ETHOS Technical Reports
Document Type
Report
Publication Date
9-30-2017
Abstract
Women’s Empowerment is one of the four pillars of Determined to Develop, an NGO operating out of Chilumba, Malawi, Africa. One of their efforts to aid in empowering women is supporting various women run small businesses. One of those businesses is the baking group of Phulano. This group used a single chamber small oven, made out of an oil drum and a brick and cement structure that used a lot of fuel and could only hold two pans of buns at a time, making their overall baking routine inefficient. In order to improve the efficiency and capacity of the oven, a five chamber design was created. The new design still utilized oil drums as the chambers and surrounded the structure with brick and clay, creating insulation for the heat. In addition, a chimney was added for both draw and ventilation of smoke. This design allowed for heat to travel effectively around all five chambers and additionally increased the capacity by five times. Construction of the new oven took approximately nine weeks with many obstacles, but the oven was finally completed with a roof for protection from the elements and counters with shelves for preparation and cooling. In testing of the new oven, it was found that heating time and cooking time remained essentially the same while the amount of wood required increased by two times making the overall efficiency better in terms of a better wood use to buns baked ratio.
eCommons Citation
Jacobs, Noelle, "Malawi: Earthen Oven Upgrade" (2017). ETHOS Technical Reports. 26.
https://ecommons.udayton.edu/ethos_reports/26
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