerous when hot, especially for high volumes, and needs to be vented and contained. Rocket stoves are a good way to heat water using very little fuel. Try a search for Aprovecho research station material for ideas, for diy. Good luck with project
Water has the highest specific heat capacity of materials,,meaning it needs the most heat energy to heat it. It’s also a good conductor of heat and hot water is very useful indeed, from generation to cooking and hygiene. It’s also very dangerous when hot, especially for high volumes, and needs to be vented and contained. Rocket stoves are a good way to heat water using very little fuel. Try a search for Aprovecho research station material for ideas, for diy. Good luck with project