dc.description.abstract |
One-third of the world’s population use traditional biomass for cooking, lighting and space heating, use of these forms of energy is associated with environmental health and human health impacts. Like in other developing countries, the energy sector of Ethiopia is dominated by biomass fuels and the growing demands of energy of the economic sector has placed additional burden on the already depleted forest resource. Local liquor (Areke) distillation is widely practicing economic activity that exclusively depends on fuel wood for its preparation and processing. This study aimed to assess the potential benefits of improved Areke distilling stoves with respect to the indoor air quality and specific fuel consumption as well as the time taken for distillation. The indoor concentration of two major pollutants, CO and PM2.5 were monitored using HOBO CO loggers and UCB PM Monitors, respectively. The test were conducted in real kitchens where the stoves perform the actual Areke distillation, whereas under controlled settings the possible efforts are made to minimize the source of variability to 30- minutes and 15- minutes intervals respectively to analyze the data. The CO and PM2.5 concentrations in room ensure that the stoves were used in their best quality and minimized the air pollution. t- test and regression models were applied to test the results of traditional stoves and improved stoves and comparison were done in terms of the average (mean) concentration during the whole distillation time intervals and 30 minutes were considered for highest concentrations. The improved stoves have shown statistically significant reduction in CO concentrations of 8.10% and 4.8ppm (p<0.05; n= 9) during complete distillation time whereas PM2.5 concentration were reduced to 19.05% and 69.70ppm. The improved stove have shown efficient reduction in highest concentration of CO and PM2.5 of 8.10% and 19.05% (p< 0.05; n = 9) respectively in the 30-minutes time interval. The present study indicates that the correlation between CO and PM2.5 were positive correlated and Pearson correlation of traditional stoves and improved stoves conditions were 0.32 (p = 0.39; n = 9) and 0.35; n = 9) respectively. Controlled Cooking test results showed that the improved stove significantly reduced the specific fuel consumption by 33.3% and 50.2% as well as reduction of time taken for distillation was observed. |
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